CW: hospital, wartime civilian life, desensitization, sexual language, animal slaughter, war crimes, suicidal ideation, guns, homophobic slurs, ableist slurs, fascist slang, Islamophobia, drugs, nuclear weapons
Yelena arrived at the door of the Nay-toe hospital, failing to catch a breath, her chest hoarse and full of fire as Natalia hung from her arms. "Pamegi! Pamegi mnye!" Sunlight peered into the small waiting room filled with disintegrated chairs, yellow-pasted posters, walls off which wallpaper peeled away. A woman dressed in a large black cloak jumped up from her chair to meet Yelena, putting her hand up to Natalia's forehead. "Xarasho," the woman said, her face hidden by an embroidered veil. "Xarasho, detka. Krasivaya." The woman's fingers softly traced the contours of Natalia's damaged face, her pink hands bright beside her cloak. The other women, looking like black ghosts, peered their head and watched Natalia as she came back onto her feet. She groaned, did a vigorous yawn, and pointed to her stomach. Two of the women reached into a plastic bag, offering Natalia a few fruits and a fried breadstick with arms stretched. "Byeri, byeri;" Natalia stuck half of the breadstick into her mouth and chewed vigorously, but gave the fruit to Yelena who had collapsed onto one of the chairs. She felt her legs burn with pain, and her neck swelled up: "just a little rest," she murmured. The florescent lights dripped down from their metal brackets, forming daggers that fell from a phosphor sky-- their milky heat burned Yelena's vision, and she shut herself away from the world 'till the women turned to shapes... turned to cinders that pierced shadows into the emptiness behind her eyes. It burns and never returns.
Natalia peeled one of the mandarin's for her with her fingers, dropping the skin onto the ground. "Infirmiere, infirmiere!" The woman in black shouted. From behind one of the steel doors, an besieged-looking nurse with glasses and hair tightly clipped behind her head came with an anxious and hurried flight. The woman in black pointed to Natalia, then to Yelena. The nurse looked at Natalia-- she immediately recognized Natalia's face; the red terror of her raw and bloodied flesh, the stench as it died away, the uncanny new flesh that grew over it. She could not help but think of Natalia, brought back to life, as not fully human, tainted by the growth of mysterious flesh. She then studied Yelena; terrible out of place with her unblemished youth and uncovered head. "Kato tee?" The nurse shouted at Yelena, her remarkable accent impenetrable. "Kato vee? Eta nee tavoi dochi!" Yelena opened her eyes, but felt incapable of moving anything else. "What?" she moaned without thought, seeming even more out of place as all the women in black moved away to the other side of the room. The nurse shook her head slightly: "uuun, you speak English? American? You are uuuh, one of the left-behind social workers?" Yelena nodded to play along, folding her arms to seem less alien. The nurse spoke English with a different strange accent, full of nose-y, long sounds and sharp Rs, but she didn't care enough to inquire about its origin.
"We're slowly pulling out over the next uhh, three months," she scribbled away on a pad, then handed a piece of paper to Yelena. "Stay with us in the officer's barracks 'till helicopter comes. Just speak; they will know this little blonde girl shouldn't be here." The nurse went down on her knees and examined Natalia's scars, probing into her face with her sharp nails. "Healed nicely. This time don't run away, uh? Nee oukodi! We were worried about you." Natalia motioned at the nurse's pen, grasping her hands as a gesture. "Oh, of course;" the nurse handed her the pen, then turned to the women on the other side of the room. "Kadi zedes!" The women stared back at her, their expressions mercifully invisible as the nurse back through the steel door which shut behind her. Yelena looked at the paper, it had arrows and boxes, one of which said "officer's baraques." She couldn't make any sense of it, and let the paper fall onto her lap. "I just need a little bit of sleep," she mumbled. Natalia took the paper, studied it for herself, then clicked on the pen. Yelena shot up with attention, clearing her throat. Natalia scribbled on the other side of the paper, then presented it to her. Yelena looked at the writing; it was beautiful, full of flowing circles and graceful lines, but still merely scribble. "I can't understand it," Yelena said to Natalia, realizing her mistake; "ya nye magu eta prachitatj." Natalia turned the page, looking at her scribbles all bent, then crossed it out with her pen and wrote again. She turned it back to Yelena, who received it with alert eyes: "nye day im menya zabratj." Yelena looked back at Natalia; she was watching Yelena's expression with an inert calm. "I won't let them take you," Yelena answered with a nod. "You speak Russian?" She whispered. "Gavarish pa russki?" Natalia took back the paper from Yelena and scribbled on it again before returning it. Yelena read it out loud. "U menya nyet yazyka;" I have no tongue.
