"The world, both natural and constructed, is built on respect. I do not think it has done enough to earn mine, however." - Lone Gunst

If you ever stopped Marie Crawford on the street and asked her to explain what distinguishes a one-hour-per-week meeting with Lara from a nine-to-five desk job, she would tell you that while she'd never experienced the latter, she was under the impression that there were rare occasions where one might feel as if they had actually accomplished something.

The office had become no less a reflection of its head's ego in the six days since her first visit (a weekly occurrence, although which day of the week stayed ever subject to change). In fact, the only shift in sentiment came from the sudden realisation this time around that her chair would have been just as regularly used by Phoebe Deckard.

Phoebe Deckard. She remembered during the conclusion of her investigation that she had gotten over her death(s), but had she really? She'd never felt that kind of connection to any other wom(a/e)n prior. So it only made sense that it had rattled her. Now to be in her place, she'd adopted a new kind of connection. Worse, certainly.

"Take a seat, Crawford." Lara stood by the window and only tipped her head aside from the downward view of the street in curt acknowledgement.

Marie did precisely as instructed. "Got yourself a good vista there?"

"Sure have. This is what success looks like, you know. This is the life."

A phrase which not long ago would have flooded Marie's bloodstream with panic and discomfort. All she knew now was disgust. Contempt at the fruitlessness of vain excess. Perhaps anger, but only akin to the dipteran antagonism one feels toward a fly when its presence has outstayed one's capacity for feeling annoyance. If one might conceive of a fly able to disown you and put you on the street.

Lara, for her part, held to what anyone but herself would take as an arbitrary duration further by the window. Then, at last satisfied, she retreated to her place behind the desk.

"So, what brings you here?"

"A complex network of motor neurons, the inexorable march of time, and your own request in the first place."

"You could simply not have come. Face it, Crawford, you don't like me."

"My actions aren't determined by whether or not I 'like' something."

"No?" And Lara was obviously not being coy the slightest bit in asking. "Then what?"

"I don't know. A sense of 'should', I guess."

"Platonic good?"

"Sure. If you can say I've got an archetype to fulfil, then that's what I have to do. Do you believe in archetypes?"

"I believe in free will, which I don't consider particularly reconcilable with that kind of idea."

"I believe in free will too, I just also happen to believe in self-optimisation."

"But not as destiny?"

"As an imperative, maybe. But not destiny."

"Didn't know there was a difference." Lara smiled. But if she'd meant it as a question, Marie understood well enough that it would have been one.

"If I might ask the same question: what brings me here today?"

"What? It's your job-"

"To report on what the community leaders are doing to you and vice versa, but let's be honest. As long as you maintain the status quo, not one of them is going to act like they care about you in the slightest."

"What about Fearnley?"

"You know that includes her."

Lara raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like you don't get on with her."

"We get on just fine, but if I was in her place, you wouldn't be having as good a time as you are right now."

"Now you're threatening me?"

"I'm outlining a hypothetical that I have no interest in actualising. Either by definition, it's an insult at worst, or all your time acting like you're some special princess who reigns over everything has made you soft."

Lara laughed. Not in dismissal - rather she let out a genuine guffaw. "That's great. That's actually... Christ, after high school, I thought it was fucked up of me to miss you, but now I remember why I did."

"That version of me is dead."

"I don't believe that."

"You remember I used to think, 'did you know the Inuit languages have more than 300 words for your mum's dick' was a good comeback, in *any* situation? That version of me is dead. Now I'm an alien pacemaker with feelings that drives her body around. So once again, why am I here?"

"I wanted your opinion on something. The mention of Plato earlier was helpful, actually. How much do you know about neoplatonism?"

"Not a lot."

"I guess it's not completely important, then. Just my take on what we know of the poem so far."

"Important to what?"

"There's a question - maybe *the* question. The one staring us in our dumb little faces. Why Sydney?"

"Why Sydney what?"

"A lot of stuff happens here that I figure... hey. Had to happen somewhere, right? But all in the same place? Unthinkable. Unless there's some kind of connection."

Though Marie was doubtful Lara fathomed the enormity of what she asked, she had to wonder based on her own experiences. She could blame Thalia - one improbability in and of herself - for her own contract, and therefore the existence of her similarly unique girlfriend, *and* for her first conference with the Knight, but anything beyond that? Was someone pulling some string or other?

As if asking herself the same question, Lara hypothesised aloud. "The Knight. The source of evil. The point from which all things come. Could it be here, in Sydney? Could it be related to someone we know?"

