Raven RAVEN It's cold. And silent. And dark. I am as weightless as a thought, as a shadow underwater. The only thing that gives me substance is the sense of filling up with. something. Something thick and powerful and inhuman, unearthly. I want to squirm away from it but there is nothing to squirm with.

All I am is a selection of verbs: to fill, to grow, to change, to perfect. It's as though I'm being rebuilt from scratch. Days pass like this. Lifetimes. A lonely wisp of nothing floating in a sea of. what's left of my mind searches for the word. Obedience? Duty? I'm being entwined in something, as though my nerves are unraveling and tangling into some idea of. I can't see it.

I can't hear it or smell it or taste it. It's nothing, a void, like the space left behind when something is lost. I can feel its emptiness, feel it trying to consume me, to ensnare me. But there's something else resisting it, something stubborn and intractable, something human . Regret. And the idea that not every broken thing is unfixable. In the darkness, I sense someone with me, and though this someone is no more substantial than I am, they feel heavy, like tears of grief or remorse. Tiny yet galactic.

"Hello?" I'm not sure how I say it. I don't seem to have a mouth. The answer comes back to me as an impression of force on matter--the particles of air vibrating from sound, the light flickering on August's hands moving as he signed. Memory. Oh. August. Get me out of here. I'm afraid.

August?.