Octavia watched her mansion’s unperturbed ruins from the hospital rooftop. The fire had gone out long ago, the firefighters cleared out, the secret agents gone with the creature Fluttershy had faced. She had gone below once for a dinner of cold greens and broth, and there received Fluttershy’s account of the battle. She said it was the monster from the attic, contained when they had been there the first time and then loosed upon them later, and Twilight agreed that it was likely. Nonplussed, Octavia had gone back to the roof to sleep.

Sleep, however, did not come. She stayed up all night in the shade of the air conditioning unit while Discord’s sun moved not a whit. The city was still for seven hours, and Octavia sat, not really thinking, but observing: the clouds burnt away for as far as she could see, the dying lawns and the sprinklers that some kept going at all hours to combat the persistent heat, the trees withering in spite of it. There was color still, but the shades of autumn were diminished. She recalled sanguine maples, deep veined yellow leaves, bark that felt alive to the touch, the gentle smell of rotting foliage and the nostalgic bitterness of the same as it burned in a neighbor’s fire pit.

It was five in the morning when she went down to the street and walked, alone, to her house, head down and Element safely tucked away in Twilight’s bedstand. It was a beautiful piece of jewelry, and she could not deny the spark of joy she felt as she clasped it around her neck over dinner, but this was not the place to display herself. Keeping to the shade as much as she could for her long, heavy mane, she passed the cobbled streets and proud belvederes to what had been the greatest mansion of them all.

Under the police tape, across the cinder-strewn grounds, past the fountain muddied by ash, she was home. Standing on the curving walk, she angled her good ear to hear the ticking of tiny flames still deep in the heart of the wreckage. Heat unlike the day’s wafted against her chest as she stepped closer and began a slow circuit around the black and collapsed figure. Not all of her house was destroyed, but most. The shell of a dining room stood in the southeast corner, charcoal timbers enclosing it where the floor had fallen through to spill pieces of the second-floor art gallery and the third-floor attic. In places, she recognized sections of wall or tiers of stairs that had been saved, their deep blue carpet ruined but not erased. Black hairs of wiring ran through everything, tangled in beams and the scattered pieces of plumbing.

She stepped onto a soft, splintery pad of ash with her bare hooves, taking care not to touch anything that was still hot. Nails and screws and staples were everywhere with the smell of smoke she could not see rising from spears of former floorboard. She picked around shattered glass and the hot, metal frames of her light fixtures. It was into the laundry room she had stepped, the washers and dryers all arranged together still, clogged with debris and warped by heat, unusable. A flattened, green shell of plastic stuck out when she stepped on it, what used to be a laundry basket, and beside it, fallen from above, a ruined bed frame.

Over the entire property such black ruination was spread. In a few years’ time, there would be no signs to show what had once stood there, and something new would appear, and she would not see it or hear of it.

For all she had endured in her house, she had not thought once of destroying it. She could imagine herself leaving it behind forever, or dying in any number of ways, but never destroying the house itself. Octavia had imagined it outliving her.

She stretched to see her music room, to see whether anything had survived, but it was at the back of the property, and all she could make out was the cartwheel of her ceiling poking aslant out of rubble. She turned and went back to the scorched lawn, paused for a minute, and then put her back to the house. She reached the sidewalk feeling exactly as she had felt before leaving the hospital: not angry, not sad, not relieved that the symbol of her suffering was gone, not frightened of the future, not contrite for the past. There was no urge to tell her friends where she had been; she would lie and say she slept on the roof. There was no urge to cry; she did not feel that she had lost anything, or gained anything. There was no urge to look back; she had done that already.

Not wanting to be seen in public, the Elements took breakfast in the hospital cafeteria. The doctor on staff wanted to discharge Twilight the following day, but there was no debate that they would leave before that. Applejack had the treasury note and was settling up with the airship technicians, and once that was done, they would take off for Passage Town. Instead of eating, Twilight drew on her napkin, remembering the array of sigils she had used in conjunction with Rainbow’s weak magic to speed their flight.

To inquiries of whether she was okay, Octavia lied that she felt relieved the house was gone. She explained that it was a symbol of all that was wrong in her world, and to see it purged from existence was, though painful, a beautiful cleansing thing. It was the expected response, and she said it.

Then they put their Elements together and spoke of how Discord would be sorry, joking of various terrible things they would do to him, as if he was entirely powerless. Twilight said she would put a spike through his heart, Vinyl said she would dizzy him with her magical lights, and on they went until excitement overtook black humor and they turned to discuss how they would celebrate once they got home. Fluttershy wanted to go into the woods and spend a few days alone with nature, and Rainbow wanted to go with Pinkie to Sugarcube Corner and buy up all the sweets they could.

Applejack brought the airship back at nine-forty, and they left the hospital without a backward glance. Twilight had noted somewhere to send them the money she owed for her visit, but it was not high on her list of priorities—so she explained to the receptionist who tried to stop them.

“West, you said, Twi?” Applejack asked.

“Full engines, west, yes,” Twilight said absentmindedly. She was already on the poop deck with her inkwell and brushes, designing the sigils for Rainbow to use. By eleven o’ clock, they were speeding along over the plains of northern Equestria while Hoofington shrunk to nothing.

“And when we get there, we are going through this window of Rarity’s?” Octavia asked.

“You and me, we’re going to blow the top off its chamber, I guess. Rarity says it’s like a big crypt. They’ll have the town emptied out by that time, so no one will interfere.”

“Are there secret agents there to help us operate it?”

“That’s what she said. They’re going through it too, after us. She wasn’t detailed, but Aloe and Lotus being gone apparently was what it took to get them to let us through. I’m not complaining.”

“And what happens when we get to Snowdrift?” Fluttershy asked.

“I’ve got my crystals right here,” Twilight said, summoning the ring of icy crystals and letting it sit on the deck. It glowed faintly with the magic she had fed into it, and Fluttershy could feel soft vibrations when she touched it. “So we’ll land in Snowdrift and I’ll do the final preparations to release all this magic in one big burst, and then it’s Discord. I still need to work out how to make sure we land in the right place, I’m going to figure that out this afternoon. As for the party, I’m in touch with Versus, and she said she’s doing her best to keep it simmering.”

“What about Colgate?” Octavia asked. “Rarity said that she was not with them, that she had insisted on going south for some reason, but that she would be back in time to come with us.”

