The planet had split and half of it had broken away; the city was resting on the clean edge.

The towers of infinite height were made of inexplicable amounts of ivory, of dark stone, of black shining obsidian, of bone. They had sat and eroded there for thousands of years, against the sky, where men had found them and taken them for their own. Gilded lines and designs of ancient writing were marked plain upon the sides, down along the broad connecting skyways, but no one paid them attention as they went about their business. Their language was lost to the mists a thousand feet below.

Eamon Cregan sat in his loft, painting and listening to the birds which flew up from the depths of the city to rest on his terrace. Sera rested at the far end of the loft upon her daybed. She was afire, soft orange flames of sleep floating across her skin. Always afire. Cregan rose and stood in her archway, leaning, gazing. She woke and turned, covering herself and smiling with her eyes up at Eamon.

“Marry me,” he whispered.