You’d think Redana would be unstoppable right now, wouldn’t you? Charging about hither and yon, getting everything shipshape, asking people seven times a day if they’re excited about reaching Gaia, making a list of everything she’s going to do once she’s wished for the freedom of all humanity, and then dragging her pack to a tea party?

Sure, you’d think that. But while she [i]is[/i] throwing herself into the work of getting everything shipshape, it’s a return to being an engineer. Everything in the ship got taken apart and put back together, and someone’s got to make sure everything got put back together the right way, map out where everything is, and start dimming the engine’s output so that they don’t slam heartily into Gaia at the other side of the system. There are more Silver Divers following her than you might expect.

Stories spread about our Redana, after all. What she did on Portugal. What she did in the heart of her wife. How they slew a monstrous hydra of the underworld together. How she stole her own guard and the heart of her own maid and sailed across the stars accompanied by pirates and songbirds.

Can you blame her for trying to learn something new?

Well, partially new. The Silver Divers had taught her how to make quick sketches of enemy-held positions from memory, how to erase those sketches just as quickly, how to make a topographical map by eyeballing it. They didn’t teach her this thing which she is trying to do.

She draws.

Not well. She makes faces at the gulf between what she is trying to depict and the reality of it outside. She has to take rides on her horse, to look down at the tangled nightmare maze of what humanity once made of this comaratively far-flung rock, and then she must return and in her chambers put down onto the page what she remembers. Sometimes the lines are quick, an impression of the clutter, jagged lines implying the great press of weight upon itself. And sometimes the lines are not anywhere near what she wants, and she makes a face, and she tries again.

And she tries again.

And she tries again.

She should have been doing this the whole trip, something whispers in the back of her head. It’s too late to start now. One day she’ll have forgotten half of what’s happened to her. Maybe it’s already started. How would she know if it started?

That’s when new subjects start being incorporated. Sketchier, because she’s drawing from memory – from an impression. From what she remembers. The first person who comes out is blocky, mighty-armed, and has the kindest face she can put down onto the paper. The next has a beautiful shock of plumage and round cheeks. The heroines at the end of the world, with more attention lavished on their teaset rather than the reality of those daring pilots. A film reel. Owls and mice. Monsters. Broken and vivid robots.

None of them real. None of them accurate. All of them drawn from what she’s pulling out of herself as the [i]Plousios[/i] drifts towards an ending, as an apology for not saving them all earlier, for leaving people in her wake, for having her eyes on Gaia – which must be out there, somewhere, ahead of them all.