Lethe sat on the step of the gazebo, kicking her feet and listening to the world beyond the fence. She was only allowed to play in the yard where Betha could keep an eye out. She could only listen to the children playing soccer in the alley as the first stars sparkled to life overhead.

They wouldn’t let her play anyways. She was little and strange and weird. Worse, she always knew where to run to get the ball, making the big kids look bad!

“Not my fault,” she grumped to her toes. The ball went to where it was kicked; she just knew how to see where things would be!

Lethe was weird, though. Sometimes her head felt too full. Memories and thoughts and echoes and questions all dueled in her brain until she thought her cup would overflow.

All those re-in-car-na-tions, searching and never finding. She wondered if it was against the Rules to ever find. She wanted to ask Alisandra, but she couldn’t juggle her big-thoughts and her little-thoughts at the same time and they jumbled up something fierce when she tried.

Besides, Alisandra had probably forgotten too. It had been such a long time since they’d been grownups together. Now the angel only saw the little Lethe.

Hard to blame her. Three-year-old girls weren’t supposed to know words like reincarnation. They were supposed to worry about dolls and songs and clapping games. They wet the bed because they were little – not because they had a nightmare of their life and death on Eden.

She sighed, bored. Alone again with her too-big thoughts. There were still weeks and weeks before she would meet Daddy again!

Overhead, one star pulsed a brilliant gold. It floated against the wheel of the heavens, darting through constellations, pulsing one-two one-two.

Satellite? Lethe wondered. But none of the grownups ever mentioned satellites. She didn’t think they had those here. Or maybe they did and it was a grownup secret?

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Staring at it, her toes warmed. She perked to the scent of honeysuckle and fresh rain. Games of hide and seek where she would raise mountains to hide under or turn herself into a passing cloud.

A time beyond Rules; a place beyond Reach; the beginning before beginnings where everyone’s first memory the gentlest of waking.

Where she would make visits to her very special friend–

“Good evening, Lethe,” Sebastian Mishkan called, admitting himself into the ratty yard.

Lethe jumped, her thoughts thrown into a jumble again. She glanced between the angel and the sky…

…but that funny star was nowhere to be seen.

She had imagined it, right? A daydream from Before. Nobody could glimpse Above from Below, except through the Gate with its ice-cold durance.

Annoyed, Lethe wrinkled her nose at the Mishkan butler. “You did that on purpose!”

The stupid witness smoothing all the wrinkles as he arranged his board!

The angel dug in his messenger bag. “Any stimulus is enough to disrupt such fragile recollections.”

Quite common for small children to remember their Before

You will grow, and forget, and be happier for it

He gave the child a pat on the head as he passed. Knocking, he delivered several letters to Betha.

As he returned past the gazebo, Lethe asked, “Why’d you give Ali the Dew at Dawn letter?”

“To aid her in her quest.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t give her the other one.”

The one written by the bad man that orchestrated the sales for his own profit and pleasure right under Ali’s nose.

“It would not aid her quest,” the angel answered.

“Says who?!” huffed Lethe. Why are you so bossy?!

He patted her on the head again and saw himself out.

Beyond the fence, mothers began to call for their children as the last light failed. Even this, the safest enclave in Sevensborough, had few lights in the alleys.

Betha called for Lethe too. “Come on in, sweetie! You’ll catch cold!”

When Lethe remained on the step, the old woman peeked into the yard. She spotted the child scowling and asked, “What’s wrong, dear?”

“He stinks…”

Betha laughed. “The old postman? A little touched but hardly foul! Come now.”

She took Lethe’s hand, steering the child towards dinner and little-thought.

But Lethe dragged her feet, staring after Sebastian.

She alone saw the roiling miasma that seeped from the ground in his wake.