"I still don't believe in your gods," Marie asserted, largely out of spite for the one she'd met.

"What do you mean 'believe'? These aren't some archaic spirits invented to explain trees and clocks to shitheads. These are the conceptual forms of existential realities we live with every day!"

"Yeah, and I'm sure every other belief system has said almost the exact same thing."

"And the poem...?"

"I haven't randomly started caring about what the Attendants think, just because I work with them."

"This isn't about the Attendants, come on! This is about me, Crawford! This is about what I think!"

"But you're..."

"Better than them? Yes, they gave me a title for it and everything. Thank you for noticing."

"An Attendant's an Attendant, no matter how you cut it. I know how you people think, I've huffed enough of whatever the air in the office must be like to make you people like that."

Lara stood to her full height. She towered over Marie, cast a shadow upon her. "Then you know nothing."

"Hold on. Really? Nothing?"

"What?"

"Just saying, that's a bit much to not know."

"Look. You go out there, out into the real world, and you'll see the Deep Light's banner being carried by such a ragtag gang of self-obsessed freaks so opposed to my own ideology that either I'm not a real Attendant or that everyone *except* me gives us a bad name. I'll tell you why."

"Why?"

"I'll tell you why, I just said!"

"Okay, so tell me."

"Well. Well! Do I even need to, really? I mean you go and take one look at any Attendant less clever than me-"

"That might take a while," Marie had just enough discipline not to say.

"-and you will notice they all have something *terribly* wrong with them."

"What, that they're a bunch of hedonistic wannabe terrorists who don't know anything about politics?"

"Exactly! It's terrible!"

"So are you."

"Look, I'd do anything for them. This organisation... you have to understand it's like a second family to me. And like any family, I think their political convictions are braindead-stupid. I mean conquest of humanity! Are you serious? You wanna go to war with the species in control of the most advanced weapons in the universe?"

"In the universe?"

Mækiu confirmed this, the following evening. "You Terrans are, to our knowledge, the only things in existence capable of hate. Well, me too now, and I suppose a few other Incubators born with neural abnormalities. But the point is that the amygdala in your brain is a very complicated piece of neural circuitry so much so that it's more or less exclusive to amniotes. Across the entire universe! And that just regulates what could be your most primal emotion, it all gets weirder from there. Do you know what part of your brain controls the feeling you get when you're sitting in the car, fatigued, needing the toilet but not wanting to make a fuss, and intermittently getting distracted by the scenery going by outside?"

"No?"

"Me neither, honestly. And trust me, I've looked."

In a more pertinent time, Lara disregarded the question.

"That's a last resort, really. That's plan B."

"...I don't believe you."

"Oh! That's no problem, because I wasn't particularly intent on asking you to."

"You only have two resorts?"

"I don't need more than two. Not when the first is 'go and complete God's little chore for ultimate power', because honestly, if this doesn't work out, I'll probably end up getting killed along the way."

"And that's... good?" Marie half-pushed for elaboration, half-sought an answer within herself.

"What do you want me to say? No. No, I'm being reckless for no reason, I'm doing something because it's *bad*. You're missing my point. The Attendants are a means to an end as much as they are a safety net. They are... not exactly practical, but tools, certainly."

"Is that an invitation?"

"Not as long as it keeps me better than you."

Marie raised an eyebrow.

"What? I mean let's be honest, I think even a dipshit like you could chessmaster an easy half of them."

"You think they're stupid."

"Stupid? No. Stupid's a bit harsh. They're inconveniences. Pointless, rulebound parasites that make it their life to waste yours. Either easily radicalised ex-Christians who have a surplus of useless devotion they have to throw at something or impatient, entitled sideshow acts with enunciations affected by teething on the silver spoon they were born with in their mouth. Frankly, the world would be better if like 20% just died and got out of the way or learned to follow basic instructions."

"But not stupid?"

"You're clinging to this 'stupid' thing pretty heavily. Are you judging them?"

"*I'm* not judging them."

"Well you had me fooled. Are you getting any of this down, by the way?"

"Should I be?"

"You're not? See, I knew there was something I liked about you." Lara caught herself. Frowned. "No I didn't. Why did I say that?"

"You know, I have this anecdote from a friend who'd had undiagnosed ADHD."

"I bet it's really interesting, or something. But forget whatever reason you came here, let's get down to business."

"I'm here on business."

Lara waved her off. "The fragments. Did you find any more?"

