Now-Age is all that lies beyond the blood-remit of THAT WAR and the time before—THAT WAR is the line that delineates past from present. As to the future; it doesn’t exist—THAT WAR destroyed it before it had a chance to bloom, fried its petals from its stem and carried on burning. Now-Age is all that remains. Now-Age is the new eternity loop.

This is what I thought of as we met the return of the Deezle’s search party. It was our hypothesis—the subject of those first discussions between Deezle and I when at long last the silent flechettes stopped falling and we knew the horrors of THAT WAR were at an end. Holed-up in the ENCAMPMENT with only each other’s company and an abandoned stash of army-issue narcotics to occupy our minds, we made do as best we could. These discussions would form the spine of our burgeoning philosophy. More than this, they would eventually spur Deezle on to take those first steps onto the Hollow Sands in search of a path to our colony’s cradle—to seize the present, take ownership of the Now-Age, saddle the rabbit and ride it into infinity.

The looks on the faces of the colonists as they trickled into the Empty Bowl were all I needed to know who lay concealed beneath the wrapping of white muslin, borne on a stretcher of finest scrap like the body of a lonely monarch returned from an ill-fated hunt.

“Are they…?” I asked one of the stretcher bearers, feeling the breath leave my lungs before I could pronounce the fateful final word.

“No,” they said, shaking their head. “But they are very badly injured—comatose, in fact.”

I stepped aside and held Elzeed and my child to me as the stretcher passed—hope, fragile, inchoate and stunted though it was, had bloomed suddenly at the stretcher bearer’s words, though I knew better than to let it fly high, where it might easily be struck down by the wind and rain and lightning of further misfortune. We followed behind at a respectful distance, as did much of the colony and, when the stretcher was borne into the infirmary, they waited outside while we entered.

“The Splinter Forest is more dangerous than we first suspected,” said Karim—ANSEX like myself, Karim had been assigned as a field medic for the expedition. As they spoke, they busied themselves by the sink, sterilising their hands and arms up to the crook of their elbows with the pink soap we manufactured from vegetable fat and hibiscus flowers. “The trees look like regular trees, but one touch and they shatter like glass—most of the others were lucky; a few cuts here and there, a severed tendon, some superficial grazes, but Deezle…”

“,tluaf ym saw tI” said Esor, of the new generation.

They stepped forwards timidly, head hung in shame and guilt. As they came, they cradled a bandaged hand to their breast, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

“.yrros os m’I …I .gninthgil diuqil ekil devom yeht rof ,deeps hcus nwonk reven evah I—em gnidleihs ,em fo pot no saw Deezle .roolf eht no saw I wenk I gniht txen eht dna kcarc ythgimla na draeh I esuaceb hcnarb a dezarg evah tsum daeh ym dna meht eit ot tneb I—deitnu emoc dah secal ym deciton I neht tub ,tup yats ot deerga I .yltcefrep noitcnuf eroc sti slifluf llits taht enihcam nekorb a ekil ,ecarg drawkwa na htiw gnivom ,gnorw eot a gnittup reven ,detsixe thguoht ton dah I spag neewteb gnirehtils ,drawrof deunitnoc yehT .hguorht yaw rehtona su dnif dna kcab elcric dluow yeht taht—tiaw ot em dlot Deezle .ytefas fo revils erab a ot nwod yaw eht gniworran sehcnarb wol ,seert retnilps ynam neewteb dnuow hcihw htap tluciffid a ot emac yehT .ytrap ruo fo tnorf eht ta detuocs ohw ,Deezle dniheb gniwollof saw I” they said, tearfully.

“.emit suoregnad a si egA-woN ehT .dlrow suoregnad a si sruo ,enod dna revo si RAW TAHT hguoht—sruoy fo tluaf on saw tI” I said, gently taking their injured hand in mine. “,hsuh ,dlihc ,hsuH”

Elzeed then stepped forward and Esor’s eyes turned to them fearfully.

“,Elzeed ,yrros m’I” said Esor.

Elzeed nodded but made no reply. Instead, they took Esor’s bandaged hand from my own and led them away to a nearby medical station where they began gently unwrapping the cloth bindings. My child followed close behind and assisted Elzeed by preparing a fresh dressing for Esor’s wound.

Karim, having finished their preparations, then addressed me.

“You may not want to be here for this,” they said, gesturing to the muslin.

I shook my head sadly.

“We are survivors of THAT WAR,” I reminded them. “Nothing we witness in the Now-Age can compare to the atrocities of that dead past.”

Karim nodded, teeth gritted and I realised their warning was not so much for my sake, but their own, for they had doubtless seen what befell Deezle first-hand and surely knew the dire state of their injuries.

They hesitated and then drew back the muslin.

Deezle’s head, neck and back were riddled with shards of vitrified wood, in a sinister parody of acupuncture. Most were small—mere splinters of the splinter tree that felled them—but one, long, glassy spine protruded from the back of their head like a crystalline horn, as if it were a physical manifestation of Deezle’s already mythic status amongst the colonists; an extraneous embellishment to their character, added long after their passing to further distance them from mere mortals.

“I’ll need to remove it if we stand any chance of saving them,” said Karim.

A pair of forceps were fitted around the largest of the shards, struggled to find purchase on its gleaming facets, slipped. Karim readjusted them, sweat glistening on their brow. This time, the forceps’ teeth bit and bound with a gritty crunch. Delicately, as if easing a tooth from a socket, Karim drew the shard from Deezle's head. As it came, I watched in a mix of horror and fascination as countless tendrils, fine as spun glass, followed in its wake, clinging to its surface. Even as I watched, they seemed to grasp the shard tighter, coiling around it like hundreds of tiny snakes traversing a tree branch, as if they hoped to return the shard to the exposed cavity in Deezle’s skull. Evidently, Karim was as horrified as I, but they did not falter, drawing the shard ever further from the wound, fighting against the strange tendrils that emerged from Deezle’s head. When, at last, it was clear of the gaping hole it created, the tendrils seemed to flee Deezle’s skull en masse, latching to the shard, wrapping themselves around it, binding to it. Karim, disgusted by the experience, quickly placed the shard, tendrils and all, into a kidney dish. For a moment, the shard rocked in the bottom of the dish, the curious, almost peristaltic movements of the tendrils animating it, and then, there was a loud crack, as of ice-cubes in a glass of lukewarm water, and the shard split into two, then four, then eight before seeming to stabilise around this most auspicious of numbers.

Karim and I exchanged a look before turning back to Deezle where they lay on the operating table. Their breathing, which had been so shallow as to be almost imperceptible, grew deeper.

Karim breathed a sigh of relief and mopped their forehead with the sleeve of their overalls.

“I think we’re through the worst of it,” they said. “Obviously it’s not over yet, but if I can get them through the night, it’s likely they’ll recover.”

But I was not listening. I was looking at the shards that lay in the bottom of the kidney dish—in the moment of fracture, the tendrils had become embedded within the crystalline matrices of each shard, forming strange sigils of black veined crystal.

I was looking at the shards and wondering if I too contained these strange tendrils.