Mastiff’s Mound was a great many things, but a tourist attraction was probably one of the lowest descriptors on that list. It was said that when the United Coalition Front was first assigned custody of the mining colony on Frindalis, it was a particularly stubborn lord who had been picked for the task. Developing a colony from scratch, especially one in an advantageous position among the tempestuous trade highways, was not a project anybody could ignore; you paid for it with the rest of your life, cursed to watch as it outlived you. Whether or not the Mastiff - as the locals called him - had earned the Shogun’s wrath to be given such a fate remained a matter of debate among most historians. The true answer perhaps laid in the daimyo’s own insistence on building the city in the exact basin where he had first disembarked from his meager fleet. A fortress city, shielded by great mountains and the sea, to rival the fortressed megacities on their original Earth. The centrepiece of such a grand jewel of the coalition was, of course, a space elevator to truncate logistical costs, but the bedrock of the basin had disagreed with this endeavour.

Year after year, the Mastiff earned his name as a quarry was hollowed out down south and its stone was used to forge a new foundation, piercing further and deeper into the crust than any other building in the to-be city. A billion tons of rock was cut, hammered and drilled out of the unstable bedrock before it was deemed worthy of bearing the infrastructure that had been painstakingly forced upon it. As construction began, the Mastiff was found dead, claimed, at least on record, by the immeasurable burden on the project itself.

Unbothered, the Shogunate then appointed a young retainer from the Mastiff's retinue as the replacement, whose first order was infamously curt: just put it back where we found it.

And so the quarry was once more filled, not with the clean stone it had once yielded, but with the dredge and the spoils of the city’s pilfered foundation. In a single year it was topped up and compacted into a plateau, where it stood in silent vigil of the city. The rest, with the gargoyles and dark gothic towers and elevator that finally pierced the heavens, was history.

Alexa blinked as she read that last line. The screen of her personal tablet drifted in and out of focus, even in dark mode, and she screwed her eyes shut. The pounding in her temples intensified for a brief moment, and then faded into nothingness. Respite was two coffees ago, and she was crashing hard.

It wasn’t her fault, or at least it didn’t feel like it. In her book, she had done everything right, from tying the loose end in her brain with the office building in the painting, to showering on time and climbing under the covers before midnight. On paper that was the perfect recipe for a good night’s sleep. In reality, she was rewarded with the experience of being wide-eyed awake at 3 in the morning, trying desperately to continue some pleasant dream she had just been ejected from. The contents of the narrative leaked from her mind as she tried to remember it, but she had been in a gigantic auditorium, surrounded by her peers, and someone was calling her name. There was cause for…celebration.

She grimaced. The more she tried to remember, the less of it she could recall, even now. Between then and the sunrise, she kept telling herself there was no dark shape in the corner, no footsteps up on the second floor, until Bladder won out and on her way to the bathroom, she looked up the stairs.

Nothing.

She sat on the couch in the dark, entangled by a lingering sense of pride, until the sun proceeded to come up, pouring through her windows and thoroughly demolishing what remained of her circadian rhythm. At this point, she hoped she’d perhaps collapse into Aerin’s arms like a scene directly out of a cheesy romantic film. That, at least, would be in her favour.

“Next station: South Ashina.”

She played herself about the empty seats on either side of her, stretching her legs in preparation for another climb. The air conditioning was cool, and the scenery was great in the moments when the line went overground, and less than three stations before the end of the line, at dusk, she had the entire train car to herself.

As the locomotive chugged along towards the end of the tunnel, the lights flickered, its power switching to a different source as it transitioned onto a more recent stretch of track, until the lights died completely.

Alexa sat up, knowing how close the station was now, and in doing so, met the twin pinpricks of light directly in front of her, higher up, at about…head height. In the dim light of her phone screen, she could just make out the shape of a head, then shoulders, then the body standing befo-

The train burst out of the tunnel, restoring light to her caboose. There was no shadow man, just the orange-purple of the sky reflecting across the calm sea beyond the submerged tracks. In a matter of moments, they had parked at the station, with the PA chiming again. “Arrived: South Ashina station.”

