“Ask the Oldness.”

That’s what Pibbles says. That’s what Pibbles always says.

I don’t want to ask it. It sounds like dust in your ear. And what does Pibbles know about Old Timey anyway.

Nothing. Pibbles knows how to make baskets and sift sand.

That’s all we ever do in Burp is ask the Oldness and sift sand with our baskets. I wanted to go to Gip Gip Yaäm and learn puppetry, but I’m not about to ask the Oldness.

I still want to leave.

Pibbles makes good baskets. The best in Burp, certainly. Top two in the region, and I’m counting both West Burp and Johnsonburg. Nevertheless, sifting sand feels limiting. Pointless.

Today, tomorrow, the next day. I’ll walk down the middle of the village, watching the dry earth blow away under my feet as the dry earth-bricks of the huts give off their own plumes. The wind never stops here. It will blow into my eyes until I get to the Farm, and then I’ll get down on my knees.

First, to pray to Qqg-Orbitz, may She provide food for our faces, etc.

Then to begin sifting.

I will assume the position: legs folded under myself, back and neck arched over my hands, which grip the basket by its leathery sides. If I were literate or numerate, I’d say I look like a deflated number 2. One of our poets might liken me to a penitent, digging for moisture in the Barrens of Expiation.

But I just sift sand.

Burp lies Gulchward and Dirtward of the Infernal Rift, a week’s trudge if we wanted to see lava and suffocate on noxious fumes from deep within this cursed planet. Since none of us wants that, we’ll settle for the distant stink of the Rift and watering eyes.

Other than that, it’s the dream of Gip Gip Yaäm and the sand. Even Locris Blingo is too far to be anything more than a legend. A thousand kilometers of wasteland lie between us and civilization.

The sand on the Farm is different. Pale and fine, denser than the pouchroot flour in Burp’s simple loavery. There are no stones, no detritus other than Shine. Nothing like the scouring grit of Ěz that lives in my eyes and throat and loinwrap.

The wind blows forever, carrying a fog of bleached dust over the land.

Somehow, the flour-sand of the Farm remains pristine, and somehow, there is always more of it.

There are plenty of stories about where the Farm came from: some sparkling castle or pit of evil or magnificent, hulking beast that was blasted into powder. An ashy relic for the sad remnants to sift in later millennia.

I don’t care where it came from. I just want to get away from it.

But here I am again today. Maybe you understand.

I can see Pibbles weaving between the other sifters, examining baskets with his good eye. He holds them close to inspect the holes that let the sand out and keep the Shine in. He nods his head and hands the baskets back—his workmanship is impeccable. Each curving span of cactus-sieve is de-needled, stripped, and dried before Pibbles perforates the sturdy fiber.

Pibbles is the real reason that Burp is renowned for its Shine production. I think he knows it, but he doesn’t hold it over anyone’s head. I’ll miss Pibbles a little.

He’s too sure about the Oldness, though. Just like everyone else, they take its word for truth. Maybe I don’t want to ask the Oldness about my plans. Maybe that’s something that the Oldness doesn’t need to know.

I can see its grotto from here. A black slit in the stone that towers over the Farm.

My gaze lingers on the cliffs for too long, and an overseer snaps a lash at me. Just a warning, but I put my head down again. The Overseer’s name is Nunk. We’ve been on good if casual terms since he was transferred from Johnsonburg. The most I’ve gotten from him is a shove between the shoulder blades, and I’ll grant that I was holding up the gruel line in that instance. Anyway, I’d be grumpy too if I were wearing armor in this heat.

I go back to sifting.

I push the basket through the tract of powder before me. It clings to my sweat-covered body. I lift and shake the basket, letting the sand pour back to the earth in thin, neat streams. If I move the basket as I shake, I can create designs in the sand below.

Subtly, I create swirls and mounds, lines and gentle curves. Vigorously, I splash swooping flourishes, piercing chevrons. Paths and mountains. Waves and peaks.

The sand pours out. No Shine rattles in the bottom of the basket. I’ve spent my life in the sand, drawing places I’ll never see.

Hot Sun is crossing low on the cliff tops that envelop the Farm. This is a reliable sign that Night Sun will be appearing. Within days. A week certainly. That is when I will go. All of Burp will be cowering in their huts, and I will slip away.

Pibbles argued with me about that. He contends that Night Sun is rightly feared. The Dark Star of Nephilcromidon lures the vilest and most savage creatures into an orgy of lust and blood, which are precisely the orgies I try to avoid.