"If I had, would I tell you?"

Both of them grinned. Giggled. Crescendoed to a cackle, each at the expense of the other.

"Tell you what, then. If you're gonna be like that, let's keep this above the table. Next week, I'll get you and-"

"Not Whitman. You just formally introduced us last week, and I'm still recovering from it."

"Yeah, and I'm sure she thinks really highly of you."

In truth, Whitman thought nothing of Marie. Her life was divided into two periods - one where she didn't have the inclination, and one where she didn't have the time. The crux, the division rested upon the evening preceded by a morning at the church and the subsequent poetry night.

It was late. Only 9:30, but at this time of year such was long after sunset. She was tired, but something was nagging at her.

Human memory is a fragile thing. Despite a hypothetical testimony from her being to the contrary, she felt no trepidation at all. This present was superimposed on her past when it became difficult for her to imagine this being a completely innocuous night.

It was actually some way down her avenue before she noticed the clearly marked police car sitting outside her house. It didn't look like it usually did. Then she realised the light to her room was on.

"Incubator."

Nothing.

"Incubator."

He heard, certainly. He was within earshot, he always was.

"Goodness me, Madeleine. I guess tonight just isn't your night."

"What's going on here?"

"Well, you did break a case in a jewellery shop earlier. They were never going to take that well."

"That's why the police are here?"

"Correct."

"Who... who turned me in?"

"If I tell you that, you're only going to start a pointless fight with them. Nobody benefits from that."

"Tell me! I'm going to go and fix this right now."

"My, my. You Terrans really do have a weird sense of value. I tell you that you'd waste your time and energy if given a certain piece of information, and suddenly your first priority is to interrogate it out of me?"

She stormed off. "God, you're so useless sometimes!"

"I try. You aren't going to go home?"

"And get myself arrested? Lose my one chance at a job in the force?"

"They don't need your presence to do that."

"What? But I left no evidence. What, are they running off hearsay? Eyewitness reports? They need a confession from me to verify *anything!*"

"You can be expelled without a criminal record."

A twang of pain struck Whitman's gem.

"Still. That doesn't mean I'd like to hang around and get one. The last thing I need is some blank-faced tough guy with a gun reprimanding me like I'm an idiot."

The last thing Professor Chang needed was some blank-faced tough guy with a gun reprimanding her like she an idiot. But in the fullness of time, it would become obvious that the military wasn't even pretending a lack of involvement in the string of disappearances around the city. The extent of the involvement was concealed well enough by the general inconveniences of bureaucracy, anyway.

"Ma'am, are you aware that you're trespassing on government property?"

"As a matter of fact, the armed guards pointing guns at me were a bit of a clue."

"We don't appreciate you trying to be coy."

"Oh, thank goodness. You should have seen what the English were like when they were in charge."

"Ma'am, please..."

Her phone beeped. Immediately two soldiers moved in and patted her down. One retrieved it from her left pocket and handed it to the man interrogating her.

"Passcode?"

"Your mother's birthday."

"I'd appreciate if you cooperated."

"I'm serious! The birthday of the mother of whoever's holding it. If anyone stole it, they wouldn't even think to try that one."

He grumbled and punched it in. Pretended not to be upset when it actually worked.

"An email. Chen, you read English fluently. Come here."

A younger man hurried over. "I do. Not sure whoever wrote this did, though: they're Australian."

His superior groaned. "What are they saying?"

"Something about a fragment. Of what, it's not clear."

The professor cautiously extended a hand. "That'd be for me, then."

"What are you reaching for?"

"I'm notoriously punctual about this kind of thing during office hours. If I don't say anything, someone's going to think I've been arrested."

"You... you are being arrested. You do understand that, yes?"

"Sure, but do you want them to? I'll be quick. You can even have the skinny boy come over here and proofread for me, if you want."

Without truly understanding why, a unit of armed personnel with military training were spellbound by the politeness and the authority of a middle-aged woman trying to check her emails. With a nod from his superior, Chen (whose uniform up close, if not his gait, betrayed his role as a shao wei in the PLA) jogged over and held the phone to her. Quickly she typed,

"I'm away from the office for a while."

Chen shook his head. She corrected,

"visiting family in Kowloon for a few days."

He approved. She continued.

"If this is that antique poetry fragment Mrs. Cahill thought was interesting, I think I gave Miguel a copy in the 90's."

"Who are these people?" He asked her.