She hooked the strap of her bag around her shoulder and flitted out through the doors, scanning her phone at the folding turnstile and making a beeline for the walkway that extended over the beach, towards a bunch next to a standing metal bin.

Aerin had her headphones in, bobbing her head in her orange windbreaker, her eyes half closed.

Alexa chose to just sit next to her and say nothing.

It was maybe three minutes before the song must have changed, and Aerin’s hand brushed against her arm. She turned, mortified to her, ripping her earbuds off. “Oh my god! When did you…get here?”

“Not that long ago.” She smiled. “You looked like you were enjoying yourself, didn’t wanna disturb you.”

“You know they launch at sunset, right?” Aerin scooped up a small cloth bag by the elastic strings and handed it to her. “Your clothes. I washed them.”

“Oh…thanks.” She stuffed it half into her shoulder bag, knowingly granting her future self the chore of ironing them again. “Did you have trouble getting here?”

“No, I just took a taxi. I was working most of the day so I was already in the city.”

“In the city and not at the dig site?”

“After that lady kicked us all out, she forced us to start cataloging stuff layer by layer. Basically what we were going to do anyway, I’m not sure what her problem is. So, as the paralinguistic consultant, I got all of the talismans and the sigils to decode. Trust me, it’s harder than it sounds.”

“Oh, I know.” She slapped her knees. “Should we go up?”

“Stairs, or the lift?”

“I get enough hills on the way to work, I think I deserve some reprieve.” Alexa led the way to where the wooden walkway met the road at the base of the mountain, buttressed by decorative concrete slabs that criss-crossed like a lattice, overgrown by the bushes it had failed to bury. They went along the curvature of the Mound’s base, until they came upon a metal platform with railings and perspex panels, built into a pair of rails that run up the side of the mountain-like structure. The guard rails looked freshly painted, and Alexa simply stepped in with Aerin and pressed the big button on the console in the corner.

The left rumbled to life, straining slightly as its old gears started to move. Its light came on, illuminating their lift car.

As they rose towards the edge of the plateau, several stories up, Alexa found herself turning away from the light, giving her phone a quick peek in camera mode to confirm her makeup was doing its job. It was just as she had left it, and she let a sigh escape, relieved.

“Are you okay?”

“Huh?” She looked at Aerin. “Yeah of course I’m okay.”

“You haven’t messaged me. Like, at all. Thought we’d have more stuff to talk about, you know?”

“We talked plenty that night, didn’t we?” Alexa looked off towards the glimmering sea, getting darker by the moment, the sun sinking lower and lower in the west. “Or, well, mostly I talked, and you listened. And I had work the last two days…”

“Yeah, about your art and how you feel. But I dunno, I just thought there was maybe something else you wanted to say.”

She knew. Oh goodness she knows. Alexa felt her hands lock behind her back. “I…” Now or never. “I know I said sorry, but it’s probably not enough. I’ve been thinking about how you - no, how we said goodbye last time. I’ve thought about it a lot over the past six years, and…it’s not your fault.”

Aerin crossed her arms. “Obviously.”

“The truth was I was only thinking of myself when I heard you were leaving. I wanted you to stay because…well, I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody like you.”

“That’s high praise.” She smirked.

Gods above, she was so pretty. “I mean it. I just didn’t want to be alone. I have friends, it’s just they’re not you.”

“Is that what we are? Friends?”

“If you want,” she said, a little too fast. “I-I mean, I really, really miss you.”

“Have you been seeing anyone?”

“No. I think I just didn’t bother.” That much was true. With work and the war and her paintings of it, there had been no time. Now that she thought about it, it was more like she hadn’t felt anything about anyone.