“Right, that. If she’s back in time for the Contraction, then we’ll take her, but I’m not waiting. If she’s late, too bad.”

“Maybe we can find her after Discord,” Fluttershy said.

“I’m not flying all the way back to Snowdrift after this,” Rainbow hollered from behind. “Sorry, but it’s gonna be winter. We’re going back to Ponyville, full stop, no arguments.”

“No, Rainbow’s right,” Twilight said. “She made her choice, I’m sure she knew the risks. If she’s not there when we are, then that’s it. She’s resourceful, she’ll make it.”

“I understand,” Octavia said.

“Sorry, Octavia.”

“I said I understand.”

Cloud Line’s house was not suited for four, but Rarity, Big Mac, and Pinkie could not go out into the town. They took the floor, one sleeping under a pile of dirty clothes in the corner. The following day, Pinkie received a letter from Octavia that they were on their way with the Element, that they should be arriving in three days. Three days to clear the town and prepare the window did not seem so very daunting to them, but, as Cloud Line pointed out, keeping their presence a secret was the most important thing; if Cork, the only other one who knew of the window, were to be drawn in, there was no telling how she would complicate matters.

“Here, Rarity, write me a letter,” Cloud Line said after breakfast. “Tell me that Pinkie predicted some sort of disaster here, and I’ll say I just got it. No, wait, address it to Eggshell, he’s the unicorn, that makes more sense.”

“What sort of disaster?” Rarity asked.

“Giant thunderstorm!” Pinkie shrieked, jumping up in her seat and upsetting her empty bowl. “Kabooooom!”

“We get those all the time,” Cloud Line said.

“Why not just say Discord’s on his way?” Rarity asked. “That’ll explain the… demolition to come, too.”

“Sounds good enough to me,” Big Mac said, yawning.

“What happens to the window after you two go through it?” Pinkie asked.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Cloud Line said.

“You should care,” Rarity said, looking up from her letter impatiently. “Isn’t it your job to care?”

“It is, but…” Cloud Line shrugged. “What are we supposed to do? We’re not gonna let them keep screwing us. Our job was two years, two. We had no say in being stuck here longer than that.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Pinkie said. “I can’t believe Aloe and Lotus would do that.”

“They seemed like okay ponies to me,” Big Mac said, at which Rarity scoffed.

“They could be worse, but that can be said of anyone,” Cloud Line said. “I never asked, how did you wind up finding out about them?”

“You might not believe me, but they told us outright in Snowdrift,” Rarity said. “We have a history, I guess they felt obligated to let us know at some point.”

“A platonic history,” Big Mac clarified.

“That’s ridiculous,” Cloud Line said. “Did they already know you knew about us?”

“Yes, I think they didn’t see any reason for hiding it,” Rarity said. “And there wasn’t.”

“The privileges of Element-hood.”

“It has its perks!” Pinkie cried. She watched Rarity write her letter, and Rarity had to pause and shoo her away. Big Mac walked to the window and looked out at the tiny town. Someone was doing laundry among the reeds, beating at a pair of trousers with a flat rock, and he watched her at this task for some time, thinking of Versus.

“You said you were planning on going to the changeling lands?” Rarity asked.

“Eggshell wants to, really bad,” Cloud Line said. “I want to stay inside Equestria if I can, but I don’t think that’s likely. They’ll be looking for us for sure.”

“What’s changeling-land like?” Pinkie asked.

“It’s beautiful if you can stand the humidity, the bugs, and the tropical storms. They’ve got a bunch of little islands up at the equator. It’s certainly warmer, though after we’ve put Equestria back together, I’ll be happy to never see the sun again.”

“Snowdrift is okay fer that,” Big Mac said. “Lots of clouds, lots of weather.”

“I was thinking something further south, something in minotaur country.”

“Way too cold fer me.”

“I’d rather see the changelings than the minotaurs,” Pinkie said.

“It is a gorgeous part of the world,” Cloud Line said. “Blue ocean waters, lush jungles, all that tropical stuff. Imagine bananas not costing half a leg. The tropical fruit, that’s one thing I would love if I lived there. Oh, and the flowers, the beaches…” She sighed. “There are some good things, but I still wouldn’t want to live there. The first time a hurricane rolled in, I’d be like ‘see you later, Egg.’ They don’t control their weather up there.”

“They don’t?” Rarity asked. “Here, take a look at this, sound okay?”

Cloud Line read the letter, describing how Pinkie had suffered a violent premonition of fire and brimstone spewing from a portal Discord would open. “This is fine, very scary. I’ll go wave it in front of their faces and see if we can get everyone to run off to Manehattan for the week.”

“What do they do ‘bout storms?” Big Mac asked.

“The changelings? No idea. Live with it, I would have to imagine.” She set the letter on the breakfast table and cleared the dishes. “They don’t have the same magic we do.”

“Maybe they all transform into seagulls and fly away with the storm,” Pinkie suggested. “Then they migrate back.”

“Why not?” Cloud Line chuckled. “Look, I’m gonna step out and see if I can get everyone together so I can warn them all at once. Just, stay here, and don’t answer the door if someone knocks. I have a key, I’ll come in. Mac, you might not spend so much time at that window, hm?”

Big Mac drew the curtain and curled up on the floor beside the table.

“I know it’s not ideal, but… Whatever. It’s only a couple days. Stay here, okay?”

“We’ll be good,” Pinkie said, batting her eyelashes with a moue.

The cold wilderness between Snowdrift and the Friesian mountains was no comfort to Colgate, who watched and waited for disaster to strike, never sure that she was far enough from the eye she imagined Twilight used to spy on her. With magic that Colgate did not understand, Twilight could run such an eye over any place in the country, could see who was talking with whom, where ponies hid, could get close enough to read someone’s book as they lounged on their patio. The invisible eye in the sky, Colgate thought, it had to be on her, for Rarity would have told them that she had left on her own mysterious mission. Her only defense was good acting. If she could pretend that her errand was innocuous until the moment she had her new Element, she might be safe. That meant no looking at the Element designs, no counting her money, no speaking of her intentions to Partial Thoughts.

Gray pine forest covered the land, occasionally thin enough to reveal a set of train tracks running through. A cold river forked off to the east, hidden under mist and woods, but Colgate knew it was there. It was the river her friends had traveled to get from Creation Lake to Snowdrift, though the section closer to her they had never seen.

