While removing the old green wallpaper in the master bedroom, Gil discovered a window. The glass surface, flush with the surrounding plaster, had been perfectly concealed. If not for the renovation–specifically Vickie’s desire to spruce up their room with an attractive floral print–he might never have found it.

Perplexed, Gil scraped away the remaining wallpaper with a putty knife, revealing the oddly-sized pane: maybe three feet wide, eight inches high.

On the other side of the glass, obscured by a smear of wallpaper paste, a warm light glowed. Retrieving a sponge, Gil scrubbed the glass clean and looked inside.

Beyond was a tiny lighted room. An open-plan apartment, furnished with a doll-sized dinette set, a sofa the length of his hand, a kitchen and refrigerator and a marble island with stools. Bright paisley wallpaper.

Squinting, he could make out spines of books on the shelf, a saucepan on the stove. Off the kitchen, next to a coat rack, an exterior door with a bolt lock, a box for buzzing in visitors. The floor plan of the apartment seemed to extend farther back. A hall stretched off the living room. At the end, a door opened onto a bathroom in blue tile.

That didn’t make sense. On the other side of the wall was Gil and Vickie’s laundry room. There was no tiny bathroom in there.

He was puzzling over this when the apartment’s door opened and a tiny woman walked in.

I forget everything except the color blue. We waded through a river thickened with dirt and blood, but through our goggles we could only see cobalt, cyan, denim. If I blocked out the skyline of splintered buildings, I could almost believe we were at sea. Mitch had found some kid’s rattle, miraculously unbroken, and he shook it and sang as we walked. I expected my stomach to twist, but there was no urge to tell him to knock it off, no discomfort. Liquid blue mud swallowed our boots up to the ankles and Mitch sang Down by the river you said you’d hold me pretty baby don’t let me go into the wet smell of decay.

The order had come a few days back. They hadn’t given a reason, just said, It has been decided that there is nothing deserving of life within the city’s walls. This is standard. Your unit has been selected for the sacred work of recovering any items that should be spared. The night before we marched, I’d dreamed that I was standing before a line of objects – a spool of thread, a porcelain doll, a tarnished picture frame – and when I reached out to choose, they cried Will not the judge of all the Earth do right? And their voices were the voices of children, high and cracked and unraveling.

Mitch lowered the rattle, stopped singing. He said, “This is one fucked up town.”

I said, “It’s fucked now, that’s for sure.”

Mitch bent over and swiped a gloved hand at a post floating past us. “Everybody here’s so bad they had to die, right? Must’ve been one evil baby.” He gave the rattle one last shake and tossed it into the current. The stomach drop hit then, the hollowness in his lack of irony. I kept my face blank. Two years in the Angels is enough to teach a woman not to flinch at the mention of a dead child.

We went on wading. After a while, it wasn’t just fence posts floating through the floodwaters. We stayed close to the doorsteps of the ruined homes to avoid obstructions. Through our goggles, even the bobbing corpses were stained with color. The world, we always tell recruits, is like a forest. To clear the detritus and reduce the risk of an all-consuming blaze, sometimes you have to set a smaller fire.

The story goes like this: Three angels visit Abraham and declare God’s plans to destroy the nearby cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose sins of inhospitality are so grievous that only death can erase their stain upon the Earth. But when the angels leave, Abraham barters with God: Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?

I have never argued with God. I have never spoken to God directly. We receive and follow orders. We are not asked to carry out the destruction, only to make sure it goes according to plan.

I found a music box with chipped edges. It wouldn’t play, of course, but I decided that something crafted to produce music might be a little bit holy, regardless of the sins of its owner. Our unit would take it back with us, where it would be reviewed for a series of inscrutable requirements before its fate was decided. I was pleased with myself for finding a potential artefact. Sometimes, by the time we arrive, there’s nothing left.

There are no accounts of someone being found alive in a drowned city. Would it mean the living one was spared by design? Or would its survival be considered a mistake to be corrected? Andy, I think, would kill it. Andy walks behind me when the unit marches in formation. He doesn’t joke like Mitch, doesn’t mess around in the ruins. I believe Andy would kill the survivor with a smile full of regret and eyes shining with purpose.

Sodom and Gomorrah were not spared. The cities’ residents mocked and abused a foreigner who was actually an angel, and, like selfish princes in a fairy tale, were punished for their prejudice. One man, his wife, and his two daughters were deemed righteous enough to flee. The wife dared to glance back at her home mid-escape and was turned to salt. These things happen; on the whole, it was a merciful outcome.