“I’ve had my own path.” Aerin cast her gaze towards the sea as well. “I’ve been all around the universe, you know. Varos, Eden, Corinth Prime, even the Bendis system. I’ve seen so much, so many people’s lives, how we’re all…constrained.” Her grip tightened around the railing. “We’re being suffocated, Lexi. Everyone, everywhere. I couldn’t wait to go home, and there was…urgh.”

“Okay, my turn. Are you okay?”

Aerin shook her head. “I don’t know. I wanted to go see everything, but when I got there, I just kept thinking: is this it? This is what I ran to? There’s so much hurt out there, Lexi, and it’s all in my head. I see it all the time. My-” She caught herself then, and said no more looking at her palm, reddened from where it had dripped the railing.

“You can tell me.” Alexa brushed the hair out of her face. “I’m not going to try to change you. I promise.”

“You do?” The last of the sunset was in her eyes as they stared at each other. “Then…I might have something to s-”

The lift lurched violently as it reached the top of Mastiff’s Mound, the inertia almost toppling them. Alexa grabbed the railing next to her to avoid crashing into Aerin, who let out a yell and stumbled back, catching herself in the corner.

“Whoa!” Aerin pulled herself back to her feet. “This thing’s a fucking deathtrap!”

“Nope! Nope nope nope nope…” Alexa unlatched the gate opposite the side they had come on and ran out into the plateau, giving herself several metres before she turned around to see Aerin having fallen on the grass, looking back at the lift.

“We’re definitely walking down,” she said, panting.

Alexa tried to reply, but she found herself doubling over laughing, dropping to her knees in the grass as they both lost it. To have come this far and be killed by a falling lift car, of all things…

Aerin was looking right at her, grinning that cheshire grin of hers, when she had stopped. “My stomach hurts.”

“Mine too.” Alexa stood up, and held out a hand. Aerin’s fingers slipped into her own as she pulled her to her feet. It was dark now, and the two of them were only backlit by the nascent glow of the convention’s many light stands, its collective halo reaching out to wrap around them.

Lights which, as a whole, suddenly switched off, plunging them into the gloom again.

“What’s happening?” Alexa asked, still holding onto Aerin’s hand.

The glow of Aerin’s watch became visible as she held it close to her face. “Uh, I think the lift was maybe a little too slow.”

Whoomph.

A balloon lit up, bright and white, somewhere in the middle. It was already beginning to rise, but as soon as it had lit up, it vanished into the dark.

Whoomph.

Four, this time. Lighter, almost a pale orange, in a ring around the first. They faded in the same way

Whoomph.

The next ring of balloons had their turn, red. Then the next, bright orange, then yellow, from the middle to the fringes of the pattern. Then the white one lit up again, and the colours traveled like a pulse outwards, faster, rising with each instance, spiralling into the starlit night sky. Music was building too, coming from somewhere below, and as it began to rise in pitch, the balloons spread out, pulsing all the time, until they hung just like the stars, bright and unyielding.

Then the varied designs came out, of whales and ships and stained glass bulbs that were translucent, structured within with what Alexa could only guess was luminous microfibres, making them look like stained glass. A lantern lit up the centre of the formation, as big and bright as the first wave, and in the distance a dark shape lifted from beyond the far edge of the plateau.

A massive bird, gold and white, ascended to the heavens, its wings lighting up from the inside and transitioning to a molten bright red, moving from body to tip in a fluid motion, the edges so detailed it might have well been on fire from that distance. It dwarfed everything in the area, even sporting a gondola on its underside.

All the balloons pulsed once more, and cheers erupted from the ground as the music crescendoed, the exhibition lighting up once again.

Aerin's hand yanked her forwards, towards the crowd milling about under the assemblage, towards the shadow of the mighty phoenix above them. “Come on!”

For a moment, Alexa thought she saw another light in the distance, blazing against the mountainside. She looked back at Aerin, still holding onto her, a soft, perfect expression on her face. “Yeah, let’s go.”