She knew nothing of airship maintenance, and was disheartened to hear from Partial Thoughts all her duties as they journeyed south. Flying with Applejack at the helm had spoiled her into thinking that airship travel took care of itself, but with only two on board, she hadn’t much time to worry about her doom. Perched at the gunwale, looking down on the cold woods, she had just finished checking their torch for a leak that Partial Thoughts believed existed, a difficult process of wrestling it to the ground, unscrewing pressure valves, inserting dip sticks in various tiny orifices, listening for gas leakage over the din of propellers, and then standing the huge torch up again and screwing it back to the deck. The high-altitude breeze made her sweat freeze to her skin, and she shivered under a too-thin suit jacket, waiting for Partial Thoughts to find a place to land for them to find some food. They would need to scrape ice off the rudder before long, and Colgate would need to clean the port holes later, which involved her awkwardly sticking a hoof with a wet rag tied to it out into the frigid air to wipe the glass.

They finally touched down outside a village built perilously close to the edge of a cliff overlooking a stretch of rapids. A group of windmills turned industriously by the riverbank a little farther south, backlit by the bright snow of the mountains. They landed in a bare patch of soil a courteous distance from town, and were able to enjoy the sun’s feeble warmth under a flocculent roof of dark clouds, the clouds they had been flying inside since taking off from Snowdrift.

Colgate wanted to get to the mines as quickly as possible, but also wanted to get out of the cold, so when an older mare from the village invited them inside, she accepted before Partial Thoughts could say anything, and they left the ship to frost over among the trees.

They shuffled out of their jackets and hung them on the backs of chairs in a cozy dining room where their host insisted they sit while she heated something up. Two colts ran in from playing in the snow, and she scolded them for being noisy before sending them back outside, for which Partial Thoughts and Colgate were grateful. They exchanged looks of mutual uncertainty across the table, but remained silent, and the mare brought in a steaming pot of pumpkin soup, a rough board of cheese and bread, and a bowl of green olives in pungent oil, all floating on her horn. While they ate, she welcomed them to town and introduced herself as its most treasured weaver and seamstress, and after mutual pleasantries, began regaling them about her children. To this they listened politely until she saw that they were done eating, then she cleared the dishes, put a battered samovar on the heat, and invited them to tea and biscuits, or something a little stronger if they preferred—which Colgate did.

Her sitting room was a simple extension of the dining room, half hidden behind a hoof-made bookshelf and furnished with stiff cushions and a cut disc of tree balanced on a pile of stones wound in baling wire. She poured Partial Thoughts’ tea and Colgate’s elderberry liquor in identical mugs who had seen so many years of washing that the fluffy cat faces on their sides were ghostly and incomplete, and she laid out the biscuits on a bronze tray with the words “THE MOON SAVES US ALL” inscribed on vermeil borders.

And finally, when the three were seated, she stopped talking long enough for Partial Thoughts to thank her for her hospitality.

“We’re always happy to have visitors,” she said. “My wife, she’ll love you, I can tell. If you’d stay for dinner?”

“Oh, we couldn’t,” Partial Thoughts said. “We need to get going.”

“But I insist! My heart, you won’t put me out, I can tell we’re going to be friends already.”

“We got business,” Colgate said, nose in her mug, savoring the smell of the liquor and trying to lap at it without drawing attention to herself.

“Business, they say. We’s all got business. But tell me, where d’you come from?”

“Appleloosa,” Partial Thoughts said hastily. “We’ve been traveling for some time now.”

“Well, you must be close by now. Not much of Equestria left!”

“The mines. We need to get to the mines.”

“Ooooh, ooooh.” She produced a slim cigar and lit it off the tip of her horn, and Colgate stared at it as the smoke uncurled and filled the room with a bitter, grassy scent. Like that, she was back in Canterlot, and asked for a refill on her liquor, which the mare provided happily.

“You have a lovely home,” Partial Thoughts said for lack of anything else.

“We make do with what we’s got here, that’s the truth. Them up in Snowdrift, they’ve got a pretty little town. I like to go up there in the summers if I can. Haven’t been this year, but maybe next year. You know, with the state of things.” She spun a hoof in the air lazily.

“Snowdrift’s nice,” Colgate said.

“I’ve never been,” Partial Thoughts said before Colgate could say anything more.

“Yeah, not her, but me, I’ve been. Chilly world.”

“Under that glacier,” the mare said. “Keeps the western wind off you, at least.” As her cigar jogged up and down with her speech, Colgate kept her eyes on its tip, wary and fascinated. She wondered whether she could get away with borrowing the cigar to burn herself and somehow fuse with her old life in Canterlot, but the more she thought about it, the less appealing it was. The alcohol, however, was its own temptation, and she got another refill while Partial Thoughts talked as vaguely as possible about what they were doing down south.

“No, we’re just work friends,” she said of Colgate, who nodded in assent. “We’re on official business, actually.”

“Cataloguing crystals,” Colgate said.

The mare formed an interested O with her lips, and Partial Thoughts gave Colgate a dark look.

Undaunted, Colgate went on, the liquor loosening her tongue enough to give voice to the old, fiery Canterlot bullshit that was wound up in her memories as an integral part of who she thought she was. She told the mare that the mines had hidden crystal deposits all over the place, and it was her and Partial Thoughts’ job to fly down and obtain records of which crystals had emerged naturally and which had been dug up, for tax purposes. The miners could only be taxed for crystals they actually sought after; anything that appeared as a result of natural shifts in the earth was extra, to be written off by the Canterlot Treasury. This she improvised, and their host listened with intense interest until Colgate ran out of steam, finished her cup of liquor, and asked for a smoke, which Partial Thoughts interrupted. The white mare made excuses for them, got directions to a place where they could purchase supplies, and ushered Colgate out the door with false geniality. They got to the end of the mud road, where they were sure to be out of sight of the house, before she dropped the act and spun Colgate around, pushing them both against a low wall. Colgate broke off and lashed her tail, but remained where Partial Thoughts had stopped her.

“With the drinking, that story about the crystals. You need to cool it.”

Colgate stared up at her, shame warming her face. In her pursuit of the past, she had forgotten the disgrace that followed her there.

“You’re done for the day, you hear me? You need to be sober to work on my ship anyway. You think I can fly it by myself?”

“You were gonna before I turned up.”

“And that would have been stupid of me. See? We both made a mistake, and we both learned our lesson. Great, let’s get some food and get out of here.”

