Excerpt: Second Sun

Her first memories were of twinkling, star-kissed nothings; white absences in a looming negative space. Sounds of cold, tinkling locks of languid, pale expanses, burning frozen waste upon her lips, tasting fields of fading grey sheets, expanding out forever. If she paused long to think as far back as her mind would will it, she would envision the spectres of freakishly tall, old men, black as coal, with thousands of pincer-barbed fingers needling into a blue-black abyss. And, in haughty contrast, a heartbeat: soft, warm, and reassuring, nestled within a swatch of fur and leather. The longest-stretching days of her life were spent moving, and her tiny, hungry feet had their first nibbles of ground in the dead of winter, upon frost-glazed powder. Back then, people were dancing circles of faces on impossibly-tall iron stilts, grinning warm smiles, cooing backwards-speak, saving their solemn gazes for the sky and whatever was in her opposite direction. Through the thick, pink faience of time, most of the details of the Nomad Days were washed out in clouds around the edges, too difficult, and not important enough, to dwell upon into clarity.