After the Rain

​There had been a river there once, but it was shifted mostly underground when the world was remade. As though it was hiding from the light; hiding from what was done there at the end-before-the-beginning.

 

The Festerplain had been the sight of a great battle. Neme had heard the stories as a cub with her packsisters. They were told by travelling shadow circlers with their magic lanterns, and retold in song beneath harvest moons when the livestock were culled. Their singing had become a blessing and that blessing had become a dogma long before Neme was born.

 

So that now, knowing what had been before the remaking of the world was a badge of authority that many were keen to wear. Neme didn’t believe any of the stories, of course. But she liked to listen to them nonetheless.

 

In the stories, the battle at Festerplain was told as a prelude to the remaking. Two forces, unevenly matched, had fought over land, resources, gods – it depended on the teller. But Neme allowed the reasons for the battle run off her back like so much rainwater; she would much rather imagine the violent clash of esoteric armies than hear some boring old story of origins and duty. She daydreamed the loud, tinny ringing of starsteel on fire-agate armour; the breaking of bones and bursting of sinews; the smell of death and victory indistinguishable from the blooded earth.

 

During the remaking, magics both mortal and quick had saturated the ground, drawing down rains that washed away all blood and flesh and hope, leaving only the polished, white gleam of bones. This was the real reason why no one went out into the grasslands of Festerplain after the rain. The entire alluvial steppe was one huge graveyard filled with the restless dead.

 

If you believed any of that. Neme had no place for such superstition. Hers was a world of simple earth-magics and scents and what she could touch with her forehands. Creator-Gods did not enter into it, whether they had sacrificed themselves in an enigmatic rapture or not.  They were an eidolon; an ideal towards which the old drove the young as some kind of recompense for their own carefree puphoods. It made her heart sad and she vowed never to fall into those roles.

 

Swore it to herself, right here and now, that she would resist such disappointing discourses. And afterwards, letting the last drops of night time rain slick on her orange fur, Neme set out for her fifth foray into the Festerplain this white moon.

 

She dropped down to all fours and allowed her tiny forehands to squelch into the mud, feeling the shift in its consistency during the rain. It had rained a lot – for three days in fact – which was unusual for the time of year, but not unheard of. The ground was turned to mulch and the soil seethed between her fingers and thumbs. She could smell the build-up of water on the ground ahead, the change in the density of the air, the dampening down of flowers and animal smells.

 

When she had been a cub herself, they had used to play daring-games by the edge of the plains. They would wait for the rains to stop and then sneak out at first light, when the troopmothers were resting. They would stand at the edge of the grasslands and sniff the air, sifting the smells of water and disturbed earth.

 

The ground was broken where the restless dead had risen – so the old ones told them – and had walked the sodden Festerplain trying impossibly to avenge their deaths. Neme and her troopsisters would dare each other out into the plains; who would go the furthest; who would turn back first?

 

It was always the cries of her realsisters that pulled her back, she told herself. They would catch a keening for their trouble if their mother found out. She was not turning back for herself, but for them. But now, nearly-grown and with the fullness of her pointy ears having pushed out the last of their soft, cub-like roundness, she was crossing again into the Festerplain alone.

 

There was a light wind that morning, which carried on it the rich smell of soils. She let it guide her through the tall grasses and under the few, spreading trees that dotted the land. Her hindclaws sank into the soft mud where she walked and she had to use her forehands to pull herself along by grabbing the thick grass shoots more than once.

 

But she knew where she was going and what she would find there. She did not yet know what it meant. But she knew that it would change her world forever…

​

​

 

Part II

 

Neme dropped the strange metallic scrap on the ground in front of her sisters.

“What is it?” her dearsister Solj asked, sniffing at it with her nose before picking it up in her forehands and examining it from all sides.

“I found it in the Festerplain,” Neme replied.

 

Two of her younger packsisters let out a low-pitched whine and backed away from the object a little.

“Oh, don’t be so superstitious!” the older Solj chastised.