Hey there, little bears. Shout out to my Hung family! It's your girl Christine here with another update... from the Zone! Let me hear you shout out in the comments: what to eat, what to see... and what to kill! Scroll down to the comments; leave me a twenty-one cock salute.
Why do we dress like this? None of them could offer up a manifesto. In troof, little of what we did could find its root; no, its causes were all rhizome-style. The troof was that everyone carried the world upon their body, with every little icon & symbol set as a levee against the planet's all-winning dust. We were dressed in the vetements of Nay-toe; factories of the world united under every single fit. The delicately-cuffed jeans, the logos, identical sneakers as far as the eye could see: they are banners that display Nay-toe's singular victory over all else. "You've been beaten," the hoodie and baseball cap scream beside the moth-bitten robes & turban. "You've been beaten by the entire world;" your children will murder each other for Louie and Gucchi, because they know wearing the robes & turbans only admits bitter, deadly defeat. Never say that Nay-toe does not give; it's all-giving, and unified in one.
"Ten things to kill in REDACTED," a stiff and unemotive voice spat. Christine plunged a skewer of meat down her throat, a full-toothed giggle with every chew.
The visions do not stop. "There's honesty in blood," Christine giggles to the camera. "Try clicking undo on this," she sneered before a blade met the throat of an anxious goat. The life drained away from its soft eyes, its pale fire growing dull as its body went slack in Christine's hand; its flesh limp as Christine's face, flat and private but for the sight of teeth 'tween her parted lips, and the depth of her heavy breathing. No, it can't be undone-- not the static that prickled above her, not the wind that carried 'cross the Zone feathers and blood, fossilized on the networks forever.
Christine grinned to the camera; 'cuz you know a moment can last forever. Captions empty, and the recommendations pointless-- all F's in chat.
When Yelena woke up, she saw Natalia asleep with her head neatly resting on a woman's black-clad legs. Unlike her, Natalia had sprout forth from of this land; she was Nay-toe's child truly, star-studded blood and allied braids. How long had she already been here? In this room, in this land? She pulled out Christine's phone from her bag, trying to make it speak in vain, frustrated by its dark silence. She held down the square button again, and remembered the pain of Natalia's sudden jab into her ribcage. Was she part of Nay-toe's plan? Or was it Nay-toe's long shadow? Why would Nay-toe have a shadow? Just as every selfie has its light, it must have its shadow. Nothing is earned without cost-- the illuminating flash brings red eyes. Natalia was Yelena's shadow; the inverse figure on the other side of the mirror, appearing kindred in appearance... but she should not be fooled by its conspiracy of photons, which trick the eye into self-recognition. Nothing is staring back at you, she thought as she looked at Natalia.
One of the women brought an apple to Yelena after she'd yawned, peeled 'n quartered. "Yabloshka, dila tebya;" Yelena thought of mother, the comforting embrace of the pre-verbal, and fuzzy silence. She thought of empty landscapes unfolding before her, buzzing with the noise of crickets and worms. The ringing in her ears bothered her. Some of the women pointed at Yelena as they chattered away, quietly, discretely; she pulled out one of the books, and read it loudly. "Cvetik semicvetk," a sigh followed. One of the women pulled a flower from her pocket, letting it lay flat on the palms of her hands. The Zone is like this flower; Yelena understood her to say. Without the heaviness, the expectations that come with words. It makes dreams come true. She put away the children's book and reached for the other one, feeling its worn edges before opening it up to where she'd left off:
THE SECOND THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« They asked: 'Gaspod Hichi, what existed before Nay-toe?' 'Nefejestva,' he answered. Ignorance. A time in which materials and substances controlled the desires and emotions of 'monzhji.' After the First Fall, it was every 'vetsy' for themselves. They lived in concrete huts, and adorned their walls with images of idols. They killed freely, of course, but more egregiously they killed time. And time was money. So Nay-toe came onto the believers and said: 'Ye of faith shall build an alliance of like-minded monzhji, and live together freely as druzhina.' And Nay-toe built them the Zone, in which it was not materials nor money but desire and love and freedom that grew like plump fruit on the trees. »
Yelena Nabakova. Last seen: 243d
I'm floating upward, somehow. I feel like an elevator falling up. A precession of lights strobe through my body. The women all take their places. With their black cloaks, they look like shades come to life-- the shadow world splitting open; taking all that they'd been denied. But I'm not afraid; their graceful movements are without malevolence, their soft hands are welcoming and yielding.
