Mazelton staggered away. It was definitely away, “towards” was a difficult concept at the moment. “Towards” required a more detailed understanding of the world than he was capable of. “Towards” implied there was something worth going to, rather than needing to get away from. Some little corner of his brain insisted that he was missing something, that there was more he could do that just “away,” but he didn’t have the capacity to investigate that thought. At some point, something caught him and he sat down. He was wrapped in something warm. He was looking for someone. Duane. He was looking for someone named Duane, who had to run away. Mazelton felt like he was good at running away. Was Duane good at running away? Mazelton vaguely hoped so.

The sun was setting before Mazelton collected most of the scattered bits of himself. He was sitting at a camp, some distance up the road. Duane was sitting across from him, carefully adding dried herbs to a pot of lentils. He was running away? From Old Radler. And everything that happened there. But he was also running towards, right? Running towards Danae. He tried to parse it out, because they seemed to blur together in his head.

The city was attacked. The Clan died bitter deaths one by one, until Grandmother destroyed the city in a cloud of boiling radioactive dust. So, injured, sick and poisoned, he ran away. He ran to South Port (Or was it South Bay? He could never remember,) then the Humble there helped him run to Sky’s Echo, and then he kept running with the Nimu caravan. And now he was here, in the New Territories. Destination reached. Job done. Next job- shelter and survival, and try to hide from/outlive the butchers. Danae would be part of that calculation, of course. She would help keep him alive, if not hidden.

Mazelton shifted a bit at that thought. It didn’t feel right. Danae wasn’t a cover, or a disguise, or a patsy. She was his dream. The whole deal- the orchard, his cottage, them dancing and living together, all under the heading of “Danae.” If there was no “Danae,” then he could have stopped at any of the cantons along the way, and set up shop there. Hope would be a good choice, booming market, easy distribution for his wares, plenty of people to lose himself in. For that matter, he could just tell the Dusties to go fuck themselves, individually and collectively, and set up shop in Cold Garden, or keep on heading west until he hit the ocean, then keep on going until he got to the next continent. He didn’t like ships, but he reckoned that he could make his way.

Danae was his “towards.” Danae the pious Dusty, who grew up in a big family and wanted kids, but sensibly felt that she should really get to know her prospective husband first. Danae, who’s weird, stilted “Husband Wanted” flier hit him like a thrown brick. Mazelton gently sorted through the still shattered glass of his mind, mostly reassembled into its stained glass matrix, but not soldered in place yet. He picked out the piece that had him sitting on the rock in the sacred grove, reading and re-reading the letters from her. Why had her flier hit so hard? Why did he write back with such agonizing effort? She wasn’t his “towards” then, he wasn’t even looking for a “towards.”

For every effect, there is a cause. He tried tracing the thought through the scattered shards of his life, and was lost in the color and emotion of it all. He pricked himself on an old memory- marching to school with the other kids, and seeing the parents standing at the doors, sending them off. His parents didn’t. He didn’t understand why he was different, he just knew he was. Maybe he did something wrong? The painful memory made him jump away, but he landed on more and more painful memories, slicing his fingers on cutting remarks at the table, being ignored, being punished for breaking the rules, or just not being good enough.

Parental affection was a tricky thing in the Clan. Kids did better with parental affection. They thrived on it, performed better by every metric, were healthier, and had hugely improved survival odds. Which was good, because while the Clan certainly didn’t try to meet a “dead kid” quota, they did have an awful lot of dead kids.

Mazelton saw the brutality of it- raising a child and hoping, desperately, that this one would be the one who made it to adulthood. That you were doing the right thing by them. That you gave them the skills and support they needed to be who they had to be. It was easier not to care too much, but how was that possible? They were your children.

Some parents managed not to care. He could feel mother scouring him red and raw with the stiff bristled scrubbing brush whenever he was “dirty.” She had to clean the “filth” off of him, “filth” that appeared any time he was bad. Like if he didn’t listen, or was too loud.

It occurred to Mazelton that he had been running for a very long time. He tried so, so hard at the rite of passage. He thought that something would be different afterward. Once you were through it, you were almost certain to make it to adulthood. But it didn’t make a difference. Mother told him to his face that both she and the Clan thought he was worthless. Father didn’t bother to say anything at all.