"Cahill's an elderly historian living in rural Australia, and Miguel's a philanthropist in San Francisco. I'm a professor of anthropology, you have to understand. My research is on the place teenage girls and young women have in societies around the world."

"And can you verify that this isn't written in code?"

"You think I'm a spy?"

"The possibility is ever-present."

"I don't doubt that if you really do have some government connection, you'd be able to find my address. If I was a spy trading secrets internationally, I'd like to think I could at least afford a better apartment."

He sighed. "Sir?"

"Let her send it. This is a waste of time."

"Lovely." The professor grinned curtly and hit send. "Now, I believe there was some kind of arrest I was under?"

"Personally, it goes against my best wishes to do this to a civilian, but these are the kinds of laws that make sense in the bigger picture. You're coming to-"

"Excuse us, officers." Two more, better-decorated guards - no longer that by any stretch of benefit-of-the-doubt euphemism Professor Chang cared to dream up, actual soldiers - strode into view, one carrying a sheepishly-grinning, with hands held in surrender, Wai-Fong, and the other, Kim-Wan holding a stalemate in visibly fighting the effects of a sedative. "I'm afraid this woman is going to have to come with us."

"According to whom?" demanded the man previously in charge, now feebly emasculated.

The former of the two soldiers produced a faxed letter from his breast pocket.

"Ministry of National Defence?! Sir!?"

He nodded.

"We're still using fax? Er, sir!"

"It sends through more quickly."

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

He stuffed it back into his pocket. "Well, the chances that anyone else would choose that as the channel of communication at the same time are slim to none."
Nobody else had any further questions, so he took the Professor's arm and led her away.

"What happened?" she whispered to Wai-Fong.

No reply.

Or, there was one, but it took her a second to acclimate to psychic modes of conversation. She was told that as a human, her telepathy was unrefined and inarticulate, and as a forty-or-fifty-something, it was also cramping everyone else's style.

"Well, I got to thinking. Why do we need to break in? We get arrested, and they bring us in of their own accord."

"How many are we sitting on?" Hope rubbed her hands together.

"Okay, let's see. Right now, we've got Thalia's..." Marie laid these out now, one by one, on the dining room table. "There's that one from T.K., the one from your book, two from Ruth, and one more from Macquarie. Six all up."

"Out of sixteen."

"Yes, out of sixteen. Pretty solid start, if you ask me."

Hope gave a low whistle.

"Still not seeing any signs they're connected in a meaningful way yet. Maybe it's reliiant on some kind of pareidolia. Seeing patterns where there aren't any. I mean this has been essentailly beamed into people's dreams - if weird connections are going to be found anywhere, it's going to be in their dreams."

"Alright. And how are you going to find the dreams of people who've been dead for hundreds of years?"

"Good question. I know there are... commonalities in every person's brain, ancient things, long predating primates or even mammalia. You know, stuff that relates to our abilities to form synapses, and maybe that's the key here."

"You mean something neurological?"

"Sure. I mean our magic is defined by the neurochemical synapses in the emotion centres of our brains, right?"

"That's..." Hope chewed on her lip. "A vast oversimplification."

"Sure, but I'm talking about the currents here for a second. The little electrical bursts between your neurons. That has to be... controlled or regulated in some way by Concordance technology, right?"

"Why don't you ask?"

"Mae. Mae! What was that you were saying about the human brain the other day?"

Presently Mækiu was preoccupied with the act of planting a fork in a power socket and watching the hairs on her arm harmlessly stand on end. She smiled up at Marie as if this had achieved something, only to then have her attention taken, back and forth, between the fork exploding and her girlfriend's bemused scowl.

"Sorry, uh, uh, um. Could you repeat the question?"

She did.

"Right! Yes. Primitive emotion centres in your brain, right at the back of your skull. It's the main focus of our healing energy, because it's one of our main power supplies. Something goes wrong there, you're gonna be running off other parts of the brain, worse parts at controlling that kind of thing. You know? Your amygdala and your hypothalamus get damaged and your soul just starts guessing."

"Guessing what?"

"Stuff like 'well hey! I don't know what the middle temporal lobe is doing, let's patch that into the endocrine system and run that up the frontal lobe, see what we can do'. It's... don't get brain damage. It's not good for you. It's maybe fatal for humans, but it's not great for your health either. You could regenerate feeling dizzy, or paralysed, or with a few minutes of your memory gone."

"I've been using my spinal cord."

"You what?"

"For the whole thing. I've been shooting myself in the head and plugging into my spine instead. It's gotten me through some tough fights. Is that... bad?"

