Marghi. Myriaky.

  Never had she felt the need for their presence so strongly.

  Answer me...

  But their answer would not come. She was prey to a painful physical longing for the company of her husbands, the absurd and unrealizable need to have them there with her, but outside, present in the room as independent beings, capable of supporting her with a gesture, a touch, a thought that she had not felt before rumbling through her mind.

  She carried within her a collective memory that would make a small country envious, but why did it not warm her? Why did she always feel one and isolated, more than a grain of pollen in the wind, drifting?

  Retreating into the shell was the only way forward for her. There was a time to say stop. If only.

  Marghi, are you not coming to mock me? To gloat over my undoing?

  It was useless. Her husband did not answer her. She could not find them, neither of them.

  To tempt me?

  She remembered that she still had some pungent white wine from the Six Islands and a whole collection of fine mugs that would soon turn to dust anyway. But this time, something held her back. Fear, the humiliation of having the portal slammed in her face again.

  Not exactly the most uplifting feeling that could come to her rescue to combat the unhealthy habit of navigating occult waters... but at least it worked.

  Gathering the malleable matter of her body that had flattened out in the hollow in the center of her restroom, Seluma crawled into the newly solidified corset, shiny and transparent and still soft, gave herself her usual shape, and took the passageway back up to her world.

  No more accidents at the Coneshell. The youngsters had found another place to act out their stupidity. In fact, many of the regulars were missing as well.

  Maybe they had left. The idea caught her off guard. Had she believed that all of them, like her, would wait for the last day by doing the usual things until the end?

  And why not? If one loved one's work, one's life, what would have been the best way to go? Was it worth wasting time running to an unlikely salvation? The world was about to end; there would be no refuge.

  She had to stay calm. Despite her taciturn attitude, which kept everyone at a distance, she felt conflicting emotions bubbling up inside of her, almost driving her to scream. She had not been well. Maybe it was the flu. She was unaware that she could catch it, but who knew? She had been close to the professor...

  Surely that morning had been a hallucination, caused by the unusual unseasonable heat wave —now considered by most to be an ominous omen— that had swept through the city, or perhaps just the sun in her eyes.

  She thought she saw Fuig's head, wearing a wide straw hat, appear behind a freight car on the other side of the square. She was about to give him a voice, to speed up her crawl as much as possible, but her eyes had fallen to the ground, under the wagon, between the wheels.

  She had not seen what should have been there. Fuig's underside, his legs. There was nothing there: just wheels and an empty space. When she looked again at the spot where she had glimpsed the head, the shape was gone. Surely it had never been there. A trick of reflections.

  Now she had no need to be afraid of seeing ghosts, no need to look at everything carefully, no need to wander around without doing anything. The super-waitress had already given her notice: as soon as the alarm sirens sounded —and they would sound very soon, no one doubted it— she would leave without looking back.

  Maybe even without pay? Seluma had gone through each of the employees in her mind to assess their level of trustworthiness. They were all reliable and responsible, under normal circumstances. But these were not normal circumstances at all. She did not want to blame anyone, but she demanded at least some courtesy. As long as customers showed up, they should be served.

  Soon the alarm would sound. Evacuation had already begun. From the early morning, every edition of the news repeated the public safety guidelines and advice to get organized and avoid pitfalls. Notices in bright ink hurt the eyes on every corner.

  As far as she knew, having never gone out again and having no intention of doing so, the Nelattese had taken it easy. Or they were standing by, ready to explode when the time was right.

  “New day of prayer in the Cathedral of the Square of a Thousand Drops. We remind all citizens that meetings for meditation and collective reflection are also planned in the opera house and the great hall of the university.”

  She was about to snort, to make a sarcastic comment, but she stopped herself. What else could the Palvi monks do? Instead of locking themselves up in their comfortable monastery to gorge themselves to the end, or running away like oblivious rabbits, they were trying to comfort frightened people. What right had she to criticize them?

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  They were monks; they were praying. While she, a cook, cooked.

  Her food also helped, her restaurant remaining a refuge for those who wandered the streets in those desperate hours looking for a cozy room, rest, and a hot meal.

  Seluma walked past the bar, giving the bartender an approving look with her recently repaired nose. The plastic skin stitches were barely visible. Here was a reliable employee. She laughed to herself, heaven forbid. All that was left was her, after Fuig.

  She sighed, suddenly nervous again at the appearance of that pale figure, which brought an icy gust of wind with the smell of rotten leaves behind it. Just after sunset, the warm air of the day had given way to an equally unnatural and eerie cold.

  The tall hat reassured her. She recognized it even before she recognized Luoth in the cold visitor. Deep circles under his eyes... consequence of the meeting?