Colgate trotted after her, alarmed at the admonition’s brevity. Partial Thoughts was not a friend, not even a work friend, yet she had refrained from punishment. This, and not the warning’s content, sobered Colgate’s mind, and the walk to the local farm sobered her body.

A young, muscular stallion in a straw hat and thermals met them halfway up the trail to the barn and invited them into his house, where he, a wife, a pair of servants, three children, and a pair of grandparents all insisted they stay for at least a few minutes. Again, they agreed, and again, they were given too much to eat. Here, Colgate kept dutifully silent, and Partial Thoughts kept the conversation light with talk of the crops, the weather, whether they thought the sun would ever go down. After salads, rye bread with smoked cheese, dried dates and candied apricots, sandwiches of cottage cheese and diced pimentos, tea, coffee, and a drop of gin for the elders, they were taken out back and shown the farm’s stock under the soft shade of a hunched willow.

As penance, Colgate took the cost of their supplies on herself, and the young stallion and his eldest daughter heaped sacks of food into the wheelbarrow which he drug back to their ship with them, talking all the while of the farm, upkeep on the land and the buildings, preparations for winter—“This ain’t anything yet, just wait for December. So cold you can freeze a pail of water before you’ve drawn it from the well. By rights, the sun should have something to say about that, but who rightly knows? Could be a cold sun for all we know, that’s what they’re saying at the chapel.”

He stuck around to admire their ship, blind to Partial Thoughts’ discomfort at showing it off to him, and only headed back home when she had started up the engines. She and Colgate watched him amble back into town while their balloon reinflated.

“You didn’t have to pay for everything. I brought money.”

Colgate looked to the sky. “I drink, I pay.”

“Ah. Okay.” She paused. “I’m not mad at you, I just want you to be careful from now on. Not everyone is gonna be as nice as those folks. I don’t want us to get in trouble.”

“That wasn’t trouble.”

“I know. I want us to avoid it in the future.”

Colgate looked at her blankly.

It was early morning the day after April’s memory had been scrubbed from her mind, and she awoke sprawled on the couch with her VCR humming quietly. That, however, was not what had driven her out of sleep. For a second, while her head cleared, she thought that she had imagined the knocks on the door, but then they came again, insistent and short.

Three possibilities scrambled in her mind as she untangled herself from the throw blanket and staggered to the door: a neighbor with some favor to request, Ink Pearl to return something she had forgotten at her house the day before, or a Pegasus Advocate. The day before was a haze of activity, dulled from too many wine coolers at her new friend’s house. They had met in the day and hit it off, out of the blue, so much that April had gone back to the stranger’s house for board games and TV. This was the memory she had been given; of the walks across town, the resignation note, and the train ride, she had nothing.

Of the PAs, however, she had everything. It was why her meeting with Ink Pearl had been so welcome when it was, that she was still reeling from her encounter with the pegasi under the bridge, the shootout at the hotel, the drive, and all the blood and shouting; a pleasant afternoon with a stranger was perfect to restore her will to go on, to remind her that all the world was not hatred or betrayal. Ink was an honest, caring mare, and though April had not told her of her recent, life-changing experiences, she had no doubt that Ink would understand if she did. Odd that she felt no compulsion to return to Ink’s company, but, she figured, there was a lot else on her mind.

For instance, the pair of blue eyes staring back at her through the peep hole, eyes under a jagged black X stained into a forehead and half-curtained by a wild garden of acid-green braids, festooned with plastic flowers and tightly twined with the wicked, red ribbon that April had come to fear in her short time with them.

“Shadows under the door,” said a voice to the side, and she backed up with a jump as the door banged against its jamb. “One or two more good ones, Broad. Get that crystal ready.”

“I should run. I need to get out.” She was frozen, standing in the middle of the entryway, gawking as the door shuddered and began to give as one of them put a battering ram to it. “They’ll wake the neighbors, and the neighbors’ll call the cops, and the cops’ll…” Something cracked, and one of the PAs outside laughed while another broke away to chase off a roused neighbor.

No time! Not quite believing it, April dashed across the room as the door cracked again, shoved at the balcony door uselessly until coming enough to her senses to unlatch it, and with one hoof on the heavy clay plant pot, sent herself spread-eagled out into the dim, fake sunshine. She dove to the ground in an uncontrolled fall, her wings catching a gust of wind at the last second to send her gliding and then flapping up to the balcony across the way, where she paused to look back before taking off again. The PAs were in her home, she could see their shadows roving around, and she burst into the air. She knew they would see her flying away, and knowing, she was afraid of their speed. She wasn’t a fast flyer, and expected they would be. She angled down again and slipped between two other apartment buildings, her shadow gliding over the uncovered common area where a worker was calmly hosing off the benches.

“Because I didn’t come back,” she realized over the street. She had ridden along, witnessed two murders, and then not shown the next day. “Obviously they were gonna come after me.” Even flying for her life, to where she knew not, she had presence of mind to reprimand herself for the lapse of judgement. She knew what these ponies were capable of, and yet in the crisp morning air and at least temporarily free, the rational but primitive urge to escape was numbed for the thoughts that assumed she would be around long enough to learn better.

“I’m not away from them,” she reminded herself. “They fly too.” She chanced a look back over her wings where three dark shapes were gaining quietly. One flew lopsided, on a hoof the glint of a pulse crystal.

She dipped suddenly, her wings caught off their rhythm by the sight of the weapon and then a second time by the empty streets coming up fast. Throwing her wings wide, she skidded on the warm air surfacing the asphalt and let herself land, almost losing her balance, in a dirt driveway. Slick with sweat, heart pounding, wing joints aching and stomach empty, she pushed herself up to the building and tried the locked gate.

“There she is, let’s clean this up,” a voice said from afar. The three pegasi materialized out from behind a thin cloud and converged on her position, and April, forehooves on the chain links, vaulted the fence with spent wings. A magical alarm chirruped the instant her body crossed the fence’s top, and she hit the ground with a knee-crumpling force, the recovery from which took another couple seconds for the PAs to catch up. They were descending on the fence when she galloped into the garden complex and ducked behind a row of broad-leafed plants. The alarm’s sound did not carry, and she could hear the pegasi walking, the jangle of their bedazzled outfits and the clink of the pulse crystal in its net of straps. The familiar howl of police sirens in the distance came next.