I will say this only once. There was a man, his arms around a child. He sat so still that at first I took them for a sculpture, a potential artefact to index. Then his eyes closed and reopened. I found them when the unit had spread out to maximize efficiency, and I was alone. I walked close enough to reach out and touch him, close enough to wring his neck or feel his heartbeat. He trembled slightly. He shielded the child in his arms. I hissed, Go.

We marched out of the city to Mitch’s rough hum, mud-splattered and toting our chosen objects. I wondered about the eyes of the man I had found. Through the goggles they had been a brighter shade of blue than anything else I had seen in the city. I could have said Be not afraid in an ancient tongue like the original angels, but I couldn’t form the syllables. Even the Go I had managed was blasphemous. His eyes floated on before me like twin prisms shifting in the light. Opalescent blue. Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? I fixed my eyes forward. I swallowed the word I had spoken and tasted salt.

Ella J. Lombard (she/her) is a writer and researcher living in Seattle, WA. When she isn’t writing speculative fiction and poetry, she can be found pursuing a PhD in Social Psychology at the University of Washington. In both lines of work, she explores oppression, justice, and how the stories we tell reflect and transform who we are.

The Future Was Yesterday’s fusion reactor containment failed when she was three days out from Rattlesnake Station. Automatic failsafes triggered within microseconds, shutting off the reactant supply and bringing the nuclear reaction to a halt, but a few hundred grams of sun-hot plasma now had a clear path to the supercooled magnets surrounding the reactor.

Yesterday’s operating system opened a ventral port from the reactor into open space. Almost all of the plasma was successfully shunted through this port and away from the ship, but a small fraction followed the path through the containment breach, touching off a massive detonation when they contacted the magnets.

The violent sideways kick of the explosion was the first Yesterday’s crew knew of the unfolding disaster. Apparent gravity changed direction twice in less than a second, first from the steady 1g of deceleration to the side as the explosion accelerated the ship into a spin, then from sideways to outward as the ship’s new centripetal force tugged the crew out from the center of the ship toward her bow and stern.

Shockwaves from the explosion traveled out from engineering, vibrating every centimeter of Yesterday’s rigid frame. Plastic instrument covers shattered, ceramic cups cracked, gangways shook themselves loose, and an infrasonic thrum blurred the crew’s vision as they struggled to understand what was happening.

The sound of the explosion came last. It was a titanic crack as though some forgotten god of the void had seized Yesterday and cracked her spine in retaliation for waking their anonymous slumber.

But there were no vengeful gods in the Big Black, and Yesterday’s spine was not actually broken. The explosion had pushed her structural integrity to the limit, but not past it. Yesterday held herself together.

Her crew tended to their wounded and carefully began the precise pattern of maneuvering burns that would counter Yesterday’s spin as efficiently as possible. They were safe, for the moment.

Beyond the moment? There was no way they could restart the crippled reactor, and the Kuiper Belt was a bad part of the Solar System to lose your fusion drive, especially on an outbound trajectory. Without the deceleration burn, they would fly right past Rattlesnake Station. There were no other permanent bases between them and the Oort Cloud. If someone couldn’t catch up to them and bring along enough reaction mass to overcome their velocity, nothing could stop Yesterday from going Dutchman.

Those were long term considerations. In the short run, all that mattered was power.

Without power, life support would fail. First they would asphyxiate. Then the cold would freeze their lifeless corpses solid. Yesterday’s capacitors could keep her essential systems humming for hours. Maybe a day at the outside. A rescue mission wouldn’t take days or hours. It would take weeks or months. Yesterday’s crew needed time. They needed power.

They knew how to get it.

While Yesterday’s spin was tamed, her crew took exacting measurements of their position and velocity. They sent the data along with a discreet mayday call back towards the Inner System on heavily encrypted channels. The message would take seven hours to reach Cislunar, the cradle of humankind’s nascent interplanetary empire. Hopefully, a ray of concentrated sunshine would reach back out towards them across the millions of kilometers of empty space, arriving fourteen hours after they sent their message.

If they were very lucky and their telemetry data was very good, that little photonic lifeline would score a direct hit on their emergency solar array, bringing them the power they needed to stay alive until help arrived.

