A smattering of applause.

“Another success, your rate remains impeccable Michael.”

Cradling the ashes in his hands, he stroked them gently. It was a moment of contemplation before his inevitable return to surgical efficiency. Producing a sleek black canister from his lab coat, he interred the remains in their final resting place in one smooth motion. He had done this before. It was the same as before. And like so many times before they asked him again.

“What’s your secret?”

Michael always replied the same way.

“It’s something like love.”

He surveyed the rest of the room, she had been the only success. The rest splayed their broken bodies across their seats, limbs contorted in every possible direction. It was easy to tell, because she had been so peaceful and so still. The fire had seeped into her veins and she hadn’t even made a sound.

He knew she would make it.

He was sure.

So he would deal with the remainder, because he wasn’t sure for the rest of them. He bore the fruits of that uncertainty, because they had given him their everything. He walked to the nearest one. The nearest corpse. The newest dead. He straightened the boy’s hair, because he remembered he didn’t like it messy. He dabbed the boy’s eyes shut, because he had gone to his rest. He straightened his limbs and gathered him into his arms.

He remembered his name, but he couldn’t speak it.

“Prepare them all for Sublimation, remember the respect they are due.”

“Don’t you wish to know where she fell?”

He shook his head.

Where she was going, he couldn’t follow.

---

“Which Frame did she fall into?”

Michael never looked, but the others were always curious.

“It’s a shame, he had such high hopes.”

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The gathering perked their heads up.

“The Theatre of Giants.”

---

She didn’t mind falling.

It was dark, but she had never minded the dark.

The dark was close, and it was warm. Almost like flesh against flesh, the dark swaddled her.

“What will it be like?”

Michael shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know Elaine, I’ve never been.”

She remembered pouting, crossing her arms and letting out a huff. He tousled her hair, bending down so the cool black of his mask was at the center of her vision.

“But I can tell you that you’ll see wondrous things. Some of them might be scary, but they’ll all be wondrous.”

---

Elaine didn’t know when she landed, it felt nothing at all like landing. She simply popped into place, as though she had always been here. It was an odd feeling, the sensation of snapping into existence fully formed. She felt the change in texture from smooth to slightly rough as she traced the line of her collarbone. One, two, three up to twelve.

She felt above her heart, thirteen.

Morningstar, you can see the light.

It took her several moments to escape her reverie. Climbing to her feet she spun in place, and all she saw were vast shapes consuming the horizon. She remembered being told stories of mountains, but she had never heard of mountains that moved. Their every step set the earth to rumbling, Elaine could barely keep her feet.

This wasn’t a place where humans were meant to exist.

It conjured a primordial feeling in her breast. Was this the feeling when man first saw lightning, all awe and fear and splendor? The breath of each colossus was howling wind, the beat of their heart an endless drum.

This wasn’t a place where humans were meant to exist.

It was a place for giants to chart their aimless and never-ending course, plodding across a tract of land as vast as they were. She was dust and sand, existing at a scale that was beneath notice. This was a world built for things beyond her ken, but still it was just as he had promised. Michael had never once lied to her, she believed it with all her heart. That he had always been smiling, and that she would see wondrous things.

What was this if not wondrous?

Her laugh became caught on the breath of giants, lost in their unyielding time. Motes of light rose with her voice, matching the tune of her spirit. She followed the pinpricks dutifully, tracing their path as they blinked in and out of existence.

She could see the light, where would it lead her?