I had found her past the nightmarkets, digging in dirt, finding something beneath the fermenting topsoil. As she cleaned it I saw a sculpted heirloom made of stone, swirls of rock with something glinting beneath. Nearby her partner raised spores from the leaves where they rested; said spores revolved in the low light; sparkling. They nodded to one another, she and she, and then to me as I stepped from the rotting, seething loom. They told me they could use me and I hadn’t heard that one; we were off, us three, to find whatever left us; to discover what had been buried. I felt the needs swim in my fingers, wanting to touch and harden them, but I wouldn’t. No one had stopped and asked me to join before. No one had seen in me anything of value. Where I walked the streets parted; where I sought ignored. Now we ventured more deeply, and at night they slept near me, though my skin was limestone and opaque. We couldn’t have been more disparate. No one would see us as we disappeared between. They would never know us until we were piled; gloaming, a heap of tissue, eating; bomen.