She lay back, in that delicious space between dreaming and waking, thinking of people she used to know. What were James, Saffron and Gene doing these days? She hadn’ t spoken to them since they’ d had that falling out at the pub, shortly after she’ d gotten her job at the museum. Always tenuous, she felt her connections to them stretching, like a strand of the voxsola pulled too thinly, until it finally snapped, leaving their lives distinct. She hadn’ t spoken to her grandmother in months. Had the city where she lived handled the crisis any better than they had in Yrcalla? Sylvia idly thought about the journey she might one day take to see her, how many days it would take by horse to cross what had once been a matter of hours by the trains. She wondered how Marcella and Sarah were getting on with their garden. How thin the strands that connect us all in the end, she thought, how easily they are broken by the wrong word in the wrong place, or even the simple attrition of time spent apart. Twiggy and Twinkle jumped on the bed, disturbing her reverie. She stroked them both and they settled down curled up against her side, and the three of them drifted off to sleep.
She dreamed she was walking in Thistle Park, and came across the dead homeless man again. His body had decayed even further, skin desiccated, shrivelled, on the verge of sloughing off his brittle bones. A green stem had burst out of the top of his head, and fruited into a plump flower, its fleshy petals bulging obscenely in the winter sun. As she watched, the flower gently unfurled, revealing inside it the miniature naked figure of Prometheus, beetle wings attached to his broad shoulders, a kind of luminescence emanating from his slick skin. As she watched, he opened his carapace, spread his wings, and flew upwards to the sun.
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