"Marie..."

"What?"

"You've been putting a gun against your own temple to destroy your own brain, and you ask me if that's bad?"

Hope raised her hands. "You know, all I'm saying is I did say so."

Marie shook her head. "Right. Yes. Okay. Whatever. What I meant to ask was, 'is the Concordance modifying our brains in any way'? That is to say, is there any sort of fixture or something that optimises our emotional output?"

"What? Oh, no, that's a terrible idea."

"But our mortal souls are fine."

"Yes? Didn't think that needed spelling out. You can let the soul die for a fraction of a second and still revive it just fine, but not the brain. You need magic for that, which I don't h- well. Now I do. But Kyubey doesn't."

"Okay, so why do I feel a little different to when I was a human?"

"Because your soul controls your body, including your central nervous system. Changing the former alters the latter, and that controls the emotional centres of your brain."

"And my emotions control my magic, which controls my soul."

"Precisely!"

"Sounds like perpetual motion to me."

"It is perpetual motion, I hate thermodynamics. But no, to answer your questions, your brains are still as feral as they were two million years ago. I'm not even going to try tinkering with those things."

Marie waved her off. "Okay, so forget the brain wiring idea. But I did have a similar idea picturing it, too. Something about leylines, one of the kids me, Dani, and Thalia came across in the 1800s made note of them, and I did a little digging. She wasn't actually referring to the geomagnetic phenomenon, but-"

"Yeah," Hope interrupted. "Global Age stuff. Magic woven so tight around the Earth in runs in currents now."

"Oh. So you knew?"

"O' course."

"Right! Well, I propose something synaptic is going on there. Like where the lines cross or something." She grinned, her inhibition and humility eaten by consilient enthusiasm.

"What are you thinking?"

"Well, each of these visions came to a specific person at a specific time and place. We need to understand who, when, where, and why. I mean presumably, whatever force dictates these kinds of things could just as easily dump these all at the same time, or in the same corner of the world, or on the same person."

"Where and when have we got?"

"Let's see... Somewhere Arabic-speaking a bit over a thousand years ago, 12th century Turkey... couple centuries after that, Kenya-"

Mækiu rocketed upright. "Kenya?!"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Never heard about anything like this happening there in that time period. I should know, I was there. And by there, I do mean the entire country."

Marie took the fragment purporting to come from there and then, and carried it to Mækiu. She, for her part, gave it a cursory skim-read and passed it back. "Oh, no. You've got that all wrong."

"Wrong?!"

"That's right! Wrong! The girl who wrote this - good friend of mine, dead for maybe longer than any one of your ancestors had a thirty-millionth of your specific genome in theirs, but still. Good friend."

"But you killed her, right? Being Incub-"

"Yeah, so she was from Dinka country, not the Swahili Coast. Wrong side of the White Nile completely. 1538 too, not 1600's like you've written here. Eventually her story made its way to Mombasa, because that was the place to be until... I don't know why it stopped being that, actually."

"Fearno said something about a high-tech wizard pirate battle."

"Really? Well, I don't remember that, but that sounds about right. Anyway! This poem... thing... started doing the rounds there, until people stopped believing some kid in Southwest Sudan who'd never seen the ocean could be so aware of how sailing works."

Marie stopped to consider the ramifications of this, before realising she couldn't think of any. Was this definitive proof of divine inspiration?

"Now... you're going to ask, 'but how is that possible?', aren't you?"

"Of course."

"Beats me, someone probably told her. I usually think about more important things, like stopping the end of the universe forever."

Privately, to Hope, Marie presented, "She really doesn't believe, does she?"

"I mean she's ten million years old, you know. Awful long time to go without seeing any evidence."

"That's true."

Aloud: "So this all aside, How far along is Macca and her lot?"

"You don't actually think collecting these is going to amount to anything, do you?"

"Putting her in her place, certainly."

"Right. Of course. Well, she's certainly getting her dick beat in by us."

Hope raised an eyebrow and frowned.

"Look, it's fine. I do hate her, of course, but I don't think we're about to lunge at each other's throats over something like this.

"I said get off me!"

Lara's right arm turned to oil, then to metal, then to static. She dropped the machete. She needed to double over, but too soon Thalia's blade was at her throat. She stumbled backward.

"Macquarie?" Marie demanded. "You- you died!"

She conducted the metastable witch dream eating at her body into a single fist, and then out into a sawblade. "Did I? Check your math on that one, Fermat."