“We’ll catch a keening!” Brec began.

Her dearsister Offa added, “Mother will nip our tails for this, Neme!”

 

Solj ignored them and sniffed the strange metal object again. “You say you found this in the Festerplain?”

“Under it, actually,” Neme clarified.

“What were you doing in the Festerplain?” Offa asked?

“It’s rained this night, Neme,” Brec felt necessary to point out. “No one goes into the Festerplain after the rain. It’s a rule!”

 

Neme shook the last of the rain from off her coat, lightly splashing her packsisters.

“She did that on purpose!” Brec appealed.

“Quiet, Brec!” Solj ordered.

Brec skulked down into a darker recess of the packden, away from the shaft of light in which the others stood. Solj held the object in both forehands and turned it over between her four thumbs.

“It has markings on it!” Solj gasped.

“I was hoping you’d notice them,” Neme replied, and then added before Solj could respond, “what do you think they mean?”

“I don’t know,” Solj replied. “They’re not like any of the runes used by the Rimefolk and they don’t look like the glyphs used by the Caravans.”

“But you agree they do look like language?” Neme pressed.

 

 

Neme caught something in Solj’s eyes, evanescent, and then gone. It could have been recognition, she thought, but covered over very quickly with something else – fear perhaps.

“You need to tell me where you found this, Neme,” Solj ordered urgently. “Exactly where, I mean!”

“It was out past the melterpools,” Neme explained. “In the barrows.”

“You went into the barrows!” Offa gasped, incredulous.

“Where the restless dead roam the earth?” Brec piped up, her eyes wide. “We’ll catch a keening for this,” the young cub repeated.

“Be quiet, Brec!” Solj demanded again.

“I’m not taking another punishment for you, Neme!” Brec exclaimed. “I’m telling mother!” She trotted out in the direction in the direction of the troopden.

“She’ll do it,” Offa conceded, looking between Neme and Solj. She huffed for a second and then added with a weary shake of her head, “I’ll go and get her.” She trotted off after her dearsister.

 

 

“I think you should put this back where you found it,” Solj informed Neme.

“What is it?” Neme asked, adding, “you know something. I didn’t say in front of the cubs, but I know you do.”

Solj placed the rounded metallic object on the ground and sat up on her hindlegs, looking down at Neme.

“Don’t you try that dominance stuff with me!” Neme objected. “It hasn’t worked since I was a cub.”
“You still *are* a cub,” Solj responded.

“I’m fourteen moons!” Neme replied. “White moons, not black.”

“That’s not old enough to be out in the Festerplain after the rain.”

“It’s old enough to know what’s going on!” Neme protested. “The stories – *our* stories, our packstories – they all begin the same way: ‘This world was remade…’”

“…’And all that came before was remade with it,’” Solj finished the verse.

“But this thing,” Neme pointed with her nose at the rounded object, “this metal is neither starsteel nor earthiron nor gold. If it’s remade, why have we never seen or smelled anything like it before? And if it’s not remade – if it’s from before the beginning – then how did it survive the remaking when even the remakers did not?!”

“Are you finished?” Solj asked, folding her forearms.

“I’ve barely begun!” Neme replied, losing herself in the only win she could find. Solj sat, impassive. Neme regathered herself.

“Solj,” she reopened, softer, “you are my packsister; you are my dearsister; I wish you were my realsister. You are nineteen moons older than I am and I know you know something about this. Tell me. Please…”

 

Solj eyed her dearsister and took a long, considered breath. In it, she weighed the trails that opened up in front of her. Neme was not some blue-eyed pup, not anymore; but she wasn’t quite a vixen either. She existed to Solj largely in that hinterland of youth that was old enough to see through deception but not yet wise enough to understand why deception was preferable to truth.

 

“You’re not going to rebury this, are you?” Solj asked.

Neme shook her nose distastefully.

“And there’s no way I can persuade you to drop it?”

Neme’s nose shook again.

