I am alive today, my dearest Liana, because of the mercy of my enemy. And with that act of mercy he bought me many more days and years to miss you.

I tell myself I’m writing this to warn you more than anything else, but I’m intelligent enough to suspect a more compelling reason. A selfish need to keep myself company with the illusion of your presence? For I do not know that you, like me, are still alive.

You appear in my mind so clearly, as if you stand in the wavering glow of this lantern beside which I write, velvet skin raked by shadow, eyes with flecks of the gray sea and then the jade forest, changing in the changing light. I remember the first time we stood naked together, waist deep in the river. The moon made the skin of your shoulders glow as we stared at each other; the forest and the riverbank and the laughter from the village all melted into a fog around you, an unimportant haze. Your eyes did not waver as I pushed against the soft young hairs at your groin. You said, "What do you think you’re doing with that thing?" and teeth emerged from behind your expanding smile. My stomach aches at the thought of it now.

We spent that night in a dream; a dream that continued in my mind on through the next day, until that afternoon when I was called by Geoffrey, the Elder. Do you remember how angry I was? He sat there in the den of his hut, surrounded by those strange machines he uses to read us and awaken us, and frowned at me. Five distinct lines deepened between his eyebrows. He stuck a finger in one ear and dug in the sprouting hairs there. "What do you think you’re doing, Kuyo?"

My mouth opened. I was about to ask him what he was talking about, but understanding was already boring its way through my confusion, and I’m sure my eyelids must have fluttered.

"There’s no future in this girl."

Most young men would never contradict the Elder, the mentor and leader of all our villages, but I had a special relationship with him ever since the rite of passage when I was nine. We were friends, this ancient, powerful man and I. "What are you talking about, Geo? I’m in love with Liana."

"If it’s love we’re talking about, then you definitely need to keep your pale white ass away from her, unless you can promise me you won’t reproduce."

That endless, pulling feeling that had been trembling in my stomach all day was hardening into a sharp rock. It went steady and the rest of my body started shaking.

"Don’t think I don’t see what’s been going on, Kuyo." He glowered at me with those thick white eyebrows, the nostrils of his wide nose flaring. "You’ve been paying attention to no one but this girl for over a year. The community needs you to mate elsewhere. Go ahead, spread your wild seed, but not with this girl. Remember your duty to the tribe. When the time comes for mating, I’ll help you choose the right women."

I cried against your side that night, your little nipple puckering under my palm. You wanted to know if the color of my skin was the problem, but I didn’t believe that to be so—Geo had told me enough times how my skin was trivial, an irrelevant trait from an earlier time. "It’s the plan Geo teaches us about," I told you. "We’re close, he says, so close he can taste it. The growing of humans back to their original glory and power, and recovering control of the city."

"If returning to the city means we can’t be together, Kuyo, then I want no part of it."\

PANVERSE ONE

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