If they were very lucky.

Back then, we liked to scour the docks of Termina Celeste for starships to tag: sleek crafts with hulls like vast canvases and cabins that were mostly unattended because the space-lagged passengers were off in the city somewhere, getting drunk or on business or both.

Blaise Landry was the leader of the crew, being the oldest out of the five of us. I was his lieutenant. That meant whenever Blaise was out, decommissioned–because sick or in deep trouble with his dad or whatever–I got to be in charge that day, which meant I got to choose which ship to tag.

Our evening began like every other: calm and lubricated with a little beer. No hint of the chaos you may’ve read about or seen on holotrope feeds. That all came later.

We were leaning over the cliffside railing in the southeast quadrant of the docks, spitting into the deep canyon beside which Termina Celeste had been built. In my holotrope lectures that week, I’d learned about DNA, and I fancied each little ball of my saliva was bringing down into the River Andalosi a library of tiny blueprints of me. An artist takes whatever legacy he can get. I hocked up a good one and watched the yellow tadpole tumble through four and a half kilometers of space.

“I’ll do you one better, Lucas,” said Hugo Gunfrey. Turning at a slight angle for modesty, he relieved himself over the edge with a sigh that shook his huge belly.

“God that’s revolting,” Robin Vexler said. She guarded her eyes with a flap of her orbital-jumper jacket and scowled. “You and me, Lucas, let’s push him over, how about it?”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” I said.

“Gravity’d do most of it.”

I laughed.

I knew I wasn’t the only one with murderous fantasies whenever we hung out by the abyss. Everybody has dark thoughts now and then. But imagining them behind Robin’s waifish face and big brown eyes was difficult.

“Any word on the boss?” I asked Jacob.

At fourteen, Jacob Landry was younger than his brother Blaise by a year. He was also the tallest and sturdiest of our crew by far. He could’ve passed for a bouncer at one of his father’s mob-front nightclubs, or maybe a truancy officer.

Jacob shook his head as he cast through his wrist holotrope for Blaise’s whereabouts, then shut it off, nixing the dance of holographic minutiae. “With a girl tonight, probably. Doesn’t drop out of the Buzz otherwise.”

“Traitor,” said Hugo.

Robin clipped on her orbital-jumper helmet. Like her jacket, it was several sizes too large and scuffed from the junkyard where she’d found it. “Give that here, Lucas. I wanna hit one of those buzzards.”

I handed her my empty beer bottle, and she chucked it at a sentry drone floating overhead. The bottle burst with a festive crash, a tinkle of falling glass.

By the time the robot spun its floodlights around we were already gone, darting off across the cliffside promenade and laughing.

Bands had struck up in the neon towers of Termina Celeste’s midtown, which clustered like an orthodontic night-terror below the city roof. Music of all kinds, from all places: Jovian blues and heat-death metal, quantum jazz and Horsehead pomp. One strain after another came rolling down off the cool evening air, balled up with smells of fried noodles, potatoplum sauce, koalaroo dumplings, trampagne.

“If Blaise is out, you know what that means,” I said, smiling. I was the first to take out my vaulter. It was long and cold and smooth, a baton of collapsible supercarbon thick as a femur. I kept it in my knapsack with the spray cans and other things.

“Means out with Benito, in with Blackbeard,” said Jacob. His back furrowed as he unsheathed a vaulter of his own. He held it like a gladiator might a pike, with one end balanced on his trapezius muscle.

“That’s right,” I said. “Means I’m in charge. And seeing as I’m in charge, I pick that beauty as our target.”

I pointed my vaulter at the pristine white argosy that’d held my eye all evening, snug and so temptingly secure in its hypersilk moorings. The name Kingfisher was lettered on its hull in old-fashioned silver characters, and from the blue roses running through their gaps I knew the craft belonged to a Delphine merchant prince. The sort of prince, from what I’d glimpsed on holotrope feeds, who needed taking down a few pegs anyway.

“Delphines? They don’t screw around,” said Jacob. “It’s like picking on the uranium mafia.”

“Stuff we’ve been through? Tch,” I said.

“This is different,” said Robin, rubbing her nose through her visor. “This is crazy. You’re crazy, Lucas.”

“Amen,” said Hugo.

“Bunch of cowards, then,” I said. “Guess I’ll have to do it myself.”

They tensed. Getting tagged a coward was no small thing if you ran with a high-wire crew like us. The only worse insult was snitch.