Ah. Someone else's dream. A few little hot flashes of a skirt. An anime girl cut-pasted into the frame. Hearts. Little v-for-victory. With clouds obscuring heaven, this must be the next best thing.
Where do you and I begin? I cut myself in two with your sword. Christine x Yelena. I carve it into the pulpy flesh. I see a headless woman, blood splattered onto her breasts, with four arms. Two of them hold our heads; the other two formed daggers of incredible white light to split the air in two and spill its guts. Could the sky be so fragile, yield so quickly?
"Another thought of Kali Hichi," one of them says in a voice dulled by the throat of another tongue. They all dance in a slow circle, shapes contorted by airy cloth. They raised their cloaks, showing off their pearly dance shoes, and did the Orange Justice, the Gangnam Way, the Floss, and the Harlem Snake. 'tween breaths, they sang a huffed song with intermittent claps like clandestine cheerleaders:
Who are the gaunt napes of adolescents?
*who! who!*
Who are the bony fists?
*who! who!*
Who are the puppies born in slums?
*who! who!*
Who were raised on vodka fumes, frigid nights?
*who! who!*
I won't lie to you. I felt the heat of the crowd, hotter than the sun on my cheek. Look to your left; look to your right. Chests pulsating with violence, made anonymous. I am drunk; yes, intoxicated on the humming ears that come to dine on hoarse cries. Faces red, overfull with angry blood; they have nothing to hide. I placed my fingers into my ears, and dulled the people-- I heard the inner sound, resonating in my nerves. "You will descend," the voice spoke to me in the language of a beating heart. "Into worlds of muck and mire. Complete shit," spat with a sharp tongue. "They float on water, like Bangkok markets." Keep your head, hold your aim steady and true. Fearless, I walk the alleys of my imagination; a bomb explodes by my ear and its heat gobbles me up like a hungry Goliath of flame. Fuck. He holds me in his innards, and I set my face up to his stomach. It whispers something to me. I cannot explain, my tongue won't fashion the sounds. I know this world is made by a formless creature: blind, retarded and schizo.
Who?
A rumble woke Yelena up. At first, she could not move; her limbs remained placid and still no matter how much force she put towards moving them. She opened her eyes. The room was empty, calm; a cloud of dust began to gather 'round the singular light-bulb hanging from the ceiling. Strange. The door swung open, and Natalia ran towards Yelena with half of her face wet with tears. She thought it was a dream-- the expression on Natalia's face was foreign and uncanny. The muscles were taut on one side, an interrupted grimace. She shook her head, and opened her mouth in an attempt to speak. A few muscles twitched, the scar across her face rippled. Nothing, despite the waves; only stale breath.
Ah-- her stomach sank; the walls contorted and a rattle rose from Yelena's feet up into her skull. An incredible suck rattled her ears. She jumped up; nausea and dizziness caused her to tumble down on her hands. Natalia pulled on Yelena's arms; she heard whimpers escape her fractured nose. "Bomba," Yelena croaked. She took Natalia onto her back and ran out the disheveled door, unsure of her heading. She tried to remember the shapes and arrows on the note; the "officer's baraques," those letters were meaningless scribbles to her now. The concrete surrounding the Nay-toe hospital was stained bright red like a sugary spill of Kool-Aid; it seems brighter than it should. The air was thick with smoke, and people were running down the alley away from the bazaar with newly-won possessions in hand-- sneakers, wheels, televisions... the dagger above them and it's a fire sale shopping spree. One of the women had been trampled, her cloak sullied with white footprints. She felt Natalia drag on her back, her limbs pale and loose like rubber; the smoke and blood had robbed Yelena of any sense of direction, so she stood there in the middle of the street. "Who would attack this temple of Nay-toe," she thought to herself, there in the sucking emptiness 'tween each distant explosion. Another deep rumble shook apart the street before her, turning the order of its sharp lines into rocky mulch. She looked down into the blackness, the underworld itself opening up before her with a hungry maw. She thought of jumping; she didn't know why. She imagined a deep pool of shit breaking her fall. But further down the street, another mentality took hold. People ran with scorched pieces of wood, collecting old debts. Windows were shattered, brittle like bone. Shacks fashioned out of corrugated metal melted in the heat like sugar in tea. Ah-- it was a humid dream to Yelena, a collapsing array of pointless pixels. She did not run, or she could not; she shambled from one shrapnel-dimpled magazin to another, tappin' on the door with her heavy head to see which had been left open in the panic.
