Page 144 of The Surviving Sky
fatherhood
happiness
Ahilya’s smile
Iravan screamed then, trying to hold on to shreds of himself, even as the creatureerasedhim, but there was only
n o t h i n g n e s s
A last scattered thought came to him through a blur.
He should have stayed in the copse of green dust with Ahilya.
49
AHILYA
She watched Iravan unravel.
Ahilya had tumbled into the vortex and seen everything as though the vortex were a series of bio-nodes with sungineering holograms hovering around her. She had seen the wisps of wind that were cosmic creatures of an amazing kind, seen Iravan’s anguish when he’d learned of his own origins, seen the rift of stars where the Moment had been weakened.
Now she watched the cosmic creature break her husband apart.
In the vortex, he floated next to her, blue-green light all around them. His mouth was open in a silent scream. His eyes were glazed. Tears flowed down his cheeks. The gigantic falcon-yaksha was motionless too, its silvery wings around the two of them in an embrace.
Frantic, Ahilya clutched Iravan, shaking him.
He did not respond.
In one of those images in the vortex, she saw the ashrams plummet, running low on trajection. Tariya clutched her children to her, weeping. Dhruv frantically swept at his bio-node. Nakshar had only hours. Hours before it crashed.
What could she do?What could she do?
Ahilya saw then how small she was. All along, she had thought to make the world better, to find a different way of survival, to matter. She had been mistaken. She had no power of trajection, no Ecstasy, no ally in a companion yaksha. Even Iravan was helpless.
Blackness spread from his pupils to his irises and his corneas.
It was killing him.
It waserasinghim so he would never have existed.
The earthrages would erase them all, if not now, then eventually.
Stay with me, she thought in terror and anguish.Stay with me.
The darkness pooled out of Iravan’s eyes like tears.
Nakshar fell from the skies.
What can I do? Please, show me, tell me, what I can do?
Iravanflickered.
Behind her, the yaksha spasmed too; she saw it mirrored in the vortex.
Iravan had moments before he disappeared, before every memory of him was gone. She saw the face of the earthrage, furious, mighty, desperate; it would not end, not before a million deaths, not before Nakshar was destroyed.
No, she thought in sudden fury.He is mine. They are mine. You cannot have them.