“Screw it,” said Jacob.

“You can’t be serious,” said Robin.

“He’s the boss, and I’m no coward. Are you?”

“These snakes, the Delphines, you said it yourself. They catch you, it’s not exactly a fine.”

“They have to catch you,” I said.

Hugo crossed his pudgy arms. “No way.”

But I’d made my point.

After waiting for a sentry drone to pass, I ran to the edge of the cliff overlooking the docks–faster, faster–and rammed my vaulter into the girders at an angle, letting the energy in the supercarbon whisk me up and fling me over the gulf between platforms. I was rising, flying, and landed on a docked starship with a metal thud, somersaulting once to absorb the impact.

I twirled my vaulter. “Last chance!” I called.

They glanced at each other helplessly. What choice did they have?

The smell of milk spilled, spoiled, and waxed forever into the linoleum floor–the grocery store smell–hit me square in the nose as I opened the cooler doors to turn each container of butter to face the glass. A four-note jingle from the front of the store meant a customer, strange for the late hour, but since it was just me and the night manager back in the office doing paperwork, or maybe sleeping, I abandoned my neatening in the dairy and rushed back to my register.

Halfway there I saw him, not a customer after all, but instead a hottie with a sly look on his face and a secret only I knew. I bit my lip so he wouldn’t see me smile and with effort slowed my pace. It was early for Levi, my boyfriend–I was pretty sure I could call him that–to have finished hanging out with his friends and show up here to loiter. Most of the shift was ahead of me.

“Excuse me miss, can you tell me where to find the hot chicks?” And he laughed adorably at his own terrible joke.

“Hot sauce is on aisle two, poultry’s past the dairy.” I answered and was rewarded by a chuckle. I took up the spot on the fatigue mat behind my register, mostly to keep the pretense if my manager decided to notice me.

“What are you doing here already? I’ve got hours left.”

“I was bored. Kinda hoping you would call in.”

I rolled my eyes elaborately. “Hard to call in when I’m already here. You should sleep. I hear it’s what people do at night.”

“I’ll sleep tomorrow afternoon when a certain brunette is available for cuddles.” He leaned over my counter and held his palm out for my hand. I smiled at the little tinge of excitement from my skin on his.

He admitted, more seriously, “I missed you.”

“I left your house two hours ago.”

He toyed with the chunky costume jewelry on my wrist. “Way too long. Come over again tonight? Tomorrow? Whatever.”

“My parents are going to make me move out if I don’t start showing up for family dinner every once in a while.”

He grunted noncommittally and brushed his fingertips over the enamel beads at my wrist, feather light. The air around my wrist distorted, an odd wobble, and one by one the beads changed from green to a deep red. Like a rose bud matured but not quite blossoming.

I gasped and clutched my other hand over the beads, tossing a glance over my shoulder, down the check-out aisle, though of course I knew no one would be there.

He straightened, stuffing his hand into his pocket, and looked at me from under his eyebrows unable to hide his grin and unsure if he ought to try.

My grin mirrored his, conspiratorially, and I said in an unnecessarily hushed voice, “Levi! There are security cameras. What if someone saw?”

His smile grew wider, toothy, and my heart skip-hopped across the inside of my rib cage. He was so beautiful when he really smiled. “They’ll never see. No one comes in here at this hour. It’s like a museum of a grocery store. I don’t know how you stand it. The only way anyone will find out is if you told them and I know you won’t.”

I turned to organizing the gum rack above my register so that he wouldn’t see my satisfaction. No, I wouldn’t be the one to rat him out.

Levi rarely used his super powers and almost never in public. He couldn’t afford the registration fees to sign up with the Conference and he didn’t want to get caught as an unlicensed super. I hadn’t even known that he had powers when we first started dating. I could tell he really cared about me the night he confessed that he had a third-tier illusion ability that could sometimes become permanent.

No one knew, not even his friends, and not just because he was avoiding the Conference. He was shy about it. About having an ability that wasn’t ever going to save the world. He only ever used his power around me. To make me smile.

He hauled himself up to sit cross-legged on the counter facing my register.

“You’re going to get me fired.”

He snorted, “What a tragedy that would be.”

“Hey!” I affected a hurt-tone to hide the real pang I felt at his dismissal. This was the job I’d managed to hold down the longest without screwing it up. So far I had managed to stay awake through every shift, despite the less than stimulating work conditions. And, even better, I had never fainted despite being on my feet all night.

