(Untitled)

[joiningyousoon]

(Perfect clarity. Frightening clarity.

I stood in a wasteland. It was)

A ruin.

A graveyard.

A battlefield.

Colossal monuments of steel all around; fallen, twisted up, tangled up in each other under a thick blanket of snow til it is impossible to tell where one stops and another begins.

No bodies.

(It was as if some cruel god had been

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[theredstars]

Turn around, Maya.

In the middle of this wasteland, by the burned-out hulk of a krawl, a woman is standing. Shining, pure, warm and vital -- and, perhaps, familiar.

[joiningyousoon]

An angel of mercy.

She smiles like she's known Maya for a thousand years. She speaks and Maya's heart thuds in her chest; tears spring to her eyes and roll, slow and hot and unnoticed, down her cheeks.

Maya feels smaller than she has in years, standing among the snow-covered crawls, the field lit by the stars

(burning too bright to be smoke-enthralled Nokgorka)

and the soft glow of the angel of mercy

(Alex Goncharova would kick anyone in the shins who ever tried to call her an angel).

Maya feels more innocent than she has in years; safer.

[theredstars]

"Pray for the living, Maya."

That golden, hearthside glow may have little to do with the Alexandra Goncharova of life. But the crooked half-smile and the patiently exasperated fondness -- those are all Alex, even if it's a softer mood than she allowed almost anyone to see.

"Pray for the living."

[joiningyousoon]

The little girl with the armful of red roses stares up at her. Her clothes are shapeless and colorless; brown and gray, battered and patched and thin, little protection against the cold.

The hood covers her head, but a shock of yellow bangs are a spot of bright color. So are her eyes, too blue and too old for her years, no matter her age.

(She said she would never leave me.)