Pijeru hauled herself over the edge of a wooden tower, swayed onto her feet, and cast a look around. There were multiple routes out of the tower, but were any of them traps?

She glanced at the canopy and went left. Another cadet sprinted straight ahead and soared across the clearing.

Immediately, one of the drill sergeants on the ground yelled, “Do you see your shadow on the ground!? Because the enemy does! Now you have bullets in your wings!”

Pijeru breathed a sigh of relief, but it immediately turned to exasperation when another drill sergeant yelled at her. Her uniform and her radio pack were too heavy. She was too exhausted. She dipped too low too quickly and, when she landed on a smaller tower between the trees, her leg caught in the safety net.

“You missed your landing! Drop and pull yourself up before the enemy notices you!”

She slid until she hung from the edge and began to pull herself back up.

“C’mon!” another voice joined the first.

She frowned. She recognized that voice. Glancing down, Pijeru found Tuhrie watching her with her neck feathers puffed out in amusement.

What was she doing here? Were other soldiers even allowed to observe boot camp?

“Keep it up. You’re almost there!”

Pijeru couldn’t decide if her voice was mocking or encouraging. “Yes, Airwoman Stracka!” she grunted with some emphasis to point out that she was not supposed to be here—this was so embarrassing; she was in worse shape than she’d thought!—but the actual sergeant standing next to her shouted, “Don’t talk, keep moving!”

Pijeru hauled herself up with trembling arms and ran to the sound of Tuhrie’s cheers.

“I was never the most athletic person,” the puppet Pijeru narrated. Coming from her the words sounded hollow rather than nostalgic.

Micah wondered if Pijeru was aware of just how many secrets she’d given away through these memories.

This was part of the basic training for one of their military branches. Pijeru would have been somewhere around twenty-two years old. She claimed she wasn’t in shape, but Micah had spent the last year surrounded by athletes and fighters and she hadn’t seemed out of shape to him. Here, she carried heavy equipment through a course that looked about as difficult as some of the advanced courses Ms. Jo had made them run near the end of the year.

Everyone knew how weak people without levels were. He would have expected avian humanoids to be frail, but he’d seen Tuhrie lift Pijeru over her head like she weighed nothing.

Pijeru finished the course and set her pack down with a thump.

Their world has more natural essences than ours, he thought. She said it herself, life adapted to the presence of the ‘winds.’ It makes sense that after the ritual—

No, no. With a shake of his head, Micah cut that line of thought off. He wasn’t here to study their biology. He wasn’t here to gather intelligence on a possible threat to his home.

Tuhrie caught up to the finish line to congratulate her. Pijeru awkwardly saluted with a few puffed feathers.

Micah turned away. So Tuhrie had not always been a monster. What did he care? This world she showed him was beautiful, but he wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it.

[Exert Dominion]. The two words hung on his lips. All he had to do was use the Skill and he could tear this illusion apart. A little longer, he thought. She promised me answers.

“—this will sound strange,” Pijeru was narrating. “The world was ending. I was in a strange place far from my home, some of the instructors and fellow recruits were real pieces of work, the training was grueling, but … I think those were some of the happiest days of my life.”

A page turned. “Of course, it could not last.” Pijeru drove behind a long line of cars at a crawl. On the other side of the road, a car hung on a broken metal fence. Scrap pieces, sand, and glass shards littered the ground. A desiccated black arm hung out from beneath a tarp.

The scene flickered. Pijeru sat on a single bed in an apartment half the size of his dorm room, watching the news.

A news reporter was saying something about a defendant being acquitted. A murder trial? The moment she heard that, Pijeru began to vent to someone on the phone.

“It’s hard to convict a murderer when corpses decay into sand. What happened to Woris; that process only quickened over the years. It wasn’t just people. Animals, plants—our food began to run out.”

The scene flickered again and they stood in a massive indoor market, shelves and buzzing glass cabinets stacked with packaged foodstuffs.

Pijeru wore her dark grey air force uniform and held a cardboard box with fissle oats printed on its cover. And it was fissle. That tall purple grain that looked similar to wheat.

She scowled at a price tag, put the box back, and began to shuffle through a small collection of paper strips in her hand, matching the images on the paper to the products on the shelves.

The scene flickered again and they stood in the same market, but they waited alongside other soldiers for a vendor to hand out small bags of supplies.

“Six years. I joined the Air Force on a dream that I would be able to see the world, to help people, and maybe—just maybe—work my way up to a position where I could communicate with the Vim. We ran out of patience long before that.

“It wasn’t our nation this time, but it might as well have been. Because when they launched that missile, people all around the world cheered. Including me.”

Missile? Micah thought and found his answer. Oh.