No wonder he ran to the Outer Courts. No wonder he fought for the Hurricane Lilly position. Not usual for a polisher, not at all. Generally a job for those outside the main line. The main line was expected to have a more serious or important job. Not Mazelton, he fought for that job. The job that got him out into the city, away from the Clan and his parents. The job that required a lot of drinking and taking drugs and, while not strictly a requirement, extremely casual sex.

Mazelton had spent most of his life running away. Always the outsider, peeking through the window at the happy families inside. The voyeur in the snow, convincing himself that the brandy was enough to keep him warm as his toes turned black one by one.

He pushed the memories around, no longer minding the slicing pain. It really was that simple, wasn’t it. He had spent his whole life seeing what other people had, how happy it made them, and being told over and over again that he couldn’t have it. And then he found out- he could have it. He could. He just had to… stop being part of the Clan. Not giving up being a Ma, that would be much too much. Just not part of an established Ma Clan branch.

Some place where he could feel safe. Someone he could be safe with. Where he could love and be loved. He picked up a particularly jagged memory of the Jasmine, and their flirtation. He loved them. He had. It wasn’t a very healthy kind of love, or very smart, but it was love. And now he was wondering if he didn’t love them because they were Cabell, and by extension, a possible escape from his Clan. Had he been looking for his “towards” even then? Probably. But he didn’t have the words for it, then. He didn’t have space for the idea in his head.

Mazelton had spent his whole life looking to take that one step forward. He felt like he should throw his head back and laugh. His face didn’t even twitch. He didn’t have the energy for emotion that strong.

What am I? I am one step forward. Away from the bad/sad/painful things and towards the good/happy/comforting. I am one step forward in the infinite generations, carrying the torch of life until the next generation is ready to pick it up and step forward. I am a marcher in the Black Parade, carrying the Black Sun that will warm and light the way.

Duane shoved a bowl into his hands. It seemed that, in addition to all those other things, Mazelton was painfully hungry.

Duane hadn’t gone far from the Stone God, maybe a mile or so. He didn’t say it, but Mazelton got the distinct impression Duane thought running any further would be futile. Basically they had lost most of a day’s travel. It was at this point that Duane revealed a desperately hidden secret, one known only by himself, and perhaps Polyclitus. The wagon… could go faster. It could, in fact, do twenty five miles in a day if you didn’t mind being jolted half to death. Which, as a rule, Duane absolutely did mind, but under the circumstances he was willing to speed things up a bit. By lunchtime, Mazelton felt like he had been tossed in a sack and beaten with sticks. A small price, to be on time.

Duane pulled the wagon into a likely looking dimple in the river where plenty of previous travelers had clearly camped. Mazelton took over the cooking this time, and in defiance of the laws of Men and Gods, attempted a flat bread on the skillet. It… was technically food. Never again. While he was wondering if there was some rescuing the dish, a small sailboat pulled up next to the bank. A couple of young men hopped out and lashed it down with the ease of long practice. Their elder, a man with fine whiskers and unsmiling eyes, walked directly towards the camp.

The elder looked between Duane and Mazelton, clearly matching them to a description.

“You Mazelton?”

“I am. You a Sky Runner?”

“I am.” Sky Runners could be cagey about their names and you shouldn’t take it personally, but it generally wasn’t a good sign when they didn’t offer anything at all to call them by.

“You found me. What for?” Mazelton was still trying to remember how sociable conversation worked.

“Some folks had some questions, and since we know all the people who would want the answers to those questions, and since we know you, we agreed to find you and ask them.”

“Efficient.”

“What we are known for.”

Mazelton smiled a little at that, but didn’t offer a seat or food.

“What questions?”

“What exactly happened down by the river yesterday?”

“You are asking me, but who should I ask?” Mazelton snorted. The elder’s eyes narrowed a bit at that, but Mazelton waved him down. “I’m not messing with you. I am still piecing things together myself. Did the Two Souled wind up passing the word about the Stone God?”

“Not as such, no.”

“Ah. Well. You can get the back story from them. Short version is that I saw it out on the plains in their territory. It was camped out by one of their regular campsites and it killed anyone who got too close. Then it got attacked by a whole damn army of slave machines, trashed ‘em, and few off.”