  “You were invited too, you know,” he told her, not in a questioning tone.

  “Were you expecting me?”“No,” the banker admitted.

  He fumbled for a moment to undo the big white buttons on his dark coat, but thought better of it and went back to shivering, stamping his feet on the floor and rubbing his hands together. “Too hot in there, and now it looks like it's going to snow!”

  Seluma was more sensitive than average to changes in temperature, but she felt no particular discomfort at that moment. He was the one who was tired, just exhausted. His skin looked like an unhealthy yellowish wax, and when he finally decided to open his coat, it revealed a rumpled shirt and a tie so lopsided and misshapen that it seemed to have been torn from his neck with unwarranted force. Had it perhaps leaped up to attack its owner, to try to strangle him?

  “Herbal tea?” Seluma asked as Luoth sat down in a corner. His eyes were red, opaque. Even the faceted rhinestone of his earring seemed dull, unable to reflect any light.

  It could no longer be ruled out that the neckties could turn into stranglers.

  The banker nodded and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with his usual handkerchief, which he crumpled up in disgust and stuffed into a pocket.

  “Do you want a drop of my milk in it?”

  She saw him gasp in shock.

  “What? No!” he replied with a sob.

  She should have expected this. The admirers of her white exudate were not many. Maybe the idea of feeding on something that came from another being... but weren't mammals used to that?

  “It's a good energetic, restorative,” she clarified. “It doesn't hurt people. And I'm told it's sweet.”

  Luoth stared at her with glazed eyes, bulging like marbles about to fall out of their sockets. His face was colored with an unusual flush, spots on his cheeks like fingerprints smeared with lipstick.

  “No, thank you,” he murmured more calmly.

  Seluma went to fetch his herbal tea herself.

  “They talk, they talk, they get drunk on nonsense,” he muttered under his breath as he accepted the blessed steaming cup. The scent of the infused herbs seemed to give him momentary relief; he closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the scent. He warmed his hands around the pottery.

  “Same as always, then,” was the dry reply. “You see why I don't go?”

  “It was worse,” he blurted out. “You should have heard the scientists talk. And we are in their hands!”

  Seluma waved his antennae and tilted his head.

  “We are not if we don't want to be. We can refuse to let ourselves be carried around.”

  “I have the suspicion that they have been accumulating theories and ideas of the most ridiculous kind for years, and that this emergency is the opportunity they have been waiting for all their lives,” Luoth continued, not listening. “At last, they can show off all the nonsensical junk they've invented and maybe even constructed. At last, they can bombard people with mindless explanations that no one could bear to listen to for more than a minute! Say...”

  He motioned for her to come closer. The hand he pulled away from the pot-bellied side of the cup was heavily reddened, bordering on scalded, but he did not seem to mind.

  “Do you know what the Eggs Sower is?”

  Seluma took her time to answer. She did not know what name to give to the restlessness the question had awakened in her heart.

  “The painting?”

  “Yes. Do you know what they say it represents?”

  Seluma waved the stems at the sides of her mouth.

  “The device by which some people believe a god created certain places in the world,” she said, reciting what she knew, what she had heard long and two lifetimes ago in the school of a small town on a wooded hill in the far northern regions.

  Luoth shook his head with such force that his thick lips trembled like jelly.

  “It really exists. It can exist,” he revealed in a whisper. “On a theoretical level.”

  His mouth widened into a smile that had nothing happy about it.

  “But it has little to do with the little drawing they showed us.”

  The insect waitress waved her arms frantically at them. Four Pipers flew to land on the ceiling hooks. “Sure,” Seluma replied with an equally vague gesture, “I'll take care of them.”

  Luoth raised a hand to stop her.

  “Tonight you must come with me, Seluma, please. I ask this as a favor to a friend. Don't leave me alone.”

  Seluma waited for an explanation that did not come.

  “Tonight? It's tonight now. Is there a special meeting?”

  Luoth nodded and sniffed. He still had not taken a single sip of his herbal tea. He had not even taken the strainer out of the cup.

  “It's something else. Some people seek... a second opinion,” he confessed jerkily, and with the last word the grimace of someone who had tasted a taste too bitter remained on his face.

  Seluma stared at him, wiggling the small tentacles at the sides of her mouth. Going out at this hour was the least desirable thing she could think of. And to go where and in what company —she could guess.

  In the time of crisis, many discovered themselves to be mystics, in a tentative search for hope beyond the tangible, in a dimension they would never otherwise have cared about. Some accepted the humble and sincere comfort of the Palvi monks, while others waded into murkier waters.

  Not her. She was neither a believer nor a gullible one.

  But she would have liked to be considered a friend, at least for one evening.

  “Just give me a few moments,” she replied, pointing to the waiting Pipers.