But I don’t really believe it. What use are demons when we have the Overseers and the Oldness?

What about the shrieks and cackling in the Undark, says Pibbles. Yeah, sure, there’s the weird noises, but I figure sound just works different during Night Sun. I mean, gravity does, right?

What about the missing people and the severed limbs, says Pibbles. And I admit that this is probably the biggest cramp in my plan. But what am I supposed to do? Sift sand forever?

My basket maintains its rhythms as I rehearse my plan. Scoop. Sift. Scoop. Every eighth scoop, I shuffle forward on my knees precisely the distance from my patella to my big toe.

Scoop. Sift. Scoop.

I don’t have any food. I have one jar of water.

The punishment if I am caught is death with some embellishments. If I make it through the terrors of the Undark to the scree fields, there are the scree worms. And the chuds.

It’s insane, my plan, but one needs a reason to go on, after all.

I already walk like an old dog, arched and unsteady. If I don’t flee for Gip Gip Yaäm, I’ll die here like an old dog. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the others: scooping, sifting, scooping, shuffling.

This is the entirety of our lives.

Scoop, sift, scoop, shuffle.

I begin the checklist again when a shout behind me snaps the spell like a lizard between my teeth. I swivel to see what the fuss is about, but the whoops and the absence of whipcracks point to only one thing.

Shine.

There was never much of it, and now there’s even less. From time to time, though, the earth still sweats Shine from its rotten depths.

I don’t know what it is. No one does. There are stories, of course. All wrong, of course.

The only thing any of us knows is that the Oldness wants it, and that the Oldness will punish all of us if it doesn’t get it. It’s a pretty basic god, I guess.

Gimme Shine. Or else.

Finds have been scarce of late. Hence, the celebratory outburst. The Overseers wade through the throng of sifters that has collected around the lucky Shine Finder. They too are elated, but they express it only through not hitting people. I feel the pull of it—there will be a feast tonight with the good tubers, and I do love alcohol.

I rise to join the revelers when I notice that everyone—everyone but me—is milling, dancing, and hooting. Even the Overseers are scowling in joy over forestalling the Oldness’s inevitable destruction of Burp and its greater metro area. I am alone.

There is nothing between me and the rest of Ěz.

I drop the basket and run. I am barefoot, and my jar of water is hidden in the rocks overhanging the village’s tertiary latrine. So much for my plan.

But I cannot let this opportunity pass.

I actually just speed walk for the first hundred meters, glancing over my shoulder. I keep my arms pinned to my side, trying not to trip the Overseers’ motion sensitivity by kicking up sand, at least until I can get some distance.

Pibbles sees me. During one of my glances, I spot him—it’s easy with the eyepatch and all—and we lock gazes. I nod once, and Pibbles does…nothing. His good eye twitches away, and he smiles and laughs with the rest of the drudges. He saves me a beating and condemns me to death all at once, which is what friends are for.

I scoot. I am lucky: we have been working this small spur for months, and there is maybe a kilometer to the hard transition from Farm to regular Ěz. My feet slip through the sand like plows. I have spent my life in this sand, and I hope this will be the last time I ever feel it.

This is better. The Night Sun plan was probably misguided anyway. I still think that chuds are overestimated by most, but it’s all theoretical now.

I’m going the wrong way, of course. I’m headed Riftward, whereas Gip Gip Yaäm lies Gulchward. I’ll have to work my way back once I’m beyond the Farm. I figure I can use the lava tubes, unless the chuds are migrating, but I’ll have to cook that scorpion when I come to it.

The cheers are growing faint, partially due to the distance I’ve put between myself and the main group and partially because the Overseers are starting to herd the sifters back into line. The celebration is over—the shine has come off the Shine.

I almost giggle hysterically when suddenly, the gig is up.

Rough shouts and the crack of whips.

They know I’m gone—I don’t know if they see me yet. I mean, I’m a skittering spot on a field of blinding white. The dust that clings to my skin must provide some camouflage, but I don’t take anything for granted. Their priority will be to prevent anyone else from getting a dumb idea, which they do vigorously by the sound of it.

Naturally, I feel badly about this. I hope my friends will forgive me, even if they might resent me for a bit. If they don’t understand, then fuck their lower back pain anyway.

Oop, they see me.