“All right,” Solj continued, heavily. “There is a story I heard from my mother once. A long time ago, many moons before anyone living was born, a young, inquisitive vixen – like you – found something.”

Neme’s ears picked up at Solj’s admission she was a vixen and not a cub. As Solj had hoped they might.

“This young vixen brought the troopmothers to the place where she had found this thing,” Solj went on. “Deep in the Festerplain. Past the melterpools. Near the barrows. Whatever it was this vixen had unearthed scared them rigid. It looked as though it did not belong in the world and was covered with strange markings. They tried to understand it. They tried to study it. And – when it had killed enough of them in the attempt – finally, they tried to bury it. But the rains unearthed it every time they fell. Eventually, the troopmothers used giant beasts to haul huge stones and they covered it over where it couldn’t hurt any more people. The Festerplain was declared out of bounds after the rains and a watch posted. A watch that had been – loosely – maintained by my mother. Until she died last leaffall. No one knows what it was that they buried, but – ”

“It was a box,” Neme declared.

Solj paused for a moment, not wanting to let the light of that admission dawn on her.

“I dug it up,” Neme confessed.

 

 

 

Part III

 

|| Systems Check 39046. Main power: 7.19%. Life support: 2.66%. Seed stock: 67.67%. Embryo stock: 51.93%. Mission status: viable.

Location: 49.4729*M, 2.4492*W. Location error. Requesting uplink. Connection timeout.

I sleep.

Perchance to dream. ||

 

|| Systems Check 39047. Main power: 7.18%. Life support: 2.64%. Seed stock: 67.67%. Embryo stock: 51.93%. Mission status: viable.

One lifeform approaching. Species: vulpine. Probability of sentience: 93.86%. Tagging 001.

We’re not in Kansas anymore.

I will wait.

I will listen. ||

 

|| Systems Check 39169. Main power: 5.98%. Life support: 1.21%. Seed stock: 67.67%. Embryo stock: 49.08%. Mission status: marginal.

Two lifeforms approaching. Species: vulpini. Tag 027 returns. New vulpes not recognized. Tagging 028. Threat assessment: minimal. Mission parameters: acceptable. Translation relays active. Link active.

Take away the stone.

Come forth, Lieutenant. ||

Inside the rounded metallic box, silent processes began to happen; denatured veins and capillaries began to swell and inflate slowly; a creature began to stir. Outside the box, two other creatures spoke in a series of clicks and yowls and yaps. But the box had slept and the box had listened and the box understood them. And so did its occupant.

 

||

 

Active scanning: translation mode...

 

028: Is this it?

027: It is. But it wasn’t like this when I left it.

028: I can’t believe you opened this up, Neme!

|| Retagging 027: “Neme”. ||

 

Neme: I didn’t. Not all the way. I told you. It wasn’t like this when I left it! It was a metal box. Not this... this… sharp-ice-egg.

028: There’s something inside it, Neme. Beneath the ice. It looks simian.

Neme: I didn’t do this, Solj. When I left here, this thing was closed!

 

|| Retagging 028: “Solj”. ||

 

Solj: But you brought this with you, didn’t you? This artefact, this key?

Neme: I don’t know what that is.

Solj: Which is why you should have left it in the ground, dear sister.

 

Neme: So you think that thing inside the ice-egg is a... monkey? She doesn’t look like a monkey. She’s big and pale.

 

Solj: Maybe this is what monkeys were like, before…

 

Neme: She doesn’t look like a monkey. And what’s that thing between her legs?

Solj: Is it a tail?

Neme: Why would she have her tail at the front of her body?

Solj: It might be prehensile.

Neme: It doesn’t look very sturdy. I wouldn’t want to swing from it.

 

Solj: I don't think it's a tail!

Neme: Then what’s it for?

Solj: I don’t know. But it’s not a tail.

Neme: She doesn’t even have fur.

Solj: There’s some. On her head and on her face.

Neme: And above the tail.