She contemplated her own reasoning, and came to the conclusion which had struck Thalia instantly.

"Oh," was all she said. "I get it."

Lara smirked. Then frowned, actually, then gawked. She dropped her blade, and witchcraft burned the skin of her arms again. Now she did stagger, shudder to contain the energy at the sight of what had become of Marie.

Anathema.

Quiet, unmoving anathema, but still more than enough to call her to action.

Marie shook her head. "Let's correct that."

She took a step forward. The road cracked and slagged as she did, and the print of her boot trailed blue and red flame. There was bile running down her chin, and blood from swollen, sightless eyes. But the flesh was irrelevant, it was a vessel. Taking it over were the upper limits of her magic, the same stuff which comprised her armour and skirt and boots and stole, and burned itself into the fibres of her hair and the pores of her skin. While Lara succumbed to the nihilistic, directionless violence of near-witchery, the opposite found its way onto Marie - such a singularity of purpose, such self-assured ruthlessness, that it threatened to consume her just as much.

Her gem flashed bright enough that for a second there appeared two suns in the sunset. Thalia recoiled in horror. Lara stepped up in the very same.

"What are you going to do, kill me? Last I heard, you don't have the guts without something to shoot your brains-"

Marie clawed at her own temple, tore the top third of her head off, and threw it onto the curb.

It slid. Only about ten centimetres, but the act of it sliding was enough to bake an impression into Lara and Thalia's eyes. For a moment, she wore a crown of bone fragment, of tattered nerves and an amount of blood one wouldn't associate with so small a volume. The next, blood dried and bone charred as a tremendous bonfire, half her height and licking shades of blue and red, erupted from the opening.

Lara ran to her. Thalia gave chase, but even with her unnatural stride stayed a pace too slow. A hammer extended from Marie's palm, and she - it, rather, - swung it forward with precision of trajectory usually expected from the field of astronautics. The

The Magician approaches.

Come to throw in your own opinion on my writing too, I presume?

"No. Instead, I'm here to apologise on behalf of the others."

Why you?

"Because I know they won't."

I'd figured as much.

"I think what they believe is true. I don't think the same of what they say."

And what, in your opinion, do they believe?

"They're convinced they're helping. That what you attempt is too much for one demon to take on alone."

I know what I'm doing.

"I trust you'll find a way to convince them, then. Because if I knew how, I would have done so already in your stead."

You believe me, though, don't you?

No response.

I turn and find she's gone. Or maybe she'd never even been, and I just wasn't paying attention.

Fine. What does it matter? I can show them. I can show they're all demonstrably wrong.

I can.

What was I talking about, though? Hm. Probably not important.

SPLINTERS

The following is a fragment as it exists in the possession of Miguel Carlos. Its authorship is attributed to Lone Gunst (1755 - 1774), a Yupik-Danish explorer in central Alaska. It reads as follows:

Every space of land and sea grows hostile if disrespected. Worse still, it may become just as rough on a whim.

The young fisherwoman knew that today was not a day which felt kind to her boat. Call it instinct, or innate talent; she was not particularly weathered by age, she simply had a knack. The land, however, offered its own hostilities. She did not understand that it would be better to chance a danger she recognized.

Snow blew, but not as a storm. It cascaded in directions uncountable, not simply downward, but not with the force of a strong wind either. Beneath her, snow cracked like arid desert sand. She doubted her understanding of what it was that she saw, but it cracked only further, almost in response.

"It's perfectly safe, so long as you trust that it is." A voice behind her was calling out, but she could not see who it belonged to.

"How does it know?" she called back.

"How does the sea know you can steer a boat? How does a storm know you have a roof over your head?" The voice was very identifiably that of an elderly woman now. "Neither do. It is an onus upon yourself to make these things true."

The ground was splintering now, like the sheer face of a glacier, but it was nothing so stiff. This was thin, powdery snow on which she stood. Nonetheless, she accepted this. It was panic which would harm her, not the ground itself. And true to the old woman's word, it brought her no harm. A tremendous fissure ripped itself across the ground, toward her, and then right through her body. And yet she felt no pain. Cautiously she moved, even in spite of the splitting of her flesh, and yet all the cracks moved with her.

She removed her glasses. The lenses were marked with hundreds of cracks. They had fractured, not the world. Satisfied, she put them back on so that she might at least be able to tell distance. And the most curious thing happened. A small white polecat, well hidden in the snow, ran and burrowed into the fissure only in her glasses. Hastily she followed.