I run for real now, kicking gouts behind me. I’m not fast, but I am motivated. The Overseers’ whips are useless, which is nice. No one has taken a shot at me yet. I wonder if the muskets are even loaded. No matter.

The cliffs lie in the distance, though they are far closer now than when I gazed upon them earlier.

The Oldness is there.

A chill runs through me, but my stride remains steady. The creature’s sinister designs rule every aspect of my life. Its eternal hunger for Shine eats my existence just as surely as it consumes that damned stuff.

I am brought back to the moment when, suddenly, I’m out of the floury sand of the Farm and onto the hard, barren scrabble that comprises the default surface of Ěz. I stumble forward, nearly spilling onto stone as the sand no longer holds back my stride, like stepping out of water onto ice. I don’t know for certain whether this simile holds since I have never seen ice, nor have I ever encountered sufficient liquid water to step into or out of. But you get the idea.

Funny story: the Farm sits in an impact basin created by a very large rock that was flung at the planet by envoys of an interstellar civilization. At least, our legends say so, and we are told that entombed below is the ancient city that drew the ire of the aliens.

When I was a child, I often dreamt of this hidden metropolis, mysterious and full of magic food, which is the best my stunted and starved imagination could produce. The whole affair seems crude, what with the aliens coming all this way and then just dropping rocks, but I thought about it a lot and honestly, it’s pretty elegant.

 And hilarious, obviously.

There are practical consequences to this historical oddity: for instance, the cliffs that surround the region and block my escape on three sides. The impactor displaced gigatons of earth, throwing up a buttressed rim of crags that has loomed over the vast bowl ever since. The Shine-harvesting settlement of Burp and the route to Gip Gip Yaäm lie behind me in a series of canyons that eventually spill out onto the continent.

Meanwhile, the red cliffs of the Jamp-la-Murg ripple in the distance, and the Grotto of the Oldness snarls at me.

My people have served the thing for untold generations. Chained by our own elites, condemned by our own religion, imprisoned by fear and soaring bluffs.

I asked my first question of the Oldness at the age of twelve. I wore the Hat of Puberty and the Ceremonial Onesie.[1] I climbed the Murg Way, sweating in the unbearable heat, and I asked the same question everyone asks the first time: What are you, O Oldest?

The answer, too, is always the same.

That which waits in wisdom

And retribution

And that’s the problem with gods–both sides of the cactus basket in everything. This uninformative utterance is made by a voice from the mouth of the Grotto—a hiss from the unfriendly depths of the earth that chilled my young soul and that of every pilgrim since the long-ago beginnings of Burp.

I mean, why are we listening to this thing? We supposedly get three questions of the Old Timey during our miserable little lives, and we are obligated to squander the first on that nonsense. Just be straight with us and skip the theater—the Oldness is real, we get it.

Anyway, the initial non-answer was followed by a sour wind from the grotto, like the last, gross breath forced from a dead thing. I went fleeing down the narrow, winding trail, stumbling and rolling the last third (not even close to the record). We’ve all heard of the shredded remains of unfavored supplicants strewn around the Grotto like stew smeared across lips, but I didn’t see anything but the dark crevice.

I flinch as a shot rings out behind me. Ok, the muskets are loaded. My hopping gait becomes more staccato as I pick up the pace, trying not to cut my bare feet to ribbons on the ragged stone. My natural optimism is flagging. My cardio is pretty good, though. I suppose I’ve been doing what amounts to a decade-plus of crunches, so I’ve got that going for me.  

The Overseers are closer now—I can hear them yelling instructions and curses. Their boots, no longer sand-anchors, crunch on the stone points I am trying so hard to avoid. Another shot, and I hear the whizzzzzzsss of the ball.

There is no place to hide. The few plants that dot the basin are wispy and frail. Pibbles likely knew that this was going to end badly, but I can hardly blame him.

I am limping more than running at this stage. My feet are bleeding and bruised, but I go on because I must. The Overseers will have no mercy because their betters will have no mercy on them.

Only one option remains to me now.

The Overseers have been gaining steadily, but my head start was substantial. I will reach the Jamp-la-Murg before they catch me. They could still shoot me, of course, but muskets are about as accurate as farting peas through a reed, except for Johann, who was a deadeye. RIP, Johann.

I’ve given up my feet, and once I am off the crags and onto the twisting Way, I leave a trail of bloody footprints. It doesn’t matter because the goons stop cold the moment I leap onto the path to the Grotto.

