x chapter: “The Throat”. From any near distance there are markers, erratic but steadily coalescing with the void. Dust, heat, a corona around the horizon’s arc. The effect is comforting in a way, beautiful and beckoning. Like a halo. From greatest distance, the planet is just as it had been, as it will be until the parent sun takes it back. So to understand what has died here, what has been found in the black, what this room in this corridor declares to separate itself from the parade of corpses before and later, it is necessary to go behind it. Beside and afar, where the voices remain. The untallied. It isn’t that they deserved or loved more, but with them came a certainty. They did deserve. They did love. What Black Narcissus has replaced them with, who can say? Faith has crushed lesser things. So within the veil, outside the stream, safe at last, the Throat opens. Beyond, a shock of stars. Nothing more.