The walls of the carpet shop were decorated with its namesakes; sharp triangles and diamonds, in dusty colors. Little square figures decorated them: zoos of goats and donkeys, elephants and tigers. It seemed to Yelena like the permanently-burnt screens of some ancient arcade, played in the smokey colonnades of the mind. Rays of sunlight peered through the pores, the ascendant filth animated by wind. A small closet sat beside a few steaming machines; Yelena opened up the closet and slowly let Natalia drop onto the carpet-covered floor. A slight blush returned to Natalia's face, her eyes shot open. She opened her mouth, as if she'd forgotten herself. The only sound was the roof above them groaning with every percussive thump of a distant explosion. "It's over for now," Yelena whispered. Natalia's empty expression seemed like a recognition, or a denial. Yelena lifted Natalia and placed her in the closet, but Natalia prevented her from shutting it. Their bodies had become one, somehow; through mutual fears, a reciprocity of pains. Natalia had suddenly felt herself sewn, looking down at her body to find Yelena's own pale flesh, sutures where they'd been joined. But they were not one-- Natalia was Nay-toe's child, she could drink his waters and feel strength. Yelena felt only nausea. That's why she shut the closet forcefully, and told Natalia to hide, and to wait. "Pryachjsya! Zdji menya." She waited for a response. Smokey air rippled through the open windows; the screech of a long loneliness. The exhaustion overwhelmed her; Yelena did not have the strength to seek another shop, to hide herself in a barrel of dates, or sleep in the trunk of a stranded car. No, no; there was nothing to fight. She felt her body grow slack, pouring onto the carpets beneath her. Nothing to rebel against. She looked down-- a field of cubic geese, and square deer, frolicking beneath a staggered and jagged palace. The long trees were plump with red, orange; Tetris patterns hung above them like the cryptic symbols of heaven's words. Ah-- in this vacuum resembling death, she feels eerily restful. "Not dead yet, bitch;" one of the figures in the carpet looked familiar. Sharp lips, beautiful eye-lashes. "Christine. Christine, why did you leave me?" She imagines the flat planes of the carpet becoming enveloped with all-conquering flame. "I've been here the whole time, bitch." The flame gives way to black. She laid down on the carpets, eager to give in. The edges of a book jabbed her stomach-- she pulled it out and the thought went on:
« There in the Zone, 'druzhina' lived in 'styob.' They transcended moral responsibility, which was inevitably tied to a fragile and crumbling age. The 'druzhina' lived beyond; beyond time, beyond petty squabbles for resources, beyond aesthetics. They formed a new nation, united not by skin color or eye color or hair, but purely by desires and ambition and courage and loyalty. They needed children, and thus formed new families, and loved openly without shame. 'Malchiki' and 'detchki' alike learned to fire grenades, jump from helicopters, raid camps and cities, hunt and skin wild boar, and write poetry from the heart... and so, they will smash their parents and undo their ties to the wicked old. Such was Nay-toe's will. All children are extremists after all-- gnashing yet-growing teeth, with every destructive act. »
They stormed into the shop, guns blazing-- the metallic thuds were unmistakable, clean and mannered, none of the slovenly unruliness of the Orient. Wood chips and a dusty howl poured through the door; two gun barrels point-blank at Yelena's eyes, unmistakably a-twitching like late-nite game seshes. The two men breathed heavily, sweaty & damp in their in Monster-merch and Nazi antiques-- their faces were obscured by Japanese drawings, with dark holes cut into them. She noticed the receiver, the rails on which flashlights and laser sights rested; the short-stroke piston suggested a German design. Even here, she sees Nay-toe's fingerprints. Yelena raised her hands, and the sudden absurdity of her plight drove her to laughter. She snickered 'n chortled, twisting while she held her sides. "Why don't you fags just shoot me," she spat. Natalia chewed on her fingers, trying to distract herself from her terrible thoughts-- imagining Yelena's plump face exploding like a melon.
