IIAstraAstra wakes to an even rhythm of raindrops on window panes.

  There’s a cracked ceiling above her, it’s a sort of pale off-white that’s not unlike her apartment. Cloudy daylight illuminates through a row of windows to her left.

  Wait, windows?

  Astra sits up suddenly from the bench she’d been id out on. Her world spins from the sudden motion and the severe ache in her chest. Right. She’d been hurt terribly. The shadow-giant.

  Ruby-Eyes going all vampire on her neck. She explores where the wounds should be but can feel nothing.

  Astra, gently, twists to have a look around. Her head had been pillowed from the unforgiving stone by a red cloth. Ruby-Eyes improvised shawl, her own blue tied loosely at the neck.

  There isn’t much to this room other than a few more benches and the row of windows. There’s a doorway, missing its door, to a hallway on the opposite wall. All of it looks cracked, long abandoned. The cold isn’t as bad here, and for the first time it wasn’t quiet either, there were bird calls in the distance, wind, rain. Welcome sounds she’d been missing dearly in whatever tomb they’d escaped.

  Astra holds her side as she slips off the bench to approach the windows. Gss, broken here and there, covered each, but through the cloudy ruin she could see an overcast sky and countless buildings, like a modern city, varying in height but close together, those in the distance obscured by fog. Little groups of birds, brown, white, or pied, flew between them. The buildings were all the same style, uniform off-white, elegant despite how faded and broken it seemed. This didn’t remind her of any city she’d ever known.

  Ruby-Eyes wasn’t anywhere in sight. Astra returned to the bench to fold the dark red cloth neatly and hug it gently. The urge to pee stung sharp and sudden as she left the room. There was a sound to her left.

  A stream?

  Astra followed it to another frame liberated from its door. Peeking inside revealed Ruby-Eyes as the source, facing a corner relieving herself. Standing.

  Standing, relieving herself - himself - directly into a crack in the corner beneath a window, so that his water escaped to the exterior wall.

  Ruby-Eyes was actually a boy! Probably? Astra had read him wrong completely because he was so pretty.

  A thought.

  Astra had no idea what her own face looked like, but her hair was long, her voice a child’s. Her gender at the moment was entirely assumed from how she presented herself. Despite her frustrating circumstance of having the ‘wrong’ parts again she could simply refuse to be seen as a boy this time. At all costs. Astra had no idea what kind of people Ruby-Eyes came from. Did they have genders? Were they patriarchal? Most human societies were, but was Ruby-Eyes even human? He’d fed on her blood.

  Was Astra even human?

  That wasn’t as important as how she wanted to be seen. She didn’t want to be forced to be a boy again, no matter the cost. She had to begin now, with Ruby-Eyes, and that meant not letting him see her parts.

  Assuming she had not been seen while she was unconscious. She was wearing bottoms beneath the robe, she could only assume Ruby-Eyes had not removed them.

  A girl-child that had never seen a boy urinate might react with shock, correct? Astra was a decent liar. A necessary skill she’d had to develop to escape harassment, or worse. Guilt assailed, she discarded it. Most of her life she’d hid who she was for the sake of others. This time she was putting herself first, beginning right now.

  Astra yelped as if she’d just walked in on Ruby-Eyes. The boy flinched and looked over his shoulder. She made sure her eyes were wide with surprise before she fled back down the hallway and waited for him to finish up.

  The stream stopped. Astra crept back to peek into the room. Ruby-Eyes had moved to a crevice of broken stone that had collected rain water from outside to rinse his hands.Then he turned and spotted her as he wiped his hands on his robe.

  She made a show of flinching back into the hall. Ruby-Eyes said several things that sounded something like amused dismissal. Then he was out there with her and pointing into the room. As if he knew she must need to go.

  Astra approached that corner making a face, then looked back to Ruby-Eyes, who had already retreated down the hallway.

  Yeah, she could make it work. Just don’t let Ruby-Eyes accidentally see her and he’d never try to treat her like a boy right? It would be easy. Questions of how to handle this in the future she dismissed. Patience and persistence would award opportunities.

  Astra finished and wrapped herself up tight, it wasn’t that cold up here in the sunlight, but the more yers between herself and discovery the better. She joined Ruby-Eyes in the hall.

  Sunlight. Ruby-Eyes had grown fangs. He’d fed on her like a vampire yet stood in the diffused light from the clouds unbothered. Astra realized with a jolt that it was silly to base her assumptions on fictions from her previous being.

  Two colorless fingertips touched the shoulder of her dress. Astra strained and saw blood, bck and dry. He knelt to turn her head for a direct look at where he’d bitten her.

  Questions, raging and impotent in her head. Her heart sank as she watched the boy turn and walk down the hallway, stopping only upon realizing she wasn’t following obediently.