A group of soldiers crowded around a screen in an office. On it, a second sun bloomed in the night sky. Warning banners scrolled across the screen and news reporters spoke rapidly. The broadcast jumped a few seconds and froze in place.

Interference?

Someone complained and shook the screen. Someone mumbled under their breath, and it took him a moment to realize they were praying. Muffled sirens screamed in the wind.

When the broadcast continued, Micah saw the target of the attack breach the expanding cloud of flames. Great curtains of white smoke trailed behind their feathered wings. Their beak rose up and the first of the Vim, that feathered stingray, pushed out from the flames. They shrunk, rising further up into the night, turned, and arced toward the world— No. Back the way they had come?

The Vim splashed in the explosion like a birdbath. They sang and laughed with a hundred voices that seeped through the walls. Not angry. Not vengeful. Delightfully surprised.

One of the soldiers kicked a chair across the room and pulled a cigar from his pocket.

The reporters kept talking. The screen split into six boxes, showing live footage of the other Vim. They perked up and glanced back but otherwise didn’t seem to react to the strike. The reporters came to the same desperate conclusion.

“Thank God for that,” a soldier heaved.

The footage showed the first Vim again as they shook their feathers. The perspective wobbled and wandered over to something off to the side—more trails of smoke breached the cloud like shrapnel. The lens zoomed in and focused on birds made of fire. A second trail broke up into a swarm of locusts. A massive stag’s head rose from the cloud. Lava flew like spittle from its mouth as it galloped into the night sky, revealing a rider on its back like a humanoid sun.

The rider gazed down on the world below it and its form cracked and contorted, sprouting red feathers and blackened feet.

Next to Micah, that soldier sparked his lighter incessantly. The flame finally caught and he held it to his cigar. A fractal snake shot from the flame and bit into his neck. Before anyone could so much as scream, his body collapsed into sand and ash.

The next thing he knew, Micah was doubled over, covering his ears after a pop deafened him. Someone pointed something like a thick black blowtorch at it.

“—bullet song—” Pijeru shouted at her coworkers. “Its a spirit! You need to sing a—”

Holes punched through the carpeted floor as the soldier kept firing in a panic, kicking up ash and sand around the pile of empty clothes and the burning snake.

The scene froze.

“Do you know what the Balefire Streams are?” the puppet Pijeru asked, calm in the storm of soldiers scrambling away from a burning snake.

The other Pijeru stood between the overturned chairs with her arm outstretched, frozen as she waited for someone to press another one of those weapons in her hand.

Micah stared. A frozen trail of smoke drifted up from a singed uniform. He took steady breaths. A man had just been standing there. A soldier who had been frustrated as he watched his world die.

His voice sounded as hollow as the puppet standing next to him. “All he wanted to do was smoke a cigar.”

She didn’t hear him. “We did. Vaguely. ‘It’s a place in the spirit world where fire spirits live, right?’ If we had known better …” She sighed. “Maybe not. We had already caught the attention of the Vim. By trying to kill one of them with fire, we caught the attention of the—”

“Stop.” Micah grabbed her feathered arm and begged, “Please. I don’t want to see your war. I don’t want to watch your world end! I just want answers. Please? Why do you hate me?”

His second question went unspoken, but it burned in his mind as surely as the snake burned through the floor. Why do I hate them?

He felt it like a pit of acid. It wasn’t just the snake, because he had all the reason in the world to hate it, and it wasn’t just fear. Because Micah was afraid. The moment he had seen those birds on the screen, that great stag, its rider— Hugh.

Even Pijeru when he had glimpsed her hatred for him.

Would the answer tell me why you left me? [Candle]?

The puppet stared at him. For a moment, he thought she’d been frozen as well, but her eyes were locked onto his hand.

Micah let go.

The puppet walked up to her younger self and vanished. Immediately, the other Pijeru grabbed the weapon, pointed at the snake, and put three holes in it. She scrambled back, but the adrenaline high that had fueled her movements drained as she took in the frozen scene.

“Oh,” she said. “I’m back here. You—” She noticed the pile of sand and her expression fell. “Oh. This day. Malek. Those cigars were always so expensive. Why had you them to order?”

“Pijeru?” Micah tentatively asked. “Are you … the Pijeru I met?”

She nodded. “You me back in brought.”

“What does that mean?”

“The Pretender me warned. Boons are a one-way street. You can them in advance manipulate but once it from my hand to yours reaches, that’s it. I thought I could cheat; a connection add … but you me kicked out.” She frowned. “And now you me pulled back in.”

“Not on purpose,” he repeated in a mumble. “Will you be fine? Has any time passed outside?” Her words seemed to imply as much but when the Pretender had given her their boon, it had been almost instantaneous.

