Our village was a miracle.

We always called it a village, though it was made up of only one central structure and a few other, smaller buildings that might have been homes. A thousand years ago it must have stretched farther across the plains, with hundreds of gelflings living within the walls of its many parts. We have only rebuilt a small part of it, but it is enough.

Jen and I choose not to live there. It seems strange to live in such a holy place. And we prefer the company of the podlings, who also seem to feel that it would be wrong to make their homes in our rebuilt village. But we spend hours there when we are not working in the gardens or tending the nebri.

Our village has pathways of white stone mixed together with crawling vines. Restored pillars hold up roofs of wood and vine, letting sun shine through in the daytime and starlight shine through in the night. Everywhere things grow and live—brightly colored plants and flowers, birds, insects. It is a haven for all who lost so much.

Still the most beautiful thing for me is the Wall of Prophecy, with its many symbols and pictures that Jen has taught me to read. My tongue still stumbles, my learning not as quick as the younger podlings, but I persevere. It is my tongue that told our story, and his hand that carved it, on a clean space of stone next to the prophecy that told of the conjunction. What was sundered and undone has at last become whole again.

For the first time I begin to feel myself aging. I never learned, nor did Jen, how long a gelfling lives—longer than the podling but not as long as an UrSkek, I would imagine. I see age in Jen as well, in small ways—tiny lines on his skin, a slightly slower walk.

One day he brings me to the Wall of Prophecy. He leads me by the hand and does not speak, as is his custom.

He places my hand on the carvings in the wall, the ones he himself made so delicately. I nod and smile at him, but he presses my hand lower, and I realize that he his pointing to something new, and his hand is shaking slightly. There are new symbols—three lines' worth—below our own story.

"Will you read?" he asks me quietly.

My lips stumble over the unfamiliar symbols, and Jen helps me, filling in a sound or a word here and there. We read together, our voices making strange song out of his words.

My mind is still unaccustomed to reading, and so there is a strange pause between my mouth speaking the words and the understanding of them. And then the understanding settles over me, and I begin to weep for this gift that he has given me in stone, Jen who so seldom speaks, the only one like me in the world, has given me words.

He embraces me and we lean against that stone, the last of our kind, wrapped together in the shadow of our world, a life carved in flesh and rock. It is all that we will leave behind, and it is enough.

The End