  Ruby-Eyes returned to her with a sigh. He kneeled, a thoughtful expression on his immacute face. He tapped his chest lightly then slowly sounded out an introduction. Another tap came when he repeated the st part. His name. It was preceded by something so long that she was sure there was a title.

  Astra blinked at him. Rubi-Eyes tried again, this time slower. It didn’t help.

  “Ru.. bi,” she said, the sound of it easy enough for her mouth to form. He frowned at that like it displeased him.

  “Rubi,” she repeated with a smile, touching a pointed finger to his chest lightly. He ughed at her obstinance, directed a point her way.

  Astra swallowed hard and tried very hard to sound out her own name.

  “Asa.. As-ta,” that she couldn’t manage ‘tra’ was maddening.

  “Asta?” Ruby-Eyes repeated. She shook her head, vehement.

  “Astorera… AZDRA!”

  “Asdra?”

  “Aztra!” She corrected.

  Epiphany in Rubi’s expression. “Astra,” he said, certain.

  Astra nodded as she echoed, “Aztra.”

  It hurt her mouth and throat to talk. As if this body had never done it before and each effort was a strain. Tears threatened, though she couldn’t say exactly why. She was overwhelmed? She was scared? Tired? Astra felt her face crumple.

  Rubi’s beatific eyebrows rose at her dismayed expression. He tried another reassuring smile as he offered his hand, Astra found herself taking it almost automatically.

  Rubi

  It hurt how much Astra looked like Letizia. Even her eyes were that same glittering limpid blue. A pang of jagged grief hit his guts every time they met. Rubi didn’t want this constant reminder that he’d left his sister’s desiccated corpse in the hollow light of the sanctuar.

  This girl, Astra, could barely speak. Letizia had been an obvious genius from her earliest years. Many had espoused her as a prodigy in all things. She had possessed an intellect that frightened some adults and she had never shied from employing it for her own mischievous amusement.

  Yet, Letizia never talked down to Rubi even though he’d turned out simply admirable in wit, talent, and dedication. In any other family he would have been impressive, but with her as his sister? It had never really bothered him that he wasn’t as great, but how people acted about it certainly had. Sometimes they gave him looks of outright pity. Was it really so bad to be out-shined by an older sibling?

  Rubi had only ever bmed those idiots for it, never Letizia herself. He hadn’t even known he was supposed to feel bad until he’d been told as much by a cssmate.

  Letizia’s face, frequently smiling, teasing, frowning when he was frustrated or beaming when he was successful. Only yesterday they’d all gone under. Letizia first, smiling, unafraid, confident that all would be well. The memory so fresh Rubi could see it against his eyelids.

  He could hear her ugh at his worry, see her eyes gently slide into repose that was not death or sleep but instead a halting. A preservation beneath gss.

  His turn came minutes ter. Mother helped him y down even though he hadn’t been small in some time. Her hand graced his cheek. Rubi did his best not to look fraught as their eyes met. Her normally flinty and dispassionate eyes softened with love and a hint of worry.

  It was the st thing he recalled.

  Then he’d been awakened by this strange little girl, Astra. It was a name he wasn’t familiar with despite having been briefed about everyone that went down into the sanctuar alongside him.

  Everyone.

  All dead now, without exception their faces gone still and gray. Lips pulled back and shriveled obscenely, paper-dry from teeth to exposed gums. Eyes sunk deep. The peek of color between the lids, cloudy. Wrong.

  He wished he hadn’t seen Letizia like that. Hadn’t seen any of them like that. Worse, in his grief he’d lifted the gss and clung to her. The horror of her too-light, paper-dry, yet somehow musty-smelling flesh on his hands and against his cheek would haunt him forever.

  How could he have walked away from her body without hugging her goodbye? Without telling her he loved her? Without kissing her brow? What if he’d not had the chance at all to do that?

  No, it wasn’t a mistake. Even though the feel of her corpse crawled about him like relentless insects searching for a way to get inside. It wasn’t a mistake.

  A twitch from within Rubi’s clenched fingers and a quiet squeak of pain brought him back to the present. He’d squeezed Astra’s hand too hard.

  “I’m sorry,” Rubi said, blinking, even though she wouldn’t understand him. Her eyes haunted, but he was gd too that he could chase away the cloudy death that polluted the memory of his sister.

  His eyes found the tiny wounds, barely a day into healing, at the crook of her neck. That was Rubi’s doing.

  “…Rubi,” she murmured, like a baby that was just learning to talk even though Astra looked as if she were eight or nine. Her little brow knit with worry for him. As if this child he’d harmed - even if he’d done it to save them both - had any business worrying about him at all.

  It put a stone in his chest.

  “Why do you call me that? What does it mean?” There was a panic in him, deep down, he knew it was the source of the stupid sharpness in his tone. He had to be more like Letizia.

