This is no stroll.

A neighborhood rises around me, stately forms of hundred-year-old Eastlakes shrouded in elms lining the quiet city street. The air is crisp; gusts of January malice sweep through my coat and I shiver—but dare not pause.

The cadence of my footsteps synchronizes with my heartbeat, every stride resounding like the crash of eternity’s gavel. What’s behind me is behind me. My eyes are fixed on the path ahead, staccato breathing, boots on the concrete, schthump schthump schthump. Pressing down the crumpled sidewalk. Hoping for another chance. But something is wrong.

Eleanor was right, of course. She and her celestial plottings, a lofty woman who dared accuse me of… slipping from the Firmament. Even now I feel it, the fingers of the earth falling away, my very footwear loosing itself and the telltale flit of an estranged shoelace against my ankle.

Violently, I kneel.

This moment will not be my undoing. I grasp the fallen strands and reunite them. For life. For tomorrow. Onward, I march.