I climb. Each step is more agonizing than the last, and yet I fly up the Way.

Violence is forbidden on the Jamp-la-Murg, and as I glance down at my pursuers, they appear to be engaged in spirited discussion. It’s mostly grunts and pointing. I think they are trying to decide if beating me counts as violence. One of them suddenly points his musket at me, but a colleague jerks the barrel upward as the weapon explodes.

I duck instinctively, never stopping, and the shot plinks out a cascade of chips above me, but no further volleys are sent.

The Overseers’ bovine grumbling intensifies as I approach the Grotto. Although my translation skills have proved suspect, I think that they’ve decided to wait me out rather than to risk supernatural reprisal. It’s a reasonable strategy—obvious, even.

I mean, where am I gonna go?

So there are audible gasps when I leave the trail and scramble into the gaping grin of the Grotto of the Oldness. I’m full of great ideas today, but I’m glad they’re shocked, the big dumbfucks.

It’s dim, obviously, and cool. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this cool—it’s not that pleasant in reality. I mean, I’ve fantasized about being cold, but you don’t really know until you know, right?

I don’t have any plan beyond disappearing into the Grotto. Do I hope the goons will assume I’m dead and leave? Do I wait for the Undark? Night Sun could come tonight or tomorrow or in two weeks, and that has its own issues.

I wriggle further in. The space between the ceiling and the floor of the crevice is barely greater than the cross-section of my body, but I move as quickly as I am able. I am not convinced that, in the end, one of the oafs won’t stick his blunderbuss into the cave.

The worst run-in I ever had with an Overseer was two years ago. I was reviewing a promising rubbish pile with my friend Shreila when a Guy named Fuckface—his actual name, I kid you not—decided he was going to chat Shreila up. As it turns out, she’s a big fan of shadow plays, and this simpleton had just seen “Brangpang and the Forty Roaches.” Meanwhile, I was trying to keep my head down and focus on finding some onions that weren’t totally black, but when Fuckface suggested that “Brangpang” was a tragedy of class, I fucking lost it.

I mean, they’re fucking roaches—is there anything tragic about roaches? Fuck no. Anyway, the real tragedy was that I got my ass beat pretty bad while looking for edible trash. Not a great day.

At some point, I lose the light. There isn’t a transition from seeing to not seeing, at least that I consciously note. Sure, it grew dim a ways back, but I’ve been able to navigate by sight from the moment I entered. Until now, the low, heraldic trajectory of Hot Sun sent its searing light deep into the Grotto.

Well, the light is gone now.

The crevice narrowed to a tunnel long ago. I hear nothing but my own breath and the sound of my skin scraping over dry stone. I cannot turn around—not as a moral choice, you understand: I literally cannot turn my body around. I feel unyielding rock everywhere.

Except before me.

Deeper.

I am terrified. Near panic, actually. The fear floods me instantaneously—there is no ramp up from anxiety or dread, and I may or may not be howling into the black.

…

So this goes on for some time. This kind of fear isn’t deep, philosophically speaking, and I don’t feel like we need to get into it. Let’s talk about something else while all this is happening to me.

…

Ok, never mind. Conversation is pretty much beyond me right now, what with the acute distress and hyperventilating. It’s all-consuming. Nevertheless, some deeper part of my brain registers that I have been moving forward all this time.

The rest of consciousness, such as it is, is focused on the very real prospect of dying in the dark. It pierces my thoughts like a cauterizing needle, cooking reason away. It grows white-hot as I drag myself forward through the shaft. I am screaming and crying and choking and crawling.

Then the needle speaks to me in a voice like wind through a skull in the desert.

It calls, and I respond, squirming and wriggling.

Hours pass. Days. Months. I can’t tell you what my thoughts are now because I am reduced to a tube of meat wriggling through a tube of stone. I no longer remember why I am here.

Then as suddenly as the light vanished, it returns, and I fall out of the mouth of the tunnel. I am blinded, overcome by a cold, hammering glare.

I blink my eyes rapidly, as if that will ratchet down my pupils against the light. I have been in the dark for so long.

And it is so bright in here.

…

When my vision returns, what I see is…obscene. I am in a cavern as broad as the Great Court of the Yagha Burp. The ceiling far above drips with toothy stalactites. Everything is white. The floor—all of it, every surface that I can see—is covered in Shine.

