Layla Scholtz heard the truck on her way home from school, squinting at it through grime-caked goggles as it emerged from a cloud of dust in the center of town. She was sure she recognized its colors but wanted to see the logo on its side to be certain. Visitors to Verdigre, Nebraska, were so rare, what else could it be?

The dust wasn’t just dirt kicked up from 4th Avenue by the vehicle’s tires. It was a persistent miasma of particles held aloft by the winds blowing in from the dead fields. Her school talked a lot lately about the Dust Bowl from the 1930s. More than a century and a quarter later, and here they were again. Not that the dust towered into thundercloud massifs like it had then; these days, it was limited only to the areas that wouldn’t do business with Grow Salvation.

I was nineteen when the first holes appeared, just on the cusp between thinking I knew everything and realising I knew nothing. Walking home from work with Mellie, we turned onto Chestnut Street and found our path blocked by a crowd of people.

“Sinkholes,” a woman was saying. “Like the ones in Guatemala.”

“Nah.” This from a man with a small child at his side, gripping his hand tightly. “Burrows. We used to see this kinda thing when I worked out west. Them critters’ll burrow the ground right out from under you.”

“It’s the damn city, that’s what,” said an older man. Permanent frown lines creased his forehead. “Tearing up roads with construction and digging gas lines and never telling anyone when or where. Irresponsible is what it is.”

We were finally able to push our way through the gathered ring of people to see what they were all looking at.

The angel falls in flames. I watch its descent through the smoked glass slits in my sun shield. Even then the brightness is too much, and I have to turn away or go blind. I take cover with the rest and hope this time the casualties will be minimal.

When it hits, it is like the end of the world all over again. Clouds of choking ash and smoke. Boulders raining like hail through the roiling miasma. Trees flung like spears. I take shallow breaths through my mask, crouched behind the flimsy protection of a bomb shelter, until the tempest passes.

After, we take a headcount of the survivors. We treat the injured as best we can. We lay the dead aside and mutter a hasty prayer over each body to bring them peace while they wait. It is all we have time for. Proper burial rites will be observed later.

Antoni kneels on the cracked pavement and waves his hand over a seam. A weed sprouts from the desiccated earth beneath, spreading its jagged limbs in praise to him, its creator. He brushes its leaves, allows its bristles to graze and nuzzle between his fingers, the mounds of his knuckles. He hears the high frequency at which it chitters its pleasure to be alive because, even here, it is grateful for the chance.

And then he tears it up, root and all.

She slices open a vein, and out pours star-matter. Liquid and glittering, the iridescent mess drips from her arm into my cupped palms. And, for a moment, there is only this: breathing in duet (forte, agitato), her brow a slash of determination worthy of sainthood (she’s my religion, yes), and, too, the dumbass acolyte who made a promise they’re no longer sure they can keep (me).

Quicksilver catches in the open window’s breeze, splattering over my double-breasted suit.

The creak of the ship on open water, the dark sea below my feet. The infinite, so close, one false step away through the rotting side of the hold. One hatch opened in a storm, and I would be as good as foam.

The intrusive thoughts followed me everywhere, but especially on the ocean.

I had come here to meet those thoughts—I chose this fate every time a new boarding house turned me out to the streets. I’d learned the sting of salt could not scrape away the thoughts boiling through my skull. But I could change things. Be something more. The things I sought were larger than a life spent toying with unsuspecting, powerless people. Larger than thoughts breaking like a bloodied tide.

Marcus laughed when Rella asked him to take a rokri fish with him to Station 12. “Rokri fish? Isn’t that what teens use to send love letters when their parents won’t let them use the comms?”

“Yeah, but comms are expensive, and rokri are cheap.” Rella was always the practical one when it came to money.

Roki fish were unique in having a symbiotic digestive system. When two rokri bonded, whatever one ate, the other digested, and that connection lasted even across the immense span of space. As Rella explained, that meant Marcus could scribble short notes on specially coated paper, feed them to his rokri, and even though their work stations would be lightyears apart Rella’s fish would harmlessly digest the paper out.

I'm putting this note among Christine's artwork. When everyone finally gives up trying to find her, they'll take apart her studio, parse out the beautiful, shallow things she made, and, somewhere among the shelves, they'll find this little book.

I could never talk about this before, but being on the sidelines means you get an unobstructed view, even of yourself. Because I'm the one who led her to where she is today. Indirectly or directly, every step of the way. I think about those steps when I can't sleep at night.

The sun was just beginning to set when Kimi reached the beach, the wagon she hauled behind her exchanging the clatter of cobbles for the soft whisper of sand. Debris dotted the landscape, leftovers from the hurricane that swept through several weeks back. Kimi kicked it all out of her way, grateful there were no bodies today. The memory of purple and bloated once-people hung over her like a cloud, but she didn’t turn back. She needed to be as close to the water as possible.

That was where the ghosts were.

Ι clutch my Book of Shadows to my chest like a wounded animal.

I imagine my heartbeat, fast but steady, seeping through the cracked leather cover and into the old tree pulp of the pages, imbuing them with new life. I focus on that thought as I make my way to the clearing, footsteps muffled by the forest floor, my shoulder already sweaty from the strap of my satchel. It’s a warm night, but then again, all nights are warm on KOI 5554.01. This old, quaky orb we now call home has us stewing slowly in our linen clothes.

At least the weather here is consistent. At least the air is not trying to ravage our lungs.