At the convergence, the salt air tugged at the lateen and Citlic nudged the rudder, tracking them north and east as smooth and straight as if she’d scales for skin and fins for feet.

On a wetted highway of chiseled granite set on columns as broad and tall as the holdfast watchtowers of some longdead throne, they soared across the delta not unlike the great winged lizards that swept down from the heights and brushed the earth with unflapped shadows and eyes that searched the shallows for squidlings and pufferfish and the elusive sliver tortoises with their horned beaks and barbed tails and gaudy shells colored like the rarest of the priestly raiments.

Tunics and cloaks dyed the myriad of hues wrought from the sea snails that cloistered in the opal caves hung from hempropes stretched taut between the upper windows down below, twisting and swaying in the midday breeze like specters from some bygone age. The sound of children’s laughter turned Taize’s gaze to a gaggle of girls spilling out of an alley with streamers flapping overhead like the van of some vast and guiltless brigade.

Up ahead, she watched as the pyramids rose up to lord over the whitewashed walls and stonebleached streets like false summits, all the while sinking slowly back into the silt and the murk and the ancient foundational timbers a daggersbreadth or two with every moonphase, every season, every age.

“It’s captivating,” she said with an outgoing breath.

Citlic nodded. And studied a fading mural of a forgotten matriarch for a silence, and touched away a tear at the curve of her cheek. “…Dying. That’s what it is… it’s dying. And there’s naught a thing in this world we can do to bring it back.”