Chapter 66
Elegy dreams of the void.
She dreams of darkness unfolding infinitely, like a skein of black yarn with no ends.
She dreams of pinprick stars and distant, glowing nebulae and planets swollen with gas and ice and rock.
She dreams of twin moons and fields of broken asteroids; of the poison brightness of the sun as it inches inexorably toward supernova.
She dreams of the end of Earth, coming by—-
fire and
winter and
radiation and
its core petering out like a spent coal.
She dreams of the Sundial, sun sail unfurling to deflect rays too bright and too potent for its inhabitants to bear; and the numbers of coordinates sealed behind Rava Vidar’s knife--slice mouth; and catapulting around the edge of the galaxy to return, a failure, to the planet from which they came.
She dreams of a fleet of ships far too vast to comprehend
and a throat so dry the air tastes like ash
and a man with honey--colored eyes spitting blood.
She dreams—-
—-of a dark doorway
—-and beyond it, a swirl of color
—-and a sequence of words like a knot of syllables that she can’t tease apart.
She dreams of what might come next—-of what may and what does and what doesn’t.
She opens her eyes.