Those tears, too—a symptom of the rot. There were other words for it, of course. The children, in their ignorance or innocence, called the affliction age, but in this, as in so much else, they erred. Age was not decrepitude. Tan’is himself was old, hundreds of years old, and yet his sinews remained strong, his mind nimble—if needed, he could run all day, all night, and the better part of the next day.

No; time passed, stars swung through their silent arcs, seasons gave way one to the next, and yet none of these, in and of itself, brought harm. It was not age but rot that gnawed at the children, consuming their bowels and brains, sapping strength, eroding what meager intelligence they once possessed. Rot, and then death.

“They all die….That means it doesn’t matter. None of it matters.”


“See, that’s the wrong way of looking at it. Since we all go to the same place in the end, the moments we spent with each other are the only things that do matter. The times we helped each other.”