“A half minute, maybe? I probably unconscious fell. I hope that your friend doesn’t panic …” She trailed off as she stepped in front of a desk where a bunch of pictures had been tacked onto a small corkboard. She looked at them fondly. “Why did you me here back bring?”

“Why did you bring me here?” Micah swept an arm out at the scene around him. “I don’t— Why would you think I’d want to see this!?”

“I’m so sorry. I wanted not— This is not what I planned. I didn’t the memories that my boon would show you handpicked. I had a vague plan that I would all four of us here bring so I you could show around. It didn’t work. I panicked.”

He wiped at an eye. “‘Here?’”

“The Plane of Memories.”

“Oh.” Micah calmed down a bit. He held out a hand. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s just get this over with?”

She stared at his hand for a moment before taking it. “I’ll try to skip to the end.” She waved a hand and pages turned. First one. Then another. Then dozens as she rapidly leafed through her own history.

Scenes flickered around them. Pijeru flew over a ruined city, flinging shimmering lamp posts and broken cars at great beasts of fire.

Pijeru stood in a line of soldiers, waiting to receive a scarf in honor of her services.

Tuhrie sobbed into Pijeru’s shoulder over a large egg in a crib.

Tuhrie and Pijeru snuck through a warehouse, armed with rifles, and stole cans of food.

Pijeru woke up alone in her bed to an incessant ringing and knocking on her door. The muffled voice of her neighbor called her name. A gust blew through her window and kicked up a trail of sand.

Pijeru, old and alone, stared out of a reinforced window at a never-ending sandstorm.

“How old were you?” Micah asked.

The puppet Pijeru was gone. That memory of Pijeru was gone. All that remained was the Pijeru he had met. Her back was hunched, her plumage thin, and her feathers worn. She was shorter than him and turned to look at him with wrinkled eyes. “Sixty-four.”

“And this—” He stopped and rephrased his question, a hopeful note in his voice, “Is this the day the Dwarf came to you?”

“No. That is it not.” Her voice was scratchy and weak, not at all like his grandmother's, but it was still Pijeru underneath. “That came much later. About four thousand years later.” Her tone was the same, her words the same, her—

“Your grammar,” he realized.

“Kah? Apologies, I meant—”

“No, no, you didn't say anything wrong,” Micah clarified. “It's just that I could understand your language a moment ago.”

She nodded wisely. “The Vim are fluent in all languages.” She ignored his confused expression and gestured toward the door. “Come. We are nearly there.”

She gripped the wardrobe in passing to steady herself and led him through a small apartment that looked much like her grandfather’s, the one she’d complained about so often that he’d agreed to move in with her parents. It was a good thing, too, because that had been the last year of his life.

The sandstorm shrouded her bedroom and the living room in darkness, but sunlight streamed in from a tiny kitchen window next to her apartment door.

She hobbled up to her family shrine and stopped there. On the upper shelves stood pictures of her great-grandparents, her grandparents, and then her parents. The center showed much of her life with Tuhrie. The bottom two shelves were empty aside from a single eggshell shard.

Pijeru wiped at the tears in her eyes, and the moisture turned to sand.

“Do not worry yourself. This is still just a memory.”

Micah didn’t try to contradict her, even though her voice shook. “Did you ever find out why the sand?”

She nodded. “Are you an astronomer? Did you pay the stars any attention in these memories?”

He shook his head.

“Me neither, my whole life. But our astronomers did. It took a while, through the chaos. The seasons had stayed the same—or so it seemed. A team pointed it out to us: the stars had stopped wandering in the night sky, even as the years went by.

“Where we are now, it has not been two days since the ritual was completed. Since that night I stood with Tuhrie under the stars. In those days, nearly fifty years have gone by.”

“The Vim hasted your world?” Micah asked. “Why?”

“Who knows? Maybe that is how they move around. Maybe they like to binge their entertainment. Personally, I don’t think they do it on purpose … but we couldn’t keep up. Life couldn’t keep up. It existed on borrowed time and the moment that time ran out—” She held up a single grain of sand.

He nodded, back in familiar territory. “We can conjure water, but it’s not real.” He hesitated but gave her a weak smile. “There’s this myth among my classmates that if you drink too much conjured water, your pee vanishes before it even hits the ground. It’s supposed to be really unhealthy for you.”

“Well,” she chuckled. “I’m glad that my boon of knowledge has been so illuminating.”

Micah took a breath. His expression crumbled to pieces. “I’m so sorry. For everything that happened to—”

“Don’t be. It has been years, even now. We got our second chance. Some of us, at least. Keep that in mind for what happens next, please.” She walked past her kitchen and opened the apartment door, letting the sunlight wash over her.

“Voller. Children. It’s time,” Pijeru whispered onto the wind. She felt like she had stepped into a dream—a nightmare—as she left her apartment and the three phantoms within it behind.