Wings flapped and air moved above, and April half-shoved and half-fell into a planter of crocuses, soil and bees going up in a firework of commotion. The entire row shivered as April scrambled to push through the collapsed planter and under the metal frames as the other pegasus flailed after her, hooves finding no grip. Her wings had flared out naturally, banging on joints and locked wheels as she rolled and struggled, covered in dirt and flowers, the wooden planter caught just above her head for her to smack into whenever she tried to get new purchase with her forehooves. She kicked out and connected with something just as the other two pegasi landed in front of her and stooped to grab her legs.

Her ears were deafened, her sense of pain momentarily switched off, her eyes dead to the dust and sweat running into them. She stood, crunching one knee and then the other on the ground to get them under her, and pushed, fast and unstopping, against the burden on her back. Metal dug in, she twisted, the planter box scraped down off a bent wing, something pulled her tail savagely, and she was in the air. The mister system and a sun shade blocked her from the sky, and at a pole, squirming and squeezing, she got herself through the gap where the tarp pulled away. A knot of mane came out on an eyehole and her hooves burned on the tarp’s hot surface before she was flying unsteadily to the street.

She hit the sidewalk and began running in the same step, almost falling over, racing to the nearest intersection and dashing heedlessly into the path of an oncoming car, its screeching tires and blaring horn startling her into a tiny jump of injured wings that carried her a few feet to the sidewalk before leaving her to her hooves once more. Behind, the PAs scattered from the driveway as the police drew near, and one—April ascertained with another fearful look back—in her direction still. The long body, wide wings, and lily-pad mane became a terrible silhouette for a second as Long Luxury, the one April knew and feared the most, swooped up to catch the wind and speed her way.

When she looked forward, though, Long Luxury was gone from her overburdened mind. It was her hooves, which were beginning to feel funny; her knees, which throbbed from her effort to stand; her back, tight and getting tighter around the wings; and the morning-pale sidewalk that went on and on, slab after slab of concrete hypnotically passing under her fixed and stinging eyes.

She turned down a side street and cut across a roundabout to a different apartment complex, where she ran against the fence and failed to get into the air. Long Luxury was out of sight for the moment, so April skirted the walls in search of something to hide behind, finding it in a noisy cluster of pipes by a water meter. Curling up as tightly as she could, she pressed herself between the cinder block wall and the cool pipes, resting her chin on one and watching the street ahead. Sensation ebbed back as Long Luxury raced into view, panting and pulling out her crystal. She had worn full Pegasus Advocate regalia, her mane looped with red ribbon; piercings catching light on her ears, eyebrows, lips, and nose; a black and purple latex vest with silver clasps and green spikes on the collars and a rose design stitched onto the breast; a skull-and-crossbones belt on black and red pinstriped pants that flared out like bells over high boots. No attempt had been made at subtlety, and this Long Luxury evinced further by strutting the sidewalk, calling out April’s name at the top of her lungs, spreading her huge wings and standing up with them.

“You can’t have gone far, pretty girl,” she hollered. “Why not come out? We just want to chat.” She walked out of view and came back a minute later with her composure loosened. “I’m sorry about scaring you! I come on strong to ponies all the time! I’m not gonna hurt you, promise!” April held her breath when Long Luxury took off and flew right overhead into the complex, where she called some more among the parked cars.

“You better not leave me!” Long Luxury shouted. She was on the other side of the wall, and her voice was loud and shrill coming through to April. “We have to talk! We have to… We have to talk!” She was screaming, coming back over the wall, and landed in a tree too close to where April’s legs were cramping behind the pipes. She stayed there for several minutes, quiet, before screaming again. “You bitch! How can you leave me like this? We were friends!” She was shaking the boughs as she cried out, but stopped abruptly, looking down the sidewalk at something April could not see. Without another word, she took off and disappeared for good.

Only after the security ponies had come and gone did April examine as much of herself as she could without moving. Her knees and chest were black with blood and soil, and her right wing was missing feathers and bleeding from where she had scraped her pollex. She wiped her face, careful to make as few movements as possible.

“Okay, let’s figure this out,” she thought. “Number one, I need to get out. There were… three?” She was alarmed that she could not remember even this; in the frantic struggle, there had seemed to be many more. “I’m safe for the moment. Luxury got chased off, she won’t be back. The bitch. Okay, okay, what’s nearby? Where even am I?” Her view of the street afforded an all-night diner, an urgent care center, and a cluster of drab offices. Going back to her apartment was out of the question, and she had no money for a room somewhere or a ride across town. In the moment, her only possessions were the clothes she had fallen asleep in the night before.

“Who can I call?” Of her friends, only Lacey Kisses and Reverend Green had escaped the memory-expunging process, but she had a foggy idea of where the abuse shelter was from where she had wound up. “I’m gonna have to leave my hidey-hole sooner or later.” Her knees and wings were aching, stiff from where she had balled herself up, and she wondered for the first time whether she had broken any bones.

She waited until the pain drove her out into a weak heap on the grass, and there, pushed herself to an unsteady walk back to the apartment gates. There she stood for several minutes, looking at the unoccupied road and the cars sleeping in their covered spots, before turning back and locating the urgent care center. If she were in Long Luxury’s place, she would check the medical facilities first, but pain overrode reason, and she hobbled across the street and into the lobby filled with the unwell.

She was in an ambulance inside fifteen minutes, no longer bleeding, but her entire body feeling like a toothache as she answered the EMTs’ questions as calmly and clearly as she could. No concussion, no loss of consciousness, plenty of abdominal pain, minor head pain, and all of this she attributed to a carriage crash. They lay her on a gurney and wheeled her, alert but lightheaded, into the bright hospital, where she was questioned, x-rayed, locally anesthetized, stitched up, given fluids, bandaged, given steroids for the swelling and Ibuprofen for pain, and at last left alone in an uncomfortable bed. It was four in the afternoon when the doctor came in again, checked her over, and said she could be discharged in a couple more hours. She asked to make a call.

A phone representative connected her to Reverend Green, and after a hushed conversation, he promised to pick her up and bring her to the shelter. So it was that, after being discharged and told her bill would come in the mail, she limped to the sidewalk, loitered close to the doors, and then got a ride to the first place where she felt safe that whole day. In his chapel, though, there was no coffee, no gentle words.

“These ponies won’t leave you alone, my sister. You’re fortunate to lose them for the time, but that fortune will not last.”

She stared at the floor. “Yes.”

“You don’t have to tell me the details if you don’t want to, but I need to know how to help you.”