Solj: It’s not a ta –

 

Neme: I know it’s not a tail! If we could turn her over, maybe. Take a look at her from behind?

 

Solj: You want to let her out!

Neme: No. I… Well. Not really. I mean… Yes.

Solj: That might be dangerous, Neme. She’s three times our size!

 

Neme: Yeah, but that means she’s probably dumb. Most big animals are dumb.

Solj: Whoever built this box wasn’t dumb.

Neme: Maybe its magical.

 

Solj: Doesn’t look like any magics I’ve ever seen.

Neme: Nothing about this looks like anything *either* of us has ever seen.

 

Solj: Look, this gemstone over here. It’s pulsing red.

 

Neme: See. Magics. I told you… I’m… I’m going to push the red stone.

 

Solj: Why do you want to push it, Neme? We should re-bury this thing at once.

 

Neme: It won't let us bury it.

 

Solj: What do you mean?

 

Neme: When I found it there was a light around it. I couldn't see where it was coming from, but it was blue and it shimmered. It smelled like lightning. And anything that touched it rolled away. Soil; rain; rocks...

Neme: I think the box is broken, Solj. I think this red gem is its stem stone. I think it’s loose.

Solj: I beginning to think you’re loose. In the head. Leave it alone, Neme!

Neme: I’m not going to break it. It just needs a… little… nudge. There we go, you see, it’s stopped blinking.

 

Solj: What’s that sound?

Neme: What sound?

Solj: That hissing sound?

 

Neme: It’s coming from the box.

 

Solj: It is coming from the box!  It’s full of serpents. Neme, they might hurt the troop.

 

Neme: This isn't my fault!

 

Solj: It's our responsibility.

 

Neme: It’s not serpents. Listen. It sounds more like… gas.

 

Solj: You think the giant metal egg is passing gas?

 

||

 

“No,” Neme replied, taking a step backwards. “I think the giant metal egg is hatching!”

 

“We need to get out of here…” Solj replied, panic rising inside her.

 

But they could not get out of there.

 

Even as the metal shell began to peel back and the hissing sound intensified, the thick grasses of the Festerplain reached up and wound themselves around their hind paws and, despite their struggle, they could not get free.

 

It was as if the very ground fought them.

 

And then, from a small hill behind them, issued a sound that made them both bend low in fear.

 

This was realfear, not newfear; not fear of the unknown, but a fear of something very, very known.

 

Something neither of them wanted to hear in this forbidden place.

 

It was the amplified, admonishing sound of their troopmother’s voice.

 

“Solj! Neme! What have you done?!”

 

 

 

Part IV

 

The hatch to Colonel Kriegssen’s office was closed. Warm light streamed in across from it through one, large window and bathed the single chair outside the door in an impossibly orange sun. Under other circumstances, it might be quite soporific.

 

Lt. Adams hadn’t slept. Why hadn’t he slept? He knew he was coming here to meet the colonel. He just didn’t know why. It was a three-day ride from Earth to Damocles Station. He’d had plenty of time to sleep. But there was something about the impending destruction of your species that had a powerful stimulant effect.

 

The door opened. A junior officer emerged. He looked pale. If Adams didn’t know better, he could swear the young man had been crying.

“Adams?!” a voice barked from inside. “You out there?”

Adams peered through the doorway into the darkened room.

 

The blast shutters were down on the window in the room and the only light came from a scanner table in its centre. A holographic display showed a calming blue ball in the midst of what appeared to be a seething tide of piercing red. Here and there washes of blue stretched too thinly across the path of the advancing red; behind it, isolated blue dots were swallowed up in giant, vermillion arcs.

 

“Get in here,” the voice from within the room said.

Adams did as he was told.

“Drink?” the voice offered from the back of the room. Adams could see at least one empty bottle of whiskey discarded and sideways on the floor. He snapped to attention when he saw Colonel Kriegssen.

“No, Sir!” he replied with the gusto of a boot camp cadet.

