Mosel flapped the long sleeves of her cloak as Shira held her ear to the stone of the temple, listening for any sound. They had found Mosel’s cloak, which was pale and purple as wisteria, in the ruins of a common room just outside the Citadel’s dining hall. Hints of what had occurred there – stains so dark and deep that they could have reached down to tehom themselves – danced over the clothes that littered the tile like fallen birds. It was here that they found something for the shade to wear: one of the only garments that remained untouched. She pulled the cloak’s hood up over her head, her fingers reduced to mittens by her sleeves.

“Why are we waiting, Shira?” she asked, only the slightest bit of impatience sifting like sand into her voice.

“There’s another well around here,” Shira responded, not leaving her post, “and some other shades have been wandering about recently.”

“Other shades?” Mosel repeated, alarmed and excited.

Shira raised cautioning a finger to her lips. Mosel, needless to say, didn’t understand what this meant but listened anyway.

“Yes,” Shira whispered. “But they don’t have hearts like you. They just kind of leaked up the shittim after…everything.” Shira was still taut as a bowstring, but made a quiet humming noise as though she had been plucked in the fragile silence of the dining hall. The sound wasn’t agitated, but contemplative. “They’ll hurt us if we’re not careful enough,” she said.

“Who called them?” asked Mosel. She sidled up to where Shira knelt near to the ground like a coiled fern against the stone. The stone seemed to embrace her feet in ripples around her.

“No one called them,” said Shira. “That’s the thing – they’re just here, and I don’t know why.”

Mosel found the frustration in Shira’s voice uncomfortable, so she flapped her sleeves a little, shooing her malaise away. “Have they hurt you before?”

“Yes,” Shira said. “But not in the same way they hurt the others.” She paused. “Maybe it’s because I couldn’t see them.”

Silence extended between them, and Mosel peered around the room. It occurred to her to imagine the people whom Shira had spoken of. Her eyes – so often wide in wonder, she found – squinted in concentration. She shut them completely.

Indistinct, would-be images of people unfolded in front of her face, which was now completely dark without the light of her eyes. The images were faint as thistledown, but she could sense the reality in them taking root in her mind’s eye. Half-formed details distilled like silt sinking to a river’s basin: the tips of toes kissing the floor between twirling motions, markings beneath twinkling eyes, and hands folding into each other.

Almost at once, the images faded, and the familiar taste of red swallowed Mosel whole. It drummed through her, in and out, frantic breath.

It wasn’t until a hand pressed against Mosel’s shoulder that she was rocked out of phantom realities, given the leverage to slip back through the door through which she had come into that small world. Her eyes popped farther open than they had ever done, and saw Shira standing before her. Her heart, which had lost numerous seeds by now, screamed against her chest in protest to yet another loss to the void about it.

“Are you alright?” Shira asked, her voice quivering like it had when they met. The air danced around it, just as worriedly as Shira sounded.

“What–” Mosel gulped, “–what’s it called when you close your eyes – only for a moment! – and you see things that aren’t there?”

Shira smiled, soft as butter. “Ah. Those are dreams, Mosel. They happen sometimes when you sleep.”

“Sleep…” Mosel echoed, slowly reclaiming herself from the fading reverberations of red, which still pulsed through her like its own indistinct heart. For a moment, all Mosel’s thoughts were reflections of other things, fading ribbons about her, loosened. She shook her head, clearing the last vestiges of the assault of red from before, then pouted. “I don’t like sleep.”

Shira laughed a little, seeming to forget the threat of shades outside. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose it’s my fault that you’re up here to sleep.”

Mosel’s cheeks were suddenly warm, and she cooled them with her sleeves. “It’s fine!” she said. She paused as something heavier than warmth settled over her. “What exactly am I here to do? You never told me.”

Shira leaned back, resting her shoulders against the wall. Something heavy seemed to be upon her as well. “You know of the ocean about here, of the same water as the Abyss beneath us?”

Mosel had known, but the knowledge felt as slippery to her present awareness as the images in her dream had been. “Yes.”

“I need you to come with me to the Mote then the Moors at the ocean’s edge, and walk with me over the ocean’s body, if you will do so.”

Mosel considered this, turning the idea over. “What’s on the other side?”

Shira shook her head, and Mosel knew that the other girl had no clue. Nor did it matter, anyway. The ruins of the Citadel and its people were no more a place to live in than a snail’s empty shell. It wasn’t to be disturbed, possessed by what Mosel had just experienced: the memory of a place. Of a home. A presence within and without.

“There’s something I haven’t told you yet, Mosel,” Shira said hesitantly. She bit her lip, but Mosel was distracted entirely by the sound of her name, which filled her thoughts like the juice of a blackberry once it’s bitten into. She smiled at the sensation, unaware of Shira’s unease.

“What haven’t you told me?” she asked momentarily.

“I gave you a heart, you remember,” Shira began, “but, eventually, it will run out. As you experience things, the seeds at your core will fade, leaving you with less and less. The enchantment I used to summon you only works for so long.”

It was a lot for Mosel to understand; the truth was pervasive as air, but she found it was harder to accept into herself than breathing.

“I’m only here for a limited time,” she said, her voice quiet for the first time. She looked down at the tile, where her inky knees absorbed the light that glinted upon them. One more seed released. It was almost like an insult.

If the moments are something to be eaten away at, whatever was doing the nibbling seemed to pause between mouthfuls, during which Mosel peered into the rafters above. She then looked at Shira, who was rubbing her forehead with one round hand, eyes closed.

“How long will it take to get to the Moors?” Mosel asked at last. Her voice seemed less soft now, clumsier than it had been as it stumbled into the silence like an unwelcome guest. She fiddled with her words in front of her face. “Will there be enough time?”

“Should be,” said Shira. Her voice was muffled, and Mosel saw that her face was buried in her knees, the side of her cloak dripping down her calf like hot wax. “I’m sorry, Mosel.”

The apology didn’t quite seem to fill the atmosphere, leaving an uncomfortable, unsatisfying slot of emptiness. Mosel felt a gravitational need to fill it. She leaned to the side, against Shira’s shoulder.

Before she could say anything, a whisper of motion pervaded the stillness from around the corner of the wall. Quick as flame, Shira leapt up. Mosel fell over at Shira’s absence beside her, then looked up at the entrance to the room.

“A shade,” Shira breathed. “I hear it.”

Mosel gasped as she watched six arms, void-like as her own, sweep into the room, followed a bulbous head covered by a painted linen cloth. Two pointed feet dripped into the air, smoke borne by gravity. The air was cold around it.

Time was suddenly only the memory of a place, and Mosel knew it wasn’t another dream.