“I need to get out of the city,” she said immediately. In the hospital, she had had nothing else to think about. She had weighed the possibilities of a new city, a new apartment across town, finding a roommate in Greater Canterlot and depleting her bank account in the process; she had considered more drastic options, such that would be granted with the purchase of her own pulse crystal or confessing what she had seen to the police and begging to be placed in a witness protection program. Ultimately, it was her lack of money that governed all: her bank account had been released, not that she remembered it had been frozen in the first place, but her ID and all her information was back at the apartment. If she could beg for enough money for a train ticket, though, she had a chance to start over somewhere else.

“Do you have any money? Anything at all?”

She shook her head.

Reverend Green sighed and slid a phone across his desk. “The police, April. You declined calling them last time you were here, but I think it’s imperative you do so now. We can give you a place to stay for the time, but we need their attention if you’re being hunted.”

“And tell them what? I was there too, I helped. Well, kind of. I was there.” “I don’t know,” she mumbled.

“You need to tell them what’s going on. I’ll step out of the room, if you’d prefer to speak to them alone.”

“Can I…” She looked at him, his expression more stern than concerned, and looked back down. “I have to be honest here, the thought of… anything, doing anything, I don’t know. I think I have to throw up.” She went to the bathroom, knelt awkwardly on wounded knees, and looked at her reflection in the toilet. Reverend Green asked whether she was okay through the door, and she said she’d be okay if she could just get a hotel somewhere. “Just for one night, I’ll figure this out from there. I can’t…” “Can’t what?” she thought.

She had to ask several more times before he agreed and summoned Lacey Kisses from the dining room, where she was serving. In his office, the three stood around his desk, April in wrinkled bedclothes, Reverend Green in a blazer and short-sleeve button-up, and Lacey in a tee and apron.

“Take my car, get her out of here. Somewhere far, as far as you can, a hotel. Please.”

Lacey nodded, concern gravely etched on her face. The look of April and the reverend’s serious tone curtailed any questions from her.

“You can use my card to pay for a room. As many nights as she needs.”

“If you say so,” Lacey said softly, looking at April. “Get your stuff, I guess. I’ll tell Drift Dive he’ll have to close by himself tonight.”

“I’ll help him close. You just go.”

At this, Lacey gave April another look, hurt and confusion in her eyes, and walked her to the reverend’s car. April sat in the back, where she could more easily duck if she saw a PA on the road. For the first several minutes, Lacey didn’t speak, and April was momentarily sure that it would be a quiet ride to wherever they were going.

“All right, I’m sorry, April, but what is going on?” Lacey asked at a red light. “I gather you’re in danger?”

“Pegasus Advocates,” April croaked.

“Well.” She drove them in silence until the dying sun had peeked around the mountainside and they were pulling up under the shriveled palms of a cheap, tropically themed hotel. Lacey checked April into a room on the ground floor, and when they were inside, April on the bed and Lacey just watching from the door, she spoke again.

“Nice of you to offer your apartment to me, April. Really swell!”

April looked at her, knowing what she was going to say, with no energy to argue.

“What with the Pegasus Advocates after you and all, and me being a stomper, that’s just excellent. What a nice thing to do. You know, I should have known it too; you were so sketched out that night, I figured you were on the run or worse. Well hell, you said as much, but seriously, from the Celestia-fucking Pegasus Advocates? Could have included that little detail. I guess it slipped your mind, right? That what happened?”

April blinked. “Ah, here come the tears,” she thought numbly. She murmured an apology.

“Yeah, I bet you are. Look at this now. And what’s this about not wanting to go to the cops, huh? Green said you were hiding something there too.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Now I gotta drive all the way back to the shelter wondering if I’ve been seen with you. Every time someone new comes up in the food line, I’m gonna wonder if they’re there to question me about your whereabouts. Am I an accomplice to something?” She was pacing, her long mane flying as she jerked her head back and forth. “Am I aiding and abetting a criminal? Am I in the same shit you are now? Green doesn’t know, he’s just trying to be nice. I swear, if you’ve got him in this too, whatever the hell this all is, I’ll turn you in so fast your head’ll spin.”

April shook her head, crying.

“Yeah, you didn’t think about any of that. I know. Hey, you know what, whatever you did, don’t tell me. I’m done. I got you two nights, because I am just that nice, but that’s the end of it.” She went for the door, and April slumped off the bed. Choked with tears, she uttered a drowning “please” as Lacey’s tail disappeared out of the room. A minute later, a car drove away.

Climbing from the floor to the bed was too much, and April stopped with a knot of comforter loosely clutched between her hooves, halfway onto the mattress, and there she stayed, damaged knees on the carpet and aching face breathing in dust and lint as she cried. When the blanket was soaked with tears and snot, and her fur was damp from resting in it, she rolled off and stared up at the ceiling. A new view of her tiny room afforded enough novelty to stem her outpouring for a soft second before becoming a mute reminder of where she was, and she cried again.

She crawled to the bathroom, peed, and looked at herself in the mirror, her royal blue fur matted and stained, her eyes red and rheumy. The only thought that cohered was a simple “oh, shit,” which, by the time she was out of the bathroom and under the sheets, had become a repeating “it really is all over.” She slept.

She woke. The sun was down and she fumbled against the nightstand for the lamp. The hour was ten thirty-eight, and she stared at the kitschy alarm clock, its hands formed to resemble long-tailed macaws in flight, beaks open in joyful song. This was the object of her attention as the day’s memories excruciatingly returned. So it had not been a dream. Even in the worst of it, she had not sincerely entertained that it might be, but waking up confirmed it anyway. April Showers was in a strange hotel in a strange part of the city, wounded but not gravely so, with a bank full of money and no way to get at it. For leaving town, she saw no recourse strong enough to make her want to go outside, but she could not stay indoors indefinitely.

Her life had been shredded too quickly for her to feel it. What she felt was not the exquisite rip and tear of loss after loss or the helpless unbelief as momentum gathered while she fell to the bottom of the world, but the queer absence of what she knew; its passing had been clean and complete while she was occupied. Hunched in bed, pushing a feather with her breath, the lack of recourse that had earlier distanced her from her own tragedy was settling at last. “It really is all over,” she had repeated as she fell asleep, and, awake, she saw the truth of it. A refreshing sleep solved nothing. Figuring out where exactly she had gone wrong accomplished nothing. She had woken up exactly the same as how she had fallen asleep, and would continue to do so unless she did something about it. Consequence and action had become one for a brief moment that day, and now she had the empty, unnavigable aftermath all to herself. Freezing up and doing nothing would be her eventual death, but anything else was out of reach. She could breathe, and she could stand, and to April, that seemed the limit.