As always, her neighbors would need a moment to react to the words. She gripped the railing and glanced down at that old familiar courtyard. The vegetable garden. The grill and outdoor tables where they used to eat. That abandoned playground where some of the 'children' hung out at night.

She had been lucky, so very lucky, to find this community. After society had collapsed and people had turned on each other. After Tuhrie had gone on ahead without her …

Pijeru and a few of her friends had come across a group of young survivors while scavenging for food in the city. One of them had recognized her military insignia and treated her with respect rather than hostility. From a brief conversation in an abandoned building, as they waited out the sandstorm and she told them stories of life before the Vim, they had struck a tentative deal with a group of strangers. And from that deal, a friendship had been born that lasted until the end of her lifetime.

Pijeru had taught them everything she knew—about the winds, the Vim, engineering, radios, the wider world, and whatever else she could remember from school. They had never had the chance to attend school. In exchange, they would help take care of her and her friends as they grew older.

She had still been healthy then, the winds had strengthened her body, but one of her friends had sprained their ankle and never quite recovered from it.

What would be in a year? Five years? Twenty, when she was seventy-eight and had to survive in this wasteland?

Their community had grown. They’d renovated four old apartment complexes around a playground in one of the wealthier parts of the city. They’d fixed the electricity, heat, and water together and even managed to grow food without it turning to sand.

They’d found comfort and companionship … but not hope.

Pijeru reached the interior balcony and eased herself to the ground, dangling her feet off the edge.

It had been so long, back then, since the last time she’d jumped off. She had developed shoulder pains and been deathly afraid of breaking her arm if she tried, like her grandpa had. But it was nice to just sit here sometimes.

A group of people looked up from one of the tables below. One of them called out. Others began to leave their apartments. Voller, one of the friends she’d made later in life, left his apartment opposite hers. He was the oldest of them. The others were mostly in their twenties or thirties. There were no children. As far as Pijeru knew, people under the age of twenty just didn’t exist anymore. The accelerated time strained babies too much.

These people around her may as well have been the last of her species.

“Are you sure?” Voller asked and the panic in his voice was matched by a feeling of resignation. She had not been the first to go.

Pijeru nodded. At this point, she had begun to say her goodbyes. People had rushed toward her, hugging her, thanking her. Some had pulled up their scarves in preparation. But three phantoms watched her like wallflowers so she willed the scene forward.

“Go toward the sun,” Voller told her.

Religion, she’d found in her old age, gave a kind of hope.

“Go toward the sun,” Pijeru replied and pushed off the edge. She spread her wings for the last time, basking in the wind, and gave up. She gave herself to the winds.

Her body crumpled in an instant. It drifted, as sand, on a breeze her friends sang into existence. It carried her through the trees and past the apartment doors over the home they shared. She was the breeze, then, and looked down onto an island of green in a storm of yellow that had consumed their city.

She was the clouds then, looking down on a world of yellows and blues, with a single island of green in the ocean. She was their song and she was the Vim. She drifted from one world to the next, down through the clouds and toward the rooftops.

“—Piji? Pijeru, are you even listening to me?”

And then she was Pijeru, standing in the middle of a bustling crowd.

“Yes, mom,” she groaned fondly. How she had missed that woman. “I’m listening.”

“You need to take care of yourself tonight, okay? There are a lot of strange people coming into the city for the festival, so don’t agree to go to any ‘cool clubs’ some girl tells you about halfway across the city or any other second locations. Tonight is not the night for that.”

“I love you, mom. And I love you, dad,” Pijeru whispered before the phantoms could catch up with her. “I wish they could have cut you free as well …”

She willed the scene forward. When the phantoms touched down, it wasn’t in the middle of the city plaza, but onto a crowded terrace at night. The muted music vibrated through the masonry and Tuhrie’s perfume overwhelmed her senses.

There was no emerald star in the night sky. Instead, a massive sphere loomed over their world. Yellow and blue. A single island of green. It shrunk with every passing second from covering the horizon to the size of one of the Vim, to the size of the moon, to the size of plane passing by.

Don’t go, some part of Pijeru pleaded helplessly as she watched her home fade into the distance, further and further, until it was nothing but a tiny, amber star.

“Is it supposed to be doing that?” Tuhrie asked.

It was too much. Pijeru shut her eyes and willed the scene forward one last time. When she opened them again, the lights were out. The party was over. The terrace was empty except for three alien children.

Micah stared. “You’re—”

“Not Pijeru,” she said, “no. She died.”

“So, you’re what?” Kyle asked. “Some kind of ghost?"

“I am the Living Memory that the very beings that destroyed her world have of Pijeru. Their impression of her— of me.”