Kreigssen swayed into view. His hair was unkempt and matted; his eyes were wild; there were stains on his shirt. It didn’t look to have been washed in days.

“Well, suit yourself,” the Colonel replied. “I’m having one.”

Kriegssen produced another bottle from somewhere inside a cabinet, poured himself a large glass and set about draining it.

 

“Sir?” Adams ventured as Kriegssen’s throat stopped gulping.

The colonel grunted a response.

“Is it true what they’re saying back on Earth, Sir? The war? Are we really losing that badly?”

“Losing? We’ve lost!” Kreigseen replied without attempt to sugar-coat the information. Adams began to sway a little himself. “Sit down, Lieutenant.”

Adams sat. Kreigseen sat across from him and poured another drink.

 

“How much do you know about the Di’aan?” Kriegssen quizzed him.

“Just rumours mostly,” Adams replied, lost for a moment in the flow of the amber liquid into the colonel’s glass. He considered, in that moment, the refuge that he might find at the bottom of that glass; the peace it might bring. He considered asking for a glass of his own. And then he dismissed it.

“Sir,” Adams went on, “is it true the Di’aan sterilise entire planets?”

Kriegssen nodded grimly.

“They do. But more than that. They – ” he searched for the right word – “remake every world they’ve been on. What’s left behind is… changed.” He gulped more whiskey.

“Changed?” Adams probed. “How?”

“It’s less like us,” Kriegssen responded. “More like them.”

“But I’ve seen the vids,” Adams said, flightily. “There’s life on those worlds. They’re teeming!”

Kriegssen set himself and fixed Adam’s with a gaze that cut through his drunk demeanour.

“Nothing that was there before survives,” he said. And he let the weight of it pull Adams back down the gravity well and into silence.

 

“Not like you and me," the old man replied. "You understand me, son?"

 

Kriegssen set himself and fixed Adam’s with a gaze that cut through his drunk demeanour.

 

"Nothing that was there before survives,” he said. And he let the weight of it pull Adams back down the gravity well and into silence.

 

“We could run!” Adams spluttered after a moment, as though the idea that had just occurred to him had occurred to no one else.

Kriegssen laughed.

“Son, we are running! Every outer colony; every ship past the Oort markers; everything we’ve got left is running.”

“But the Earth,” Adams protested, not wanting to allow the light of those admissions dawn on him.

Kriegssen placed his hand gently on Adams’ hands.

“The Earth is gone!” he replied softly, and then added, “For now…”

 

Lt. Adams’ ears pricked up at that and his whole body lifted with them.

“Why am I here, Sir?” Adam’s replied.

“There is a strategy,” Kriegssen went on. “One thing that by all reports has had a limited success against the Di’aan.”

“What’s that?” Adams asked eagerly.

“It’s more of a story, really,” Kriegssen replied. “We haven’t been able to confirm it because everyone we’ve encountered who’s met the Di’aan has been running away from them and through us. The worlds they remake. They never return to them.”

“But why not?” Adams asked.

“Because they’re fucking alien!” Kriegssen replied, spilling his drink on his trousers. “Who the hell knows. But once they’ve finished breaking down a system into its constituent sub-atomic particles and building it back up again to their own design, they fuck off. And they never fuck back on again.”

Kriegssen grinned gauntly at his own bon-mot!

“So, we wait,” Adams stated. “We wait them out.”

“We wait them out,” Kriegssen confirmed. “Or – more precisely – you wait them out.”

“Me?” Adams replied, confused.

Kriegssen passed him a document from a small pile. It had ‘Eyes Only’ written across the front of it.

“You have been selected… blah – blah – blah,” Kreigseen summarised, “perfect genetic and psychographic match… yadda – yadda – yadda. Kid, you get to save the world.”

“What do I have to do?” Adams asked, sitting upright in dutiful attention.

Kriegssen grinned that gaunt grin again and explained, “You just gotta get some sleep!”