The elder nodded quietly at this, as though it was all quite normal.

“As far as I knew, it was still on the other side of the Ramparts. Until it turned up yesterday. Why it came looking for me… I don’t know.” But he had some pretty interesting guesses, which he had no intention of sharing. “It wasn’t attacking, really.”

This got him a raised eyebrow.

“I think it remembered me, and wanted to know what I was.”

That got him a harder look.

“Again, not being funny here. Polishers are, literally, built different. It’s really subtle, and not the sort of thing you can spot with a dissection. But we are. I think it could tell, and wanted to interrogate me. So it tracked me, somehow, and interrogated me, somehow. I don’t know how. I don’t understand what happened there. My memory of it is very shaky and I vividly remember things that didn’t happen. So. Yeah. Best I can do.”

Mazelton tried the flatbread with a sprinkle of salt. It was now salty and awful, instead of just awful. The salt really brought out the terrible flavor. It was just flour and water. Why was he so bad at this?

“So, you don’t know anything about one of the largest rivers in the West boiling for a solid hour as you stood in a haze of exploding stars and beams of light shot from your hands into the chest of a seven meter tall statue shaped kind of like a woman, if you squinted and turned your head a bit?”

“I did what now?”

“You heard me.”

“I heard you, I just don’t believe you.”

“There were a dozen witnesses.”

“Huh. No idea. I mean, if I had light cores I could aim beams of light from them with some kind of cone or reflector or something. Not something I can just shoot out of my hands.”

“Uhuh.”

“Did it work?”

“Did what work?”

“The light beam thing.”

The Elder was unamused.

“That’s what we are trying to figure out.”

“Oh, well. If you figure it out, do tell me. That thing terrifies me.”

“Oh really?”

“Are you trying to be funny now? It’s an untouchable being of unknown power, origin, or purpose, and it flew across the Ramparts to find me! So yes, I am a mite alarmed! And if it wasn’t clear from what I said before, that thing scrambled my brain good and hard during the… whatever happened. This is the most coherent I have been all day.”

There was a pause at that.

“You don’t look that scared.” One of the youngsters said.

“I’m a Ma.”

That was likewise met with silence. It seemed that the name was all the explanation needed.

“Reckon I can find you if I have more questions.”

“Buy something next time.”

Duane gave Mazelton one of his patented interrogational looks once the Sky Runners were well down river. Mazelton sighed.

“It was kind of the truth. I have a bit of a better guess to why the God came looking for me, but it’s only a guess. See, most polishers are, eh, pretty similar to everyone else. Much higher radiation tolerance, of course, and any kind of real legacy will have some instructions on clearing up the heat from your body and running it into your core. Even in the Ma Clan, polishers are still mostly standard humans with some built in extras.” He gave Duane a look of his own, having long suspected that Famil Ninivut had been up to some kind of shenanigans too.

“But some polishers, particularly in the Ma clan, have a relationship with heat that I can’t really put into words. We control it like the air in our lungs and the tips of our fingers. It is so utterly a part of us that… I don’t have the words. We just exist in a different sort of relationship with the rest of the world than… the rest of the world.” Mazelton pulled his hair in frustration. It all seemed so obvious to him, but nothing came out when he tried to put it in words.

“ANYWAY. I think the God relates to the world in a kind of similar way, just at a vastly larger scale and from a fundamentally inhuman mindset. But I think I am similar enough to it that it could recognize me as a fellow… living being? Or something? And it tried to communicate with me. In the same sort of way that-” Mazelton spotted an ant crawling over his foot and picked it up on his finger.

“Hello Mr. Ant! Who are you? What is your deal? How is life in the colony? Have you considered reorganizing the colony on an autocratic basis, rather than the current communitarian arrangement? The BEST ants deserve to thrive, and to have their achievements rewarded, don’t you think?” He returned the ant to the ground, and it wandered off.

“So, now what? What do you think the ant got out of that experience? What will it do as a result of that incredible, once in a lifetime, event?”

Duane shook his head.

“Yeah. Me and the ant both.”

The sky was a piercing blue that day, and seemed to fall endlessly upwards to the moon.