Piles of it. Heaps.

Mountains!

It’s unmistakable. Lurid iridescence, bands of searing luminance—the smallest particles flinging light from their surfaces. I’ve seen flakes and chips throughout my life. A nugget every few years. All of this Shine—our shield from the cruelty of the Jamp-la-Murg—Burp’s future embodied in sparkling dust! It shimmers before my eyes—even the air is full of it!

It is hateful beyond imagining.

I see no flame or opening to the sunlight. Yet the light comes from everywhere, reflected infinitely by the precious stuff until the rays finally break on my dull body.

My hand stretches toward a mound. I touch it with the barest tip of my finger and pull away to inspect the glimmering patch on my finger. It sticks like fine salt—I have an insane urge to taste it.

This much was a ransom! I brush it away on my leg.

I am walking in it—can you conceive of this?! It is beyond price, and I am dragging my filthy feet through it like it was the flour-sand of the Farm. I feel sick. It’s in my lungs, and I cover my mouth against it as I weave between heaps. I have already lost the way back.

Movement catches my eye, and I turn.

The Oldness is here.

It separates itself from the curve of a tall drift. A shambling human form takes shape, bent and shaking. Its limbs shed scales of Shine. They float, swinging wide arcs toward the ground like the papery ashes of cactus baskets, burning white. The Oldness is made of Shine, and it is coming for me.

I don’t run. Shock or exhaustion. Resignation, I suppose.

It stops a few meters away. I thought that it would be taller. Or have six arms or…I dunno. I really am tired. Anyway, death is surely imminent. I’ve actually imagined this moment more than once. Probably some kind of socio-cultural artifact, like sleep-chuds. You know, where you have those dreams where you’re paralyzed, and whatever creature you imagine is sitting on your chest is derived from specific mythological contexts.

Maybe the Oldness is like that?

My idiosyncratic manifestation of the doom that has dangled over Burp for all time, no doubt. It tracks. I mean, given the unrelenting focus on Shine in my life, is it any wonder that the impetus for that focus would be personified in this gleaming horror?

“Ahem,” coughs the Oldness. It taps at its throat. “Sorry. Haven’t spoken to anyone in a while…um, are you understanding me?” It pauses. I stare helplessly.

It puts a hand on one hip. Gossamer slivers of Shine flutter to the ground as the thing moves. “Huh. Well, shoot, I…”

“I can…can understand you.” It is me making the ghostly rasp time. It’s true, though. I can understand this…creature…perfectly. I take a step back. An embankment of Shine rises behind; I consider diving into it and taking my chances.

Taking my chances was how I got here, of course. I decide not to dive into the Shine.

“Oh, good!” It continues as if it is not the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. “I’m never sure if this works right, what with the intervals and whatnot. By the way, congratulations on not blurting any stupid questions. You’d be shocked by how many folks just up and ‘Who are you? What are you going to do?’ and then that’s it. Long way to come for that.”

It waits for my response. Does it believe I’m here to ask my questions?

“Ah, you’re thinking. Good.”

It has a face, I realize. A man’s—though the features appear so weathered and worn, even through the Shine, that I’m not completely certain. His head and body are hairless. I don’t know if he is human. I don’t see how that would be possible.

The Oldness glances around and takes a seat on the largest piece of Shine I have ever seen. In other circumstances, it would have been the marvel of a lifetime. Now, it was touching this thing’s buttocks. He points at another boulder, only slightly smaller, and I place my own cheeks on a kingdom’s worth.

“Do try to think of a couple interesting questions.” It says, locking gazes with me. Its eyes are silver—the iris is visible only as a faint line in the curve of its eyeball. The pupil is a grey dent. “At least one good one.” It brings a shimmering hand to his mouth and coughs, clearing its throat in puffs of glitter. “If you still weren’t sure, I’m the…um, Ancient One…or whatever you folks call me now.”

The Oldness, I whisper.

“Oldness, right. Well, that’s me.” The Oldness shrugs, then chucks a thumb over its shoulder. “How’s things, you know, out there?”

Dry, I say.

It nods and chuckles. “Quite so.”

I am not afraid of it—not in awe, in any case. I can see the humanity of the thing more clearly now. This is a man, covered in Shine. No, not covered: this is a man sheathed in it. Swaddled and shrouded. His body is laminated in Shine. All dug from the flour-sand. Collected and carried.

Sifted.

All of it.