“Seriously, Sam,” and he tilted his head to stare at me in that way that made me forget to breathe, like he was seeing more to me than was really there, “you can’t tell me that this place makes you happy.”

“It’s got seven different types of cheese whiz, what’s not to love?”

“Ha. Ha. No, I mean it. You can’t do this forever.”

“Do what?” I made to restack the gum rack yet again and managed to somehow knock an entire row onto the floor. Typical Sam. I bent to clean the mess.

He plucked the wire gum wrack out of my hand when I straightened. “You can’t hide here like you don’t deserve something better.”

I swallowed hard. That was the thing wasn’t it? “Maybe I don’t?”

It’s not something I could say to my parents or even my sister, Olivia. It wasn’t right to force them into the position of defending me when they were the ones most hurt when I dropped out of University. When it turned out all that high school potential was so much fluff.

That was before I met Levi. He wouldn’t get it. I forced a false smile and a false voice and held out my hand. “Unless you’re planning to make a purchase, sir, I’m going to have to ask for that gum back.”

He slid off the counter, down to my side, forcing me back a step. He caught my wrist to stop my retreat and pulled me in close. Wrapped both arms tight around my shoulders.

I was so overwhelmed by the gesture that my vision went blurry, my head light, it was hard to breathe.

He whispered in my ear, “What do you want, Sam?”

Through the fog of my emotions all I could think to say was, “This.”

I can’t breathe, the simulation room is swimming so hard. Swirling shades of blue and green, so many shades! I don’t know how the humans stand it. Tears–the real thing–smear my cheeks as I clutch at the clothing covering my body. I’d do anything for the comfort of white walls right now, for the solidity of my pod-group pressing tight against my membranes–

“Stop,” I gasp, and curl atop the simulation room floor, feeling for it past the maelstrom of colors. “Stop the test! I cannot–”

The air flashes, and a moment later, the room settles, resolving into nothing more than blank walls.

Blessedly blank walls.

My panic slowly subsides, but the tight squeezing in my chest does not. I know already the disappointment of what is to come next…

From the nearby wall bud, the project leader’s voice buzzes in disapproval. “Candidate Jandoon,” the project leader says, “you have failed Assimilation Test 351x. Prepare for reincorporation into your pod-group.”

A chaotic array of emotions unfurls inside me, a mix of human neurochemicals and the remnants of my own. I’ve spent years training for the Earth system observation program. Years being coaxed into the unforgiving shape that is human, inoculated into the bizarreness that is sound and speech.

And worst of all, the colors. So many terrible, pointless colors, all of which refuse to settle to stillness in my brain-mass.

This project has been my entire life.

And now I have failed. I am to be reincorporated, so close to my final goal.

“Hey!” A familiar voice echoes down the undulating white passage behind me. “Jandoon, wait up!”

I bite back my cringe–one of the few human expressions I excel at–and turn to face my competitor. “Greetings, Candidate Neeome.”

Their face squints oddly, and I realize I’ve erred too formal.

Neeome would never make such a mistake in language. They have passed every test formulated by the project leader. Have become so human at this point, some question whether they will be able to fully reincorporate into their pod-group once the project is complete.

Their dedication is obviously stronger than my own, an observation which always causes me internal pain. If any of us are chosen to initiate first contact with the humans, it will surely be Neeome.

Neeome matches my pace, joining my disgraceful slouch down the passage toward reincorporation.

“I heard what happened,” they say. “In the color room.”

I say nothing. I do not wish to express myself in human sounds, and chemical clouds are not an option until I have been reincorporated.

“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” they continue. “Plenty of us fail the color tests. They’re tough!”

I stop. Neeome is being compassionate. Likely practicing for when they are sent planet-side. Even now, their dedication continues to shame me. Still, I cannot help but glance down at my near-white hands, veined with faint tones of yellow and blue.

Unlike the color room, my hands do not swim before my vision–but how many weeks of training did that take to overcome? And the colors are still so pale–so muted!–compared to what our final shapings will be and what we will face on the planet’s actual surface.

I grab futilely at the air with my limited human hands. If I were my true self, the air would be permeated with the chemical signature of my frustration. If I were my true self–

“Hey.” Neeome takes my hands, encasing them in their own. It reminds me of my birthing sac, of that brief period surrounded by the pod-group’s mass, touching but not yet joined.

