The rivers, swollen with the silt of a hundred collapsed dynasties, ran thick and sluggish, carving new, winding veins through her limestone flanks. They carried the detritus of a species that

The names, like the grief that had birthed them, had simply eroded, smoothed away by the relentless tide of existence. She no longer felt the phantom itch of the silver comb, nor the sting of tears that had once carved rivers down her cheeks. Those sensations were as alien to her now as the scent of rain might be to a star. Her awareness had expanded, stretching beyond the confines of skin and bone, encompassing the slow, inexorable crawl of glaciers and the silent bloom of mountain ranges. The world had become a canvas, painted with the vast, indifferent strokes of geological time.

She remembered, or perhaps it was merely a resonance from the deep earth, the shudder that had rippled through the land. It had been a cataclysm for the fragile beings below, a final, desperate scream swallowed by the planet’s groan. But to her, it was a sigh. A gentle settling, like dust motes in a sunbeam. The mountains, once jagged teeth against the sky, now wore softened, rounded shoulders. The rivers, swollen with

of her own sister, or the boy who had promised her a silver comb now fused irrevocably to her calcifying scalp. Nothing came. The names, like the grief that had birthed them,

to a mind now measured in epochs. The fire that devoured their wooden sanctuaries was a mere spark, extinguished in the blink of a tectonic eye. She tried to recall the name

The village below, once a frantic hive of smoke, weeping, and fragile human warmth, now appeared as nothing more than a scattering of pale gravel in the dirt. How small their terrors seemed