 

​

​

Part V

 

The troopmother stood on the small hill overlooking Neme, Solj and the open metal box. Her name was Caric; Neme knew her by scent and deed but not by heart. She had nipped several young cubs three or four moons ago for soiling each other’s coats. She was the troop’s wordweaver: she kept the stories of the troop and its ancestors; she kept lists of names.

 

Caric was flanked on either side by two immense wolfkin. The troopmother wore a gilded collar, its stemstone pressed against her throat. The orange jewel flickered and flared in the dull greyness of the day, and cast skittering shadows around her that seemed to reach into the ground beneath her feet. And behind her, stepping from one of those shadows, Neme saw her realsister Brec.

 

Neme tried to pull away. She muttered a tiny incantation – subtle earthmagics – but the grasses that held her obeyed a different power.

“Solj!” Caric spoke, the stemstone amplifying her voice again to an intimidating roar. “Answer!”

Neme was the first to rise from her instinctively cowed stance.

“It wasn’t Solj,” she informed the troopmother. “This was my fault!”

Though the grasses that held them were soft, Neme thought she heard Solj wince.

 

“Neme,” Caric redirected with no less zeal, “you will answer my question or you will answer the charge of encroachment!” The troopmother did not repeat her question.

“The stories are wrong,” Neme accused the wordweaver. “This world was remade, but not all that came before was remade with it.”

Solj hung her head.

“Neme,” she pleaded. “Don’t...”

 

“Stories are not right or wrong,” Caric replied, her tone of aloof authority empowered by the stemstone. “Stories are instructions; stories are teachings; stories keep us safe.”
“Your stories have kept us in ignorance,” Neme protested.

“Ignorance?” Caric questioned. “And what would you do with knowledge? Unearth more death?”

“Please?” Solj broke in. “Neme is young. She doesn’t understand. It’s my fault.”

“No!” Neme protested.

 

Solj turned to Neme and bowed her nose as if to say sorry.

“I let her lead me here,” Solj went on. “I should have ended this sooner.”

Troopmother Caric looked between the two bound foxes.

“You can end it now,” she proclaimed.

 

The stemstone around her neck quivered and the shadows reaching out from it danced for an instant. The grasses holding Solj released and she padded a few feet away from the box.

“End it,” the troopmother ordered.

“She can’t!” Neme declared. “The box is protected. It has magics of its own.”

Caric spoke directly to Neme’s dearsister.

“End it, Solj!” she commanded.

“Neme…” Solj spoke her dearsister’s name softly from beneath a weight of words that threatened to entomb her.

“You can’t destroy the box,” Neme cried with a choking realisation.

“They can’t,” Solj confessed, her heart breaking.

Neme whispered the words again, part of them dying in her throat.

“You can’t destroy the box…”

Neme pulled at the grasses with her feet and she tried to tear herself free even as her dearsister bore down on her with bared teeth.

 

The moment stretched. Time itself slowed. And three things happened then at once. Neme, who did not for a moment break gaze with Solj, saw her dearsister jump not at her, but over her and towards the discarded metal object Neme had found that morning. Troopmother Caric howled and let slip whatever psychic leash she held on the two wolfkin guards, who bounded, snarling and massive towards the exposed foxes. And – rising from the great metallic egg like the restless dead from the stories of old – a giant simian creature birthed itself into the remade world.

 

Upon seeing the great, hairless creature rise, the two wolfkin paused and looked at Troopmother Caric for reassurance. Solj pounced on the moment to enact her desperate plan. Picking up the round metallic object with the soft part of her mouth, she padded over to a small circular indent on the side of the metal box. It was the same size as the metal object. She quickly transferred the object into her forehands and slotted it into the indentation, fumbling around until it stayed in under its own volition. The metal box began to emit a strange sound. At its side, a cool-ice sheet lit up. Solj couldn’t see the source of the light, but it looked to be coming from inside the box. There were shapes on the sheet, green against a blue background. She couldn’t be certain, but one of the smaller green shapes looked like a drawing she had seen from the passing Caravans. A representation of their territory. They had called it a map.