"That you, shanti?" The two men stepped aside, letting their AR-15s fall to their sides. Yelena rubbed her face-- Alec was standing before her, holding a bloodied knife. His blonde tangled hair was adorned with a musty red beret. "I'll be damned," Alec wiped the knife on his sleeve and spat something into a plastic bottle. "You're a tough little detka, I'd figured you'd be cheugged-out back there in TayGeneration;" his lilting drawl surprised Yelena, his face was covered in little scars. He pulled Yelena up with his hands, dusting off her shoulders in an over-friendly gesture. "Don't mind the blood; just had a little liver." In the Zone, seeing someone again in the flesh was rare; it must be a sign by Nay-toe that he watches over us. One of the armed men adjusted his mask, wiping away the sweat beneath his face: "you know this slut?" Alec giggled, then put a bit of chewing tobacco into his mouth. "Don't sperg out, betazoid;" Alec motioned Yelena towards the door, who gave herself only one backward glance. Don't be fooled by his smile, Natalia: know that the light beyond the door will bring you only certain doom. Only one backward glance.
The gunfire had subsided. The two men searched the alleys with their guns drawn up to their shoulders, imitating what they'd learned with every blood-curdling respawn. One of them stuck up their fist, shook it, then did a twirl with his index finger. Alec whistled, waiting for a response that never came. "You did all this, Alec?" Yelena saw the smoke rise up from behind the Nay-toe hospital, on the roof of which a few children watched the fire ripple through the bazaar. "Nope;" his honesty gave her a chill. "There's bombings here all the time. Civil war between the Muhammads... peace be upon him... we just whip into action when we see an opportunity. Got some supplies; batteries, graphics cards, medicine." Alec took out his phone, scrolling through the TL as he spoke. He was dressed in a child's idea of a soldier: baggy jeans, sneakers with a big 'N,' and a large leather fedora. "Who's we?" Alec smiled as if Yelena had asked a stupid question. "We? We, them boys. They're pretty nice. Don't be mad about Paco and Groypee back there; Groypee just doesn't like white girls." Yelena zipped down her jacket, her face melting with heat. She felt vomit well up to her mouth. The stench of dismemberment and destruction hung heavy in her lungs. "We'll take you back to based camp. That's just what we call it. It's pretty chill there." Had the Zone really been reduced to nothing except rape and theft? She prayed for Nay-toe to wash everyone clean, to return their souls to nada.
Through the bombed-out & crushing haze, she sees the people gathering debris, cleaning the streets of bones and wood. Violent explosions, bursting energies were only part of the daily rhythm here; the imagination must have the freedom to wipe things clean again, to make space out of the clutter of life and allow for cleanliness that could aspire to the sparkling mountains lording above them. Oppressive; that's how Yelena would describe the feeling. Nay-toe's imposition was absolute: no Gods, no Masters, only the infinite totality of your imagination's open-air market. Between the detonated ordinance and a ruined tea shoppe, a black VW van came out the fog, racing down the road. The sides of its doors were cluttered in silver spray-paint: "the Spear of Destiny," and an arrow pointing to the front. Alec made an oh-kay sign with his fingers, signalling the van to stop. A plume of dust rose from its bronze wheels.
The door slid open. A short-statured figure walked out of the van, wearing Gucci sunglasses and a quilted jacket. Near his stomach hung a sword in its sheath, tarnished and stained with blood. His head was unevenly shaved at its sides, and a few zits marred his sharp face. Unlike Paco and Groypee, the short-statured figure looked relaxed & unguarded-- his soft smile and loose shoulders made it seem as if he'd been strolling through a garden all day. Alec tore open a few slices of cheese from a packaging and chewed on it like gum. Yelena wiped her face; she looked down at her hands and saw that they were covered in soot.