  Astra only stared up at him, uncomprehending. She shook his hand gently as if to offer some apology or comfort. It was strange that she did not seem nearly as discomfited as he was despite the fact that she’d nearly died in the night.

  Fighting off the umbra had taken so much blood.

  He bent for a moment to tighten the shawl around her tiny shoulders. Then he tugged her along by the hand again, toward the stair. It seemed all the city was ruined but he had to hope there was something left.

  Something? To keep them going? In this empty world centuries beyond his own time where the two of them might be the st remaining?

  They arrived at a stretch of windows, nearly gone. A cold breeze from the west told him that the storms were coming. Perhaps only weeks away.

  Rubi felt Astra slow. Her gaze on the city wide-eyed, curious, free of the memory of when it had once lived.

  “Where did you come from?” Rubi’s voice carried an accusatory edge even though he knew it was misdirected. Slipping like this made a fine spark on tinder.

  His aspect became frightful. Astra’s lip quivered with uncomprehending apologetic anxiety until she - no longer able to endure his gaze - dipped her chin to her chest, cowed, trying to speak a nguage that Rubi didn’t know and she had forgotten how to speak.

  Rubi lifted a hand to banish the expression, cajoling his face muscles by force. Though the act freed hot angry tears from his eyes. He was on the edge of shamefaced sobbing for his mother and sister and that was angering all on its own.

  What would Rubi do when he calmed? Lead the two of them where exactly? The idea that he could help himself here seemed ridiculous, let alone a little girl.

  “Rubi?” Astra’s hand and tiny voice tugged at his frayed edges. Rubi saw that she was looking up at him, pity in her eyes.

  That pity shoved Rubi not into tears but instead silent, staring rage. All those occasions he’d found himself wondering that he should feel badly for others pitying him needlessly only to face more from a dulrd child?

  Sparks became confgration, brilliant and instant. An urge to cast himself through the broken windows battled and quickly lost with the desire to sp Astra as hard as he dared. Rubi’s dangling hand flinched with the restrained intention.

  Astra had turned her gaze from him to a shard of window, oblivious. A curious babble and a gentle tap on the gss followed, it was a question. Her innocence at the edge of his fury robbed it of all oxygen and left him smoldering, shamed.

  “…Uuubi?” Her words came out now as broken pieces of stone with their fronts or ends missing. Her little fingertip tapped again on the gss.

  There, a direction. He could keep Astra safe and explore what ruin remained of their home. Teach her words. Feed them both with his alkemia and pneuma. Perhaps before long she could tell him where she came from. They could find proof that others lived. Storm season approached, but there was time to figure if there was a world that could be found again, for the two of them.

  Why had he wanted to strike Astra? He’d never felt such sudden and violent rage before. Rubi swallowed that down as best he could. He had to clear his throat to keep from retching.

  “Gss,” he said slowly, leaning to tap exactly where she had tapped. Her little face lit up when she got it on the third try.

  After that he taught Astra window, floor, dress, shawl, stone, and bird. Though the st had been mistaken with clouds at first because Rubi could not see what she had been pointing at exactly. There was a back and forth as he sorted out if she meant to know the word sky instead. Through all of it Astra was patient and did not exhibit any of the frustration typical of a child her age. Each word, repeated several times as well as she could until it tired her, then she returned to them minutes ter to ensure she had it right. She hadn’t missed yet.

  They descended the building. Along the way she learned stair and door. Confusion between bench and sit slowed them, resolving only when she pulled them both down on the former and said the word correctly at the same time.

  The manner that she approached this was curiously childlike and not so. Methodical and deliberate, yet unreservedly joyful and proud. Her mood was infectious to say the least, but by the time they were out on the avenues of weathered stone he could tell that she was becoming exhausted. Astra held her cheeks now as if it pained her to repeat the word street.

  “Enough,” he said with a gentle finality. His mien conveyed. Astra narrowed her brow in defiance, so he pressed his palms against her cheeks to make light of it.

  Letizia had done this when he’d been small.

  Astra nodded before pouting in an exaggerated way that clearly meant she was hardly put off. Rubi ughed when he released her. Astra was ughing too.

  Astra

  While the city was a ruin it was hardly without interesting things to see. It took her running off only once to have a look at some orange lichen-like substance growing on the leeward side of building foundations and cracked stone before Rubi grabbed her hand tight and refused to let go.

  It was a spirited, excited feeling that had her run down the avenue before she realized it was happening. Astra had forgotten what it felt like to be a child.

  She felt bratty, experimentally wiggling her fingers in Rubi’s grip. He responded with something between an assurance and a reprimand.

  Astra knew she shouldn’t push too hard. Rubi was older, but still not an adult. It was easy to forget that as she was now. Easier than she thought to keep up the fake-child act.

