He felt a kinship with one of the five. One of them was a prize; something the man, Atlas, had recently won. He felt a bit smug over it. Two of them were a set, they came together. They didn’t like chasing each other’s tails like stars in orbit but too bad, that’s what they were. One was a vacancy, a question, the edge of a narrow cliff. Another was … the answer, like an echo, though she couldn’t quite see why. She tried to see their faces clearly but couldn’t; they warped in and out of view, beckoning her closer.