Does it keep him alive? His body must be full of it.

“I don’t bother with the day-to-day questions. I can’t even remember the little ditty you pilgrims get.” He looks at his hands, which bob in time with his voice. “Waiting, waiting. Something, something, retribution…ah, well. The Machine does that anyway.” He waves off into the Shine dunes before his hands drop into his shiny lap. He may or may not be wearing pants.

He nods toward me. “But when a…a supplicant actually shows up! Well…I like to participate. Think of a question yet?”

I want to ask it how to get out of here, but I think I know the answer. I want to ask it why I was so stupid to have leapt into the Grotto when I just should’ve taken my beatings. I probably also know the answer to that. I don’t care what the Oldness is, nor do I yearn to know the secret of Shine. I don’t want to ask any questions.

What I want is escape, and I know that none will be offered. I would wait the same eternity as this shambling wreck, and escape will never come.

So I ask it what it waits for.

The Oldness sits up straight, bewildered. His eyes are wide, and they glisten with something other than Shine. “Oh! No one has…no! No one has asked that for some time, I think. Always wisdom or retribution. Never the wait!” He slides off the boulder and paces, his feet kicking up spatters of granulated Shine, a whisk-whisk sound that resembles the ambient fuss of a sifting gang.

He is excited. He tries counting on his fingers, tapping showers of Shine from his hands. It’s barely denser than the air, and a cloud of fine particles surrounds him like a halo as he moves.

Whisk-whisk.

I consider the incredible span of centuries it must have taken to accumulate this much Shine. The lives squandered on it. The Oldness trudges through rills of the execrable stuff, kicking through it like air.

He talks as he paces, calculating. Remembering. He speaks always in the present, as if the things he recalls are happening before us. Many of the words are meaningless to me, but I understand enough.

A traveler.

His Machine—vessel, maybe—failed, causing great destruction. But a message was sent across time. Waiting with inhuman patience for rescue. The need for Shine, for survival. Waiting here, with only the remnants of the Machine for company and protection, buried somewhere in the glittering mounds.

Other memories—jumbled and nonsensical.

I cannot tell what is true and what is the warped product of this solitary afterlife. Is this some ancient proto-Burpian who stumbled into a nightmare and never escaped?

It doesn’t matter. I do not care if this specter is a time traveler or a just another sufferer cursed by Ěz. I am not enchanted by mystery. I don’t know my father’s name. Nor my mother’s. My ancestors are as unknown and unknowable as the Pandemoniad of Velsha.

I have no ancestors, in truth. Their names and bones were ground to glittering Shine and heaped in this tomb to sate this failing thing.

I was wrong: the Oldness is not human. It has not been for a very long time. As it speaks, Shine falls from its body in ribbons and sheets. The Oldness is disintegrating before my eyes, though somehow, no matter how much Shine floats to the ground, it does not grow smaller.

It tells me its names—there are dozens—its lives before this cavern.

Passed down.

The Oldness grows quiet. The thing looks at me with its eyes that have seen nothing but ghost-glow for ten thousand years. Shine pours off its form like sand from my basket. I’ve received my reply.

It was waiting for me.

I rise from the boulder of Shine. I look at my body—the flour-sand that coated my skin when I fled the Farm is gone. Replaced. I glow like the Oldness now.

It smiles, teeth and gums as Shine-besotted as the rest. It shakes its head, and a last, death-rattle escapes into the cavern. The Oldness says nothing as it sinks into the Shine. I feel its encrusted eyes on me as it disappears. I will never ask my final question.

The Oldness dreams, and it remembers all of them, too. I dream. Somewhere in this place, the Machine calls. It calls.

It calls for rescue.

It calls for itself.

As time collapses around me, I remember this life I am telling you about. I will not see Gip-Gip Yaäm after all.

As I march through the fields of Shine, I untwist and remove my loinwrap. It falls away, and I stoop. I plunge my hands into Shine and lift a leaking pile. It weighs almost nothing. I smear handfuls of Shinedust over my entire body. My eyes burn with it.

The Machine sings through time.

…

That is not perhaps the answer you expected, having come all this way. But I wonder if the Machine calls to you, in its dream-slither. Hidden here.

Somewhere in the Shine.

…

Now, your other question?

© 2025, Derek Leuenberger

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[1] “Onesie” approximates an untranslatable word in my language that expresses both comfort and terrible, terrible anxiety that you can wear.