She was out of bed and attacking the room before anger consciously hit her, and when it did, she had already exhausted herself and opened a stitch, and could only lie apart from her minor destruction. She listened to herself catching her breath, flat on her back on the stiff carpet, and imagined what would have happened if the PAs had finished her off in the garden center, or if they had plucked her out of the sky with their pulse crystals.

A car rolled into the lot, its headlights combing her inside wall. The door shut, hooves walked outside, then all was quiet. If it was Long Luxury or one of her associates, April thought, she may as well open the door for them.

She flinched, sending jolts of pain up through her wounds, as the phone rang, and she struggled to answer. Her voice was dry and tired.

“Oh. Yeah, tell her I’m here.” She hung up and opened the door, standing just inside to admit her visitor.

Lacey Kisses looked at her sourly as she came in and found a flat surface on which to empty her saddlebag. Without looking up, she said, “brought some food. The rev told me you wouldn’t be likely to go out and get it yourself. Fruit, veggies, water. Okay, ‘bye.”

“Wait.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Lacey said, stopping at the door.

April switched the lamplight for the room lights. “Please, I’m only asking for a few minutes. Some advice. Anything, Lacey, please, I’m…”

“I see it.” Pitiless.

“I’m sorry for getting you caught up in this.”

“Me too.” She sighed. “All right, I’ll listen. Go ahead, eat, I didn’t do anything to it.”

April sat on the bed, pretending that the comforter wasn’t balled up on the floor with the TV stand’s dislodged cupboard door; Lacey tactfully pretended the same as she installed herself in the easy chair. April ate two oranges, not bothering to be careful with their juice, before speaking.

“I’m not a PA, that’s number one. I went to one of their meetings to see what it was about.”

“Right.”

“I thought they made sense, or a kind of sense, that’s the only reason I went back. They… uh, that is, we, went driving a couple nights ago. You know those two ponies that went missing?”

“I don’t keep up with the news, but I think I heard something. One of them was a doctor?”

“Dr. Whooves and some guy named Whippoorwill. Whooves was a friend of the Astras, and they’re getting ready to leave town now because of it. We… that is, the PAs, a couple of them, and me, I was along for the ride but I didn’t actually do anything. They got them. Took… took care of them.”

Lacey was nodding. “And then?”

“I ran. Well, they dropped me off, and I didn’t come back. Just as bad.”

“All right, you’re a witness. You couldn’t tell Reverend Green why?”

April shook her head.

“Was this the night we went to your apartment?”

“Night before. I was trying to clear my mind still, and night walks sometimes help.” She bit into a pear. “That one didn’t. So now, here I am.” Talking about it gave her the strength to look Lacey in the eyes. As long as the strange mare was in the room with her, not everything was lost. She spoke with frail confidence, knowing all the while that she would grovel for even a modicum of recompense. Feeling so, but with enough pride left to conceal the severity, she said, “I’m rather desperate.”

“Do you have a plan?”

She shook her head again, and Lacey regarded her, not without sympathy. She looked up from the mess of fruit juices on her sheets. “You said you’ve been on the run before? Do you have any advice?”

“Yeah, I’ve been. Not from anything as bad as you are, but pretty close. Advice? I don’t know, get out of town. That’s a good start. They’ll find you here sooner or later.”

“All my stuff’s back at the apartment.”

Lacey thought she knew what April would ask next, but did not offer it herself. Her conscience protested, but she still stung from not being told about the PAs earlier. But then, why should April have told her, she thought. They weren’t friends; she wasn’t entitled to hear April’s secrets if April didn’t want to vent them.

“I don’t know how to start over in a new city anyway,” April continued.

“It’s never easy. No matter what you bring with you, it doesn’t feel like enough, you never feel prepared. At least, that’s how it was for me. The reverend helped me get set up in Applewood initially. If he hadn’t, I’d have… I don’t know. But you just keep your head down, find a job, and take any help that you can get. I guess the biggest piece of advice I’d have for you, April, is to put away your pride and take what you can get. It probably won’t be much.”

“Great.”

“It’s the truth.”

“What about a place to live?”

“You might be homeless for a while,” Lacey said. “But there’s shelters sometimes, bus stops, underpasses. You can sleep in the woods too, if there’s some nearby. Fountains are good for bathing, public restrooms too if you can get time in one.”

“And there are nice ponies out there that’ll help too, I bet,” April said.

“It’s great when it happens, but don’t expect it.”

“No, I know.” She fumbled with an apple. “I have to get my stuff first, at least some of it. I don’t have any clean clothes, for starters. I want my toothbrush and my comb.”

“I can take you down there tomorrow, if you want,” Lacey heard herself saying.

“Tomorrow?”

“I wouldn’t go back tonight. The PAs are probably watching for that. Tomorrow’s just as risky, frankly, but… We don’t have a lot of time, April. You’re not gonna cruise on Reverend Green’s card forever.”

“I know. I know I should be grateful for even this. He didn’t have to do anything, and neither did you.”

“Trust me, I am aware.”

It took a moment for her rejoinder to sink in. “I really appreciate it, Lacey.”

“Please.” She looked away, feeling like a heel.

“What happened to you?” April asked. “If you don’t mind.”

“What happened? I went back to the shelter and Green told me I should have been more compassionate with your situation, not be malicious.”

“I mean when you were younger, when you were on the run. What happened?”

The dreaded question, which she knew April would ask if she stayed long enough. Lacey had been cagey about her past to everyone, but most ponies who inquired were those whom she served in the line: some recognized her from her acting days and wanted a picture or more, and others just wanted validation. These were ponies she did not know well or personally care about, who she did not interact with outside her place in the shelter; April should not be much different, she told herself. They had served together once, and then April’s life had apparently crumbled outside Lacey’s notice. “Does this mare not have any other friends? Why am I doing this?”

She could be cruel and ask April that question outright, but feared the answer would be that April did not have other friends; then, Lacey knew, she would be trapped into helping more than was comfortable. She was only just beginning to rebuild her life, and though it was not the life she wanted, giving that up for someone barely more than a stranger was not appealing—and she knew that she would give up plenty if asked. She had saved up two hundred-sixty bits for an airship, which she had told April at their apartment; if April remembered, Lacey would surrender it, for she could not live with herself otherwise.