My hands shake in theirs. Sending signals, signals that are so much harder to interpret than what I’ve always known. “I just…I just don’t understand how you can do it. How you can stand it, it’s all so bright. It makes me want to burst from this skin.”

“Hmm.” Neeome glances down the passage both ways, then leans in close. “You want to know the secret to all these tests?”

There is a secret? I was unaware there was a secret.

Cautiously, I nod.

“Well,” they continue, speaking quietly, “ninety-five percent of it is just faking. Pure performance. You know, pretending that everything is okay even though it’s really not.”

I startle. That cannot be right. The project leader would surely catch on. If we do not learn to adapt to being human in all ways, our observations will become compromised at the first moment of extreme stress. Everything we have worked for will be lost.

But the expression on Neeome’s face is one of intense seriousness. And expectation.

As for what they are expecting…?

Oh.

“So,” I ask, “what is the other five percent?”

She grins as though I have shared an amusing adage or called a large canine companion a “good boy.”

“Nightmares, mostly. Accepting you’re going to have them about everything you work so hard not to see. I spent a week waking up screaming after my first real tree. A week! And the things still give me the trembles when I see them. If the project leader decides to post me at a forested observation point, I am so screwed!”

I laugh at the euphemism. Then nearly jump because it is my first spontaneous laugh.

It sounds quite different from the practice rooms.

Neeome pats my back, then sets off down the passage. “You should ask to take the test again,” they say before exiting a side passage.

I consider.

“Yes,” I say to nobody in particular, “perhaps I should.”

“Candidate Jandoon,” the project leader states from the wall bud, “we have accepted your request of a second trial for Assimilation Test 351x. Proceed.”

Already sweating–why must these bodies shed so much moisture?–I step into the testing room. The walls are white and blank. Everything is void. Comforting.

But it will not last.

In fact, as soon as I begin to settle, the walls flash.

Blue and green assault my vision in a chaotic spray. Beneath me, an ominous mass of orange and silver tilts, nearly tipping me over.

I start to crumple, wishing I could suck my eyes inward and erase the horrors stabbing at me from every angle. The rocking, the roiling, the terrible colors!

But I catch myself.

Ninety-five percent of it is just faking.

Neeome who excels at everything has admitted even they are not so perfect. And if they can bear the pain of assault from all these newly embedded senses, then there is no reason I cannot do the same.

Right?

My eyes water excessively as I bite my lip and send a heavy dose of pain signals to my brain-mass, and my legs quiver beneath me. But I do my best to pretend at stillness. At calm.

And, in what I am certain is to be the greatest error in my life-cycle, I stare directly into the maelstrom.

It hurts.

Oh, how it hurts. Every movement is a stab into my brain-mass. A furious jab whose sole task is to undo me.

Instinct screams at me to shut my eyes. To curl on the floor that I know is there outside of the simulation until the roiling stops. Until my inputs are manageable once more. But though the thought of reincorporating to my pod-group feels urgent under this assault, I know the urge will not last.

Because there is one thing–just this one thing–that I want more.

I want to be a part of making history.

I want to observe.

Wave after wave of sheer terror, I fight off as the colors swoop in from every direction. As they peel away my carefully practiced preparations.

And then, just as I think I can bear no more…a shape resolves.

High up, a winged fluttering. White feathers cutting through the chaos, tipped in black.

“A gull,” I say, my breath sucking free. I remember the pictures, the grayed-out stills we studied in class for preparation.

And as I say the word, the rest of the simulation begins to resolve into shape. Into form and purpose.

“And the ocean,” I gasp. “And the beach! It is the beach!”

A mass of water expands as far as I can see, blue and green and every shade between, murmuring as it stretches calmly up and down the golden sands beneath me, oddly reminiscent of the chemical clouds of home. Overhead, the gull swings in a wide arc, eyeing the waves below.

And though the image fills me with a new kind of terror, the world no longer reels beneath me and my limbs no longer shake.

Indeed, I am laughing, though it takes me a moment to realize it.

I’m laughing because I know now, whatever the challenges, I will pass the tests before me. I will pass them and be as human as I can be no matter how frightening it is because some things are greater than fear.

And maybe, if I am brave enough, it will be me who gets to initiate first contact.

And then I will be the one who gets to teach a human how to be us.