"Who's this beautiful hyperborean goddess?" The short-statured figure adjusted his sword, putting it to his side. He took a long, leisurely drag from his vape pen. "Pa-russki gavarish?" Yelena nodded, willing to only partly amuse him. "I knew it;" he took another drag. "Been learning off the apps. Very based language. You know what based means?" Yelena nodded in the negative. "Doesn't matter, what's your name little maiden?" Yelena stared back at him. Alec spat into a plastic bottle, then interrupted: "Lena. She's from Florida or something." The short-statured figure poured a few squirts of hand sanitizer, stuck out his wet hand, then withdrew it after Yelena's aloof stillness. "I'm Little King Samuel. They call me that because I'm short, but I don't let it bother me." Little King Samuel took another drag from his vape pen. "Lena, have you ever done a DNA test?" Yelena nodded, trying to console herself by insisting to her nervous mind that she'd not locked the closet on Natalia. "Come with us, shanti. You'll get bride-napped if you stay here;" Alec tapped on the glass of the open van door. She felt like a diver nauseous with second-thoughts as she looked down from the diving plank. Up the ladder, at the edge, there's tremendous loneliness as the wind makes the wood beneath you sway. She held her nose, and dove straight into her fate-- the two men stepped into the van, and closed the door behind her. The metal beneath her heaved into movement.
Yelena sat on the tattered leather of the rear seats, expended cartridge shells loose beneath her feet. The van smelled like verde mixed with bubblegum; as if a hippie tour-bus had crashed into a candy store and started a noxious fire. Paco and Groypee sat beside her; her two angels, there to watch and record her actions. Paco adjusted his helmet, then smiled at Yelena. "Hello, I'm Francisco." He had a childish smile, and yellow teeth; he played with the safety on his gun. Groypee glared at her from the other side, a deep wheeze the bare minimum escaping his lips. Across the aisle, Little King watched Yelena while he took deep hits, one-two-three-four, on his neon-glowing vape. He passed the vape onto Alec, who sucked on the pen 'tween hits of a milk-bong. "Minty menthol, Monster-flavored. It's kind of our version of meth," Little King explained. His smile slowly bled into a concerned look, his posture tensing up. "We're not meth-heads. We're normal people." Groypee coughed into his hand, then wiped it on his camouflage pants. Outside, the sand of the Nay-toe camp slowly faded away, as if they'd surfaced from an ocean. Yelena watched the light dance on the streams that cratered onto the stones, watched as the green of the forest gave way to ginger-brown trees which grew from charcoal black trunks. The ground beneath them was covered in dry grass untarnished by time, as if the soil had been frozen in amber. She felt the air suddenly grow thick and dense, as if it were straining under the weight of some immense pressure acting upon it. Paco chewed on his fingers, his eyes alive with some unknown fire. Yelena noticed that Samuel had shot up at attention, his hand hung below his nose and his nose twitch-y and alert. Alec handed the driver a few cuts of liver, and Yelena met his dense and bulging face.
Once the forest had dried out into a field of broken charcoal, she saw a city grow on the horizon. The dusty cloak that covered the land in darkness receded away behind them, no longer irritating her eyes. The sun rose from behind it-- no, through it, as if the city were made of glass. Yelena stuck her face up to the window of the van, wiping away the condensation. Angular fragments stuck out and pierced the sky, glowing with rays of light that danced onto the clouds. "What?" She whispered to herself. Samuel broke his eyes away from the road and turned his eyes to Yelena, smiling as he traced the slithers of hair that fell from her round ears with his gaze. "Used to be one of the biggest cities here in the Zone," he drawled. Groypee searched the dense woods; slivers of light danced on the trees, glittering & flashing... his face ached when he shut his eyes. "Then the nukes hit. Turned the whole city and everyone in it into a fossil." The van turned, and the road continued beneath a beige bridge on which a train encased in black carbon stood. The walls were covered in black shadows, as if the people had forgotten them. Shards of glass hung from the top of the bridge, sharp & shiny like little knives. "Stalactites," Samuel said before he cracked an ugly smile. The road let onto a highway, littered with molten cars in a procession that stretched all the way to the glowing heart of the city. "What is it called," Yelena murmured. "Stjeklograd," Samuel answered. Yelena's mouth was agape beneath her sleepy eyes; the redness in her face was becoming, Samuel thot. "Well, that's what they call it now," Samuel answered himself with a chuckle. Yelena's only response was to close her mouth. The road beside them was littered with luminous crystals as if they grew in wild. Yelena tore herself away from the window, then lowered her face into her hands-- her hands came together and she whispered a prayer into her fingers for Natalia, addressed to Nay-toe. The mountains were distorted, broken thru' the massive structures of glass that stood before her. Paco and Groypee peeked at her with curiosity and surprise. This is Nay-toe's land; the glass was clear and pure. Her eyes were open.