“You don’t have to answer,” April said flatly. “I get it. I wouldn’t—”

“I made some bad enemies, and I’m not proud of it. One was in Manehattan. Both were, I guess.”

April slid over to the cleaner side of the bed and lay attentively, and it looked for a second as though she were offering for Lacey to join her.

“I was wealthy for several years when I was a lot younger, white-collar crime. Me and a partner, but something came between us, as it always does. We lost our jobs, and while he went on to get a big position with another corporation, I… didn’t.”

“That’s when you were homeless.”

“No, that’s when I started my modeling career. Adult entertainment.”

April nodded respectfully, but Lacey could see the usual flash of silent judgment in her eyes, or thought she could see it.

“That paid good too, and I was smart with my money, but, like you, I knew too much. He had it out for me, and I kind of had it out for him, and we tangled like this for a while. Anyway, to make a long story short, this is about when the Elements of Harmony came to the big city, and they fell in with him. He got them out of a jam, I guess, and I tried to get in on the action too when I found out about it.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not comfortable saying. Let’s just say I exploited one of them in a time of weakness and indecision. They naturally turned against me, there was retaliation, and soon after, my business started hemorrhaging money. Soooo, they left, and I had a huge mess to clean up, which I tried to do for a while. It didn’t work, and he was still after me, but I didn’t have the money anymore to fight back. I was either gonna have to go down a really dark path to see things through, or just give up the ghost and leave. If Reverend Green hadn’t have shown up when he did, I’d probably be on that dark path now, or dead.”

“Oh my goodness.” She felt slow for not knowing what else to say. “Who is he to you? The reverend.”

“Reverend Green was a good friend of my mom’s when they were younger, like a spiritual counselor. He found the clergy early, and she had a big set of issues, so he was always giving her advice. He saw her through a lot before I was born, basically helped her get her life on track. I don’t know many details, he doesn’t talk about her in front of me. I know he did her marriage, and he buried her when I was… fifteen or sixteen, I think. We were close by then, him and I, and he helped me too. Still does.”

“He helped you out of Manehattan.”

“He’s always known when one of his friends is in trouble. It’s that crazy unicorn magic. So yeah, he showed up in Manehattan, heard me out, and told me basically what I’m telling you, to get out and never look back. I went to Applewood after that, did a little work, got spooked, and flew up to Trottingham. Ran into the Elements there too, and you know, April, I think it was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

“You said they didn’t like you much.”

“Oh, they hated me, and they deserve to. But Trottingham, I was slipping into my old ways there. The Elements came in, stirred everything up—as they do—and of course we ran into each other. They gave me a little money and got one of the Trottingham ponies to fly me up here, and now here I am. Green never made it down to Trottingham, but I guess he knew I’d come back to Canterlot soon enough, because when I landed, he was already in charge of the victim shelter, he already had a place for me.”

“Is that pony in Manehattan still after you?”

“He’s dead.” Lacey held up her hooves. “Not by me. Someone else got him, I don’t know who. I won’t lie, him being gone makes this a lot easier. I can live without fear of him sneaking up on me.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how I’d get to that position with the PAs.”

“You won’t, not here.”

April chewed her lip. “You said you didn’t really like living in Canterlot either. At the apartment, you said that.”

“It’s not the life I’d imagined for myself, but… I don’t know, show me someone who is living the life she imagined, I guess. It’s okay.”

April averted her eyes. “I’ve never run away from anyone before.”

“Don’t you have parents to live with? Or a sibling or something?”

She shook her head. “I’m an only child, and my parents are both dead. Died when I was in college.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay. The last thing I’d want is them getting caught up in this with me.”

Lacey nodded. Awful as it was to say, she was glad her mom hadn’t been around to see what she would later make of herself. Her father had, and made it clear that she was no daughter of his when he found out. A wild part of her imaginings urged her to tell April this, establish a kernel of empathy between them.

“And I don’t really have anyone else in Canterlot. I haven’t been here that long.” She blinked back some more tears. “I had sort of hoped I’d find a friend or two in the PAs. Talk about stupid.”

“We all make mistakes,” Lacey said weakly. It was stupid, she thought, but could say nothing to April’s face, screwed up in an attempt to keep from bawling.

April took a deep breath and wiped her nose on a pillowcase. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I was really screwed up that night, I wasn’t thinking.”

Lacey shook her head. The part of her that had seen her through Manehattan demanded she clasp her anger and let April spin off as she would, but to look at her, Lacey could muster only an icy expression. April was a college kid in the big city; she’d never seen the horrors life could serve up, and there was something endearing in the innocence to Lacey. She could teach April a lot, she thought, but maintained her cold exterior even as her heart softened. “It’s fine, I understand. I’m sorry for turning on you and leaving like that. I was angry, but Green is right, I should have considered your position more. I didn’t have the right to take out my frustration on you. You have enough on your plate right now.”

“If it makes you feel better, you being mad at me was kind of the last of my worries.” Not entirely true, but pride was seeping back into April’s thoughts. Lacey was warming to her; hope was in sight.

“That’s good,” Lacey chuckled. “I’ve caused a lot of trouble in my youth, and I still have the habits from it. I’m working on them, but…”

“I get it.” Quietly, the pride slipped back away and solidified into certainty—at least of tomorrow. Part of her hoped that Lacey would start unloading details of her past, that they might accelerate into a close friendship, but April did not have the mental energy for it. “Ask her anyway. You’ve already had the worst day of your life. What’s a little more? Exhaust yourself,” she thought.

“Anyway.” Lacey got up. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow. What’s a good time to come by? You wanna sleep in a little?”

Lying back on the pillow, April thought. “As early as possible. Six is good. What time is it now?” She glanced at the clock. “Six is fine. Five-thirty. I don’t care, any time. We’ll get my stuff, I’ll withdraw everything I have, and then… A train out of here? An airship?”

“Train. There’s some small towns not far from here. We can even stop in Ponyville, that’s really close.”

April just nodded. The idea of a new town felt implausible in her mind, and the space yet to travel to reach that town became insurmountable to her the second Lacey was gone and the lights were off. She listened to the car pull away and scratched at her bandages, and the clock ticked, and traffic hummed, and water moved through pipes in the walls, and the thermostat’s yellow light blinked, and life went on even as she stared up into sleepless darkness.