Michelle Muenzler writes words both dark and strange to counterbalance the sweetness of her baking. Check out michellemuenzler.com for links to more of her work.

Nashira sat on the highest branch of Talltree, squinting into the dawn sky where specks shifted against glowing peach cloud. From such a vast distance the tiny blemishes looked like a flock of birds, but as they neared, details emerged. Silhouetted, slender figures. Hair shifting in the breeze. And of course, wide, fluttering wings.

Nashira never wearied of watching her fellow fairies return from night gatherings, their cluster rising then lowering in unison, saving energy by working with the wind. They travelled slowly thanks to bulging bags that hung from their shoulders. When Nashira had been a gatherer, she’d judged the success of a venture on how deeply her shoulder ached on return. It had been a long time since she’d felt that satisfying pain.

As the fairies’ silhouettes dissolved into glinting gold armour and brightly coloured wings, Nashira rose to her feet. It was time to go. If she could see the patterns on her brethren’s wings, then they’d be able to see her details just as easily. But the grey, flaking excuse for wings drooping from her back weren’t assets to display with pride.

It had been a year since Nashira had contracted Dust Disease. The illness had arrived after a fierce, hot wind that destroyed plants and coated the forest in a strange dust. The forest recovered when the rains arrived, and at first it seemed the dust had washed away. But it had only moved, choosing a new target. Fairy wings.

While Dust Disease picked victims randomly and wasn’t contagious, Nashira preferred to avoid healthy fairies. The sight of her withered wings made many folk uncomfortable, and each time she witnessed their unease it killed a little of her heart.

Concentrating, she managed to move her wings. A hindwing twitched. A forewing fluttered weakly. She tucked all four wings against her back then dashed along the branch in the direction of Talltree’s trunk. Each stride caused her wings to shift, and the movement sent pain stabbing down her spine. It was tempting to grow still and fear-frozen, but the breeze carried voices on it. The returning fairies were close. With teeth clenched, Nashira hurried on.

Then behind her came the patter of feet, fairies landing on the branch. With no time to scramble down the trunk, Nashira placed her back against the bark, hiding her wings from the other fairies’ sight. As they made their way towards her, Nashira stood in what she hoped would pass for a casual stance.

The gatherers were chatting as they walked the stretch of the branch, but when their eyes fell on Nashira, they fell silent and still. They stood bunched together, staring.

Nashira breathed through nerves. She was sure the gatherers couldn’t see her wings, but they were probably picturing them, flaking brown, ugly and useless. Even from a distance Nashira recognised the barely masked disgust on some faces, and horror and pity on others. Then she spotted a smile.

“Nashira, hello!” Miram, Talltree’s best armour maker jumped up and down and squealed. “It’s good to see you, Nashi.” She broke from the huddle and skipped along the branch, stopping in front of Nashira. “It’s been so long since I last saw you. How are you?”

How was she? Really? Her wings were dying. Still, Miram was at least willing to speak to her. That counted for something.

Nashira dragged a smile onto her face. “I’m well, thank you.” Dropping her eyes to hide the truth, her gaze fell on Miram’s bag. “What did you gather last night? Moon flowers? Owl eggs?” No. Night gathering at that time of year could only mean one thing. Her heart fluttered. “Dragon scales?”

Everyone who lived on Talltree prized dragon scales above all other items. They made the strongest, most light weight body armour and the sharpest swords. No brownie spear or hawk talon could penetrate dragon armour, and not even rock-monsters could withstand the edge of a dragon scale blade. And the best time for fairies to collect scales was during the dragon mating season.

Like everything a dragon did, the mating ritual was savage. A fairy bold enough to approach a recently mated dragon could salvage scales knocked loose during the ritual. Until the dust took her wings, Nashira had been a brilliant scale collector.

“We had a most successful night,” Miram said, patting her bag. “I found a collection of tail scales that had fallen from a dragon nest. Though small, they’re lovely colours. They’ll make wonderful wrist armour. But Wurren had the greatest find.”

Wurren. His name was enough to send nerves scooting through Nashira in a thousand directions. Spotting him amongst the watching fairies weakened her knees.

“Wurren,” Miram called over her shoulder. “Come show Nashi what you collected.”