  Thinking of herself as a ‘fake-child’ caused a sort of agonized swelling in her chest. A rotten feeling that cowed the wild impulse. Astra stopped needing to restrain herself.

  Rubi led them to the remains of a park. A broken outline of what might have been fencing or a low wall drew a square with notched corners at an intersection of four buildings. Short, tatty grass poked through the stone here and there, crowding together in the pces where bushes, trees, or flower-beds used to grow. There were benches that were more or less whole arranged around a surprisingly intact mural.

  It was a stunning mosaic, precisely cut and neatly arranged tiles in varying shapes. Although most were intact, nearly all color had faded. A pale yellow arrangement lingered to portray sun beams emanating from a focal point.

  Astra slowed for a closer look, heart falling when Rubi dragged her along until she realized he only meant to stop on a bench at the opposite side. Rubi conjured for them cups of water and mealy bricks that tasted so awful she had to be urged several times to finish one. She made a sort of lilting hum that she hoped would be taken as begrudging thanks. Rubi nodded.

  He went quiet as she busied herself looking over the cup that he had conjured. The material was something like a ceramic or pstic but held the full character of neither. It was seamless, perfectly formed.

  Distraction allowed the rotten feeling to ebb. She set the cup down beside Rubi to walk to the center of the mural, turning when Rubi said something to her that she, of course, did not understand but took to mean that she should not go far.

  She stared at him to see if there was anything else until he waved her off.

  Astra walked the perimeter, convinced that her first impression of sunbeams was correct. A perfectly bright and wonderfully round stone caught her eye. She bent to pick it up, turning it over in her palm where she could see that it was slightly oblong and pitted on one side. The odd desire to keep it lingered, but she had no pockets so could only hold onto it as she wandered.

  Rubi’s eyes did not leave her as she poked about the ruin. He seemed amused every time something caught her eyes and ughed when she returned to him hands cupped and overburdened with curiosities.

  He taught her pebble, which she was mostly sure about because she pointed at a rge chunk of rubble and repeated the word only for him to shake his head and provide another - but she did not know if it was rock or rubble or some word her tongue held no equivalent. Together they managed oval and round by way of the pebble and simple drawings on dirty stone. They sat together close on the bench as he ran his fingertip along the edge of the smooth pebble to teach her the word smooth and supplied rough when she ran her own fingertip on the broken edge of stone between them.

  More pointing gave way to edge, orange, sharp, eyes, ears, hair, mouth, nose.

  The st was managed through fits of ughter because Astra found it utterly hirious to poke him on the nose to watch his incredulous reaction. She couldn’t help but do it until he caught her hand and refused to let it go while giving her the most seriously disapproving look. Even that was funny in its own way.

  Astra didn’t feel like herself. Her childlike behavior was impulse, not pretense. She was having fun. Most surprising is that she recalled everything Rubi taught her earlier, without fail.

  She realized she was chewing on her lip rather aggressively only when Rubi tapped it with a gentle fingertip and scowled with that perfect pretty face of his. He taught her the word lips.

  A shake of her head and a point at the edge of the bench. “Edge,” she managed through her aching jaw. The way the word sounded in Rubi’s nguage felt pleasant. He nodded and echoed it back to her.

  Certainly needing a correction or reminder about any of these words he taught Astra would be expected, but to not forget a single one? She held a perfect list in her mind: gss, window, floor, dress, pebble, rubble, round, oval, shawl, bird, stair, door, street, bench, edge, orange, sharp, eye, ear, nose, hair, mouth, lips.

  Astra thrilled, despite the unnatural readiness that she was able to conjure the list. Rubi did not seem suspicious or frightened by her at least, but his surprise was renewed by what she did next.

  “Ruubi… shaaaarp, earrr,” she struggled to get the sounds right as she pointed at his elongated, distinctly elven, ear. He sucked in a barely perceptible breath as she then pointed to her own ear and said, “….rouuund ear-rr.” Astra stretched the vowels, stumbled over the second use of ear, but she was sure she had the right of it.

  Rubi’s face confirmed, unnecessary yet satisfying. He considered, then pced a hand atop her head. With her eyes following his wrist Rubi lifted the hand from her head slowly, parallel to the top of her head. Then he spoke a word.

  Astra understood. Rubi was telling her that it would come when she grew up. She could not be sure what the equivalent word or phrase to her own nguage he was using. Grow-up? Come of age? Adolescence? These concepts evaded pointing.

  Her rumination broke when Rubi poked the tip of her ear through her hair. She made a half-hearted attempt at spping his hand away, then darted from the bench to the edge of the mural.

  From there she watched Rubi lift the cup and dissolve it to nothingness.

  Excitement tingled to the edge of Astra’s fingertips. It would take patience to arrive at the words she needed to ask about magic.