Page 81 of Carousel

She’s by the glass, watching what looks like a brown, oversized balloon on its side in the sky. It does a slow loop of our ship. Through the quirky ship’s enormous window, I can make out a large group of people wearing long red robes. They’re holding instruments – horns, trumpets, accordions, drums – and many are waving at our ship. More and more soldiers and pilots are coming up here to watch and wave back at them.

Eventually, the ship boards The Emperor via a docking pod, but I stay by the glass, mesmerised, because there are new ships arriving or departing every few minutes. At one point, the sky is filled with ships sailing in different directions.

I turn to look the other way – and see Cosmer from across the deck.

Why? Why right now?

He hasn’t seen me yet. At a distance, under the sun that beats down at us from above the dome, he looks just like the boy who was always kind to me. My friend.

Of its own accord, my hand lifts a fraction – then I force it down.

I scold myself. What was I about to do? Wave at him? Like an infant?

Cosmer has seen me. I can’t read his expression. He’s just still. Just watching me, watching him.

Are there even people around us anymore? It doesn’t feel like it. It’s like there’s only Cosmer, and the ships, and the glass, and the sky, and me.

And though we’re protected from the elements and there’s no breeze here, I feel an unnerving tingling, as if there is – a cold one – blowing over my body. There’s a specific word for it in Rhavnan, elyan. I remember Old Mother used to say the sensation meant there was a version of you in the future, thinking of the you in that exact moment. Maybe that’s what will happen. I will look back on right now with fondness, or…

Something else.

It’s a stalemate.

And I have no idea what to do to break it.

I want to run to him. How could you give up your Sky Provision for me?

I want to turn my back on him.

You let me think you were dead.

And there are things that are different about you.

And there are things that are different about me.

I’m so close to making a decision.

But it turns out I don’t need to make one.

Because he does it for me.

He’s started walking purposefully towards me.

I start walking purposefully towards him. He’s all I can see.

We meet each other halfway, almost perfectly in the centre of the deck.

“Cosmer,” I say, up at him.

“Ara,” he says, down to me.

I glance around. “Where’s D⁠—”

He talks over me. “At his first corrective instruction.”

Of course.

I try not to let those words bother me.