Wurren didn’t move. With eyes shock-wide, he stared across the space dividing himself and Nashira. She had a feeling he would have remained that way but the fairy beside him gave him a rough nudge that made him stumble forward. With his bag clutched in front of him like a shield, Wurren moved slowly and rigidly along the branch. His obvious discomfort hurt Nashira worse than any pain her wings could inflict because she and Wurren had once been inseparable. But thanks to the Dust Disease, for almost a year they’d barely seen each other, let alone spoken.

As Wurren neared, he snapped his emerald wings closed. Maybe he thought the sight of their beauty might break Nashira to pieces. No wonder they’d once been such a perfect couple. They’d understood each other exactly.

He stopped in front of her. “Good morning, Nashira.” His stiff politeness stung. “What brings you all the way to the landing branch?”

Longing? Jealousy? A twisted need to torture herself?

“I roam Talltree every morning,” Nashira said with forced poise. “It was just coincidence that brought us here at the same time.” Then to shift the focus away from her, she jutted her chin at Wurren’s carry bag. “What wonderful treasure did you find last night?”

Wurren opened his bag, revealing a stack of large, scarlet scales.

Nashira whistled. Not only was red the rarest colour, it was unusual for such large scales to come away from a dragon’s hide. “What a find! What will you do with such beauties?”

Wurren shook his head as he stroked their glossy surface. “I have no idea. How am I supposed to decide the best way to use such a special collection?”

“They’d be perfect for body armour,” Miram said.

“Of course you’d say that,” Wurren replied. “You’re an armourer. But the scales are too colourful. If I wore red armour in a brownie battle, the brownies would die laughing.”

Nashira smirked. “Quite a powerful weapon then.”

“Except,” Wurren said, “my fellow fairies might also succumb to the joke.”

Miram pouted. “I didn’t say they’d make armour suitable for you, Wurren. But I’m sure there are many other fairies who’d love a scarlet breast plate.” She toed the bark beneath her feet. “Armour looks delightful when it matches a fairy’s wing colour, don’t you think?” With her face set in innocence, she opened her wings a little, revealing a hint of vivid crimson.

Nashira’s insides curdled, not from the beauty of Miram’s wings, but from the way Wurren smiled crookedly as his eyes roamed all over them. He used to save that look for her.

As if realising how see-through he’d become, Wurren hid his pleasure with a concerned frown that he planted on Nashira. “Should you be up here with your ill health?”

While his words were gentle, they still hurt. Did she really look so poorly?

His frown deepened. “How did you even get up here without the ability to fly?”

He stood on his toes, trying to peek at Nashira’s wings, but she pressed her back harder against the tree trunk. The pressure worsened the ache that was her constant companion, but she breathed through it. Better some pain than the shame of Wurren seeing her hideous, useless wings.

“I have arms,” she said, recapturing his gaze. “Strong arms. I could climb around this tree far longer than you could fly. Besides, I’m quite well and I’ll remain so. Healer Lich is making great progress on a cure for Dust Disease.”

“He is?” Miram gave a little clap. “That’s wonderful to hear, isn’t it, Wurren?”

“Of course, it is… if it’s true.” Wurren’s eyes narrowed and he searched Nashira’s face. She met his stare but feared he could see past her eyes to the grim truth that Lich was failing.

“We’re so glad you’re feeling better, Nashi,” Miram said. “You’ll be flying with us again in no time.”

“Yes.” Nashira clenched her teeth, forming a rigid smile. “Well, I mustn’t keep you.”

Wurren returned the smile but it looked strange mixed with his worried frown. “It’s been nice seeing you, Nashira. Really. I…”

“Yes? What is it, Wurren?” I miss you? I still want to be with you? She held her breath.

“Ah, nothing.” With the shake of his head, Wurren hefted his bag, moved to the edge of the branch and stepped into the air. Spreading his wings, he descended slowly between branches and disappeared.

Nashira’s spirits sank with him.

One at a time, the other gatherers followed until only Miram remained. “It really has been lovely to see you, Nashi. And I mean it, I really can’t wait to fly with you again.” She hid a chuckle behind a hand. “Gatherings are dull without you convincing us to take silly chances.” With a last smile, Miram stepped gracefully off the branch. She spread her perfect, scarlet wings and floated after Wurren.

Even after the gatherers disappeared from view, Nashira continued leaning on the tree. Every nerve ending in her back sizzled, but she refused to move. Given time, maybe the pain would hurt worse than the loss of Wurren’s love, her friendships and her freedom, but she doubted it.