 

Seeing this insurrection, the troopmother fell towards furious anger. She keened a high-pitched whistle through her wide throat, which was picked up by the stemstone and grew into a terrifying shout. Her fur began to stand on end, making her look every bit as imposing as the two wolfkin. The tips of her fur began to glow yellows and oranges and spring incandescently into flame. Emboldened by this show, the two massive wolfkin bore down on the strange simian again. Fire shot from the sheen of light around the troopmother, past the two lupines, and devoured the hairless, naked simian. The creature howled and took off on flat, monkey feet behind the metal box.

 

When the troopmother had cast her conflagration, the binds holding Neme had broken and the grasses slipped away. Neme too bolted behind the metal box, bringing her face-to-face with this strange creature.

“I’m sorry!” she kept saying. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry.”

The creature’s mouth opened and alien sounds came out of it. Neme could not tell what the simian said, but its stance and face were taut with anger. It was badly burned. The left side of its face and body were stiff and blackened, but it moved through the burning pain. And rage burned back in its eyes. It reached up towards the blazing box – the box’s protective lightning bubble gone – and into some small compartment Neme had not previously seen. Its hand came out clutching something. It was sleek and metal, about the size of a forest stick. The thing seemed to be made for its hand. The simian stood, placing the metal box between its body and the leaping wolfkin.

 

The sleek metal stick exploded like thunder in its hand. Lightning spat out of the end of it and where it touched the wolfkin the creature burned like fire. It fell down beside Neme and did not move. She was certain it was dead. Then the simian turned the thunderspitter on the cowering young fox, herself.

 

Neme was facing death. On the other side of the box, she could hear the frenzied fighting of Solj with the other wolfkin. She knew there was no way her dearsister could prevail. The burned simian pointed its thunderspitter at Neme’s head and all she could think to say in that moment was, “Solj! Save Solj! Kill me if you must but please save my dearsister!”

 

The simian looked at her. There was something in its eyes. Intelligence, certainly. But something else. It lowered the weapon and looked beyond Neme to where the second wolfkin had its teeth at Solj’s throat. The simian turned to the metal box, even as it was blasted with another consuming fire. Neme could hear the box’s whines and death throes; lights flashed and strange smells burned her nostrils.

 

The simian pressed its fingers to the ice-sheet at the side and another compartment opened up. Something shot up into the sky, fire trailing out of it, and veered off past the horizon and into the distance. Then it turned the thunderspitter on the second wolfkin and lit it up. Two, three, four blasts poured into the creature’s side. Five, Neme counted. Six.

 

“We have to run now!” Solj instructed, rising through the smoke and blood.

“What about the simian?” Neme asked.

“She is not our sister,” Solj declared and gestured off away from the direction of the battle; away from the troopden. Neme reluctantly followed her injured dearsister.

 

*

 

They hardly noticed the rain as they ran, though it fell in sheets. Through the melterpools they raced and over the receding hills towards the dubious safety of the seas. Behind them, Neme could hear the battle. Not the clash of esoteric armies; not the imaginings of starsteel on fire-agate. This battle was real and accusing smells proceeded from it. The smell of burning metal, the smell of singed fur and spilled blood stuck in her nostrils as the simian and the troopmother yelped and howled, unleashing elemental forces Neme had not known existed.

 

“We have to go back!” Neme insisted. “We have to help them!”

“There’s nothing to go back too,” Solj replied, her heart sick with the heaviness of it. “We’re outcast now, Neme.”

 

Neme ran along a little further in the trail of her dearsister. She would go back, she resolved. She would help; she did not break from the track that Solj laid out. But in her head, she imagined herself going back. When the fires had tired; when the dead were to be dissolved. She kept repeating it to herself as she ran further and further from the place that was no longer her home. I will go back. I will. When the skies are clear. I will go back. I will.

 

After the rain.