“Lucy, what time is it?”
“It is eleven fifty a.m. on Saturday, February fourteenth.”
Half the day is gone, but she still has a little time left. She turns over, delaying getting up. But she must. Today is the Ceremony of the Dead. She will be there for Benja.
A dust storm is blowing inside the hole in her chest, covering it with dry sand. Cycle and recycle—the only states as true as time, she reminds herself and gets up. She opens the curtains. The sky is gray. The clouds look like a wool blanket.
“Lucy, what’s the weather like today?”
“It is scheduled to snow by nightfall.”
She stares out into the cityscape of concrete and glass buildings and begins piecing herself together. She is Aris. A citizen of Callisto. A scientist.
She sniffs herself and decides she needs a shower. How many days has she been without one? She cannot recall. She turns away from the view and walks to the bathroom.
Once there she strips off her clothes. She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. There is a touch of purple on the thin skin below her eyes. The worry line between her brows looks deeper. Her hair is a mess. She looks away and sighs.
She gets into the shower and pushes a button. Five minutes. A stream of hot water falls on her skin and hair. She lathers herself with soap from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She breaths in the steam and fills her lungs with its warmth.
The water stops. She gets out, dries herself, and dresses. Black shirt. Black pants. A pair of hiking boots. She pulls a jacket off its hanger and puts it on. She looks like she is ready for one of her hiking expeditions.
“Your coffee is ready,” Lucy says.
Aris is thankful for her. She’s the only being in this cycle who is a constant in her life. She wonders if Lucy will be hers again in the next cycle.
The coffee is bitter. She forces herself to swallow it down. After two more sips she begins to taste its subtle nutty flavor. Once the cup is empty, she feels more like herself.
A knock on the door. She opens it. Metis stands before her, radiant and handsome. She wants so much to kiss him. If only she were not so sad.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hello.” His smile is as gentle as spring.
Aris begins to feel like she is going to be fine.
At the train station to Elara, she waits with Metis and those heading to the ceremony. The platform is filled—unusual except on ceremony days.
The train arrives and they enter. They go to their seats and settle in. Aris looks around. In the whole train car, there is only one man who looks like an Elaran. He’s sitting by himself at the other end. The residents of Elara are a reclusive bunch. They are craftsmen. They work with their hands, making beautiful things like pottery, jewelry, wood furniture, and musical instruments—anything not made by the machines. She sees them occasionally at the gift market. Maybe they were searching for things that once belonged to them—just like the redheaded woman.
She roots around in her pocket and pulls out the crisp object. She stares at the blue origami crane in her hand. The thought of parting with one of Benja’s birds makes her feel ill. But she has to say goodbye.
Benja is the first loss she has known. Or remembers. The pain of missing him feels as if it will never end. She wonders how many people she has lost in the past. She cannot decide whether it is better to remember or to forget.
“What’s that?” Metis asks.
“A gift from my friend.”
“You haven’t said much about him.”
Aris wonders what she can say about Benja that would do him justice. No matter what she says, she feels she could never fully explain him and the complexity of her feelings for him.
She tries. “His name was Benja. He was a writer. He was writing a book about a man searching for his way home, but he never finished it. His writing was beautiful. Dreamy. Surreal. Different from the way he talked.”
“How did he talk?”
“Straight forward. Laced with sarcasm and wit. He cursed a lot. He felt it added oomph to a sentence.”
“Sounds like an interesting man.”
“You have no idea. He was not afraid of anything. He did what he wanted without caring about the consequences. He lived life with no boundaries.”
“You admire him,” Metis says.
“He was what I could never be. Brave. Fearless. Honest.”
“You’re not any of those?”
She shakes her head and settles into silence. She feels Metis’s hand on hers and lets it stay there. Its warmth travels up her arm and settles in the middle of her chest. With him, words seem not to matter. She feels—no, knows—he understands her even when she says nothing at all.
Aris leans on his shoulder and stares at the gray subway wall, blurry from her perspective inside the fast-moving train. The gray wall is not moving. It is constant and fixed. It is she who is moving. It is she who is blurry.
With so little time left, she should not be forging a new connection. It will only make leaving him worse. They will be like Princess Orihime and her lover—only meeting on the seventh night of the seventh moon. Her gut is hollowing. But she does not want to let go.
An image flashes by. Red. A flower. Her hand twitches, reminding her of a pain so primal and instinctual. She pulls back her hand.
“It’s everywhere,” she says.
“What?” His voice is hoarse.
“The red design. I keep seeing it on the sides of the tunnel.”
The train stops, and the station looks just like any other—white, clean, with circles on the floor. They get off the train and make their way to the glass elevators. A sea of strangers surrounds them. They float along slowly with its tide.
She steals a look at Metis.
