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Outside, you un-peg your wash that has been drying on the clothesline since morning.

The day is an ordinary early fall day.

Overhead and at zenith, the sun beats down on you, warming the bare skin of your forearms. And yet, a cold wind blows out of the east, the origins of which are from tall mountains. The wind goes through your thin skirt and swirls around your bare legs. A herald of the coming winter announcing itself in the goosebumps on your bare calves.

Earlier and over breakfast, you paged through the Almanac, which predicts a harsh winter.

But, you’re a scientist. You know you should pay no attention to this pseudoscience.

But you do.

You stand by the clothesline with your pegged trousers and shirts and bras and panties flapping in the wind. You push your hair back and you pull the over-sized sweater tighter over your shoulders.

The sweater was his.

And absentmindedly, your left hand runs over your groin. You worry your wedding band on your left ring finger with the thumb of your left hand.

Your belly is soft, the skin doughy from where she’d grown in you so long ago. You can’t blame all the softness on her. You know it’s your age, too. When you stand nude in front of the old faded Cheval mirror beside your bed, you see you no longer have the body of a young woman.

Rather, your body is one she’d helped form when you brought her into the world on a stormy night after Yama had arrived at the last minute and you were scared and didn’t want to give birth without him being there with you.

And Yama witnessed her birth. And he held your hand as she left your body and came into now and started crying and the midwife told you she was a girl and you were happy as was he and then the midwife put your daughter, bloody and warm from being inside you, on your bare body.

And you smelled her smell.

And Yama told you that you were both beautiful.

So long ago.

So very long ago.

When your breasts were heavy with your milk and your nipples would be chapped and ached from her nursing.

So long ago.

You look heavenward and you see how free the sky is of clouds on this fall day. And if it weren’t for the Stigmata above, the day would be bright.

But for the Stigmata.

You see the Stigmata’s massive black streaks of dustthat smear across all of the sky. And how the sun is sometimes diffused and obscured as the dust clouds pass between Earth and the sun.

And you feel the cold.

The Stigmata.

Once your life’s work. But now, since she went away (!), you are empty. You are a woman out of time. Out of place. A part of you has been taken from you. And you never recovered.

I was strong once.

And now, Fall comes early. You’re cognizant that this will be the last time you peg out the wash for a while.

A boom from far away.

The birds fly from the brush of the wide field that adjoins your family’s old pioneer house.

They pass over you.

Then, you see the rocket as it rises from the Yards north of you. A gleaming fire that’s leaving with multitudes of your species from the bounds of this dying place. Leaving before it’s too late.

A single tear washes down your cheek.

You reach into your dress pocket and find that old piece of paper Yama gave to you a decade ago. An ancient parchment of lined white paper with his distinctive scrawl.

He was unusual when it came to his old ways. That’s what you found attractive in him. Would write letters on paper.

The scientist and the soldier, the two of you would laugh together in his bed that would eventually become your bed and, with time, your marriage bed on which the two of you conceived her one sultry lazy Sunday afternoon.

And from the paper you read his words again for the thousandth time.

And you fold the paper back up and put it back into your pocket.

And a part of you regrets sending him away after her death.

He was in mourning too, but a mother’s mourning is, to you, more deep, more heartfelt, more devastating. Perhaps because she inhabited your body for a brief part of her life and fed from you. And your love. Your unquestioning love for her.

Or perhaps it was, or is, the guilt that still eviscerates you from knowing her death was your negligence.

Yama never said this. Never pointed this out. Told you over and over her death was a horrendous accident. And there was nothing either of you could have done to stop this.

The quality of mercy is not strained…

You wipe the tears from your eyes.

Above, the uncaring sun moves into the Phase II Area of the Stigmata.

You should get inside. The False Night will come soon. And the cold.

And the rocket’s roar is now a dull drone and its engine’s light fades in the sky as the world grows dark and the midday sun dims.

And you wonder if you’ve stockpiled enough food for the coming winter.

And a part of you no longer cares.

***

Once confined to the cell, they took Yama’s neural implants offline.

He resigns himself to this, expects this. The Ag Corps implanted them as part of his routine indoctrination.

On his own, he would have never been able to afford such technology.

Now in the small shielded prison cell deep in the Complex, he is alone with his memories. And emotions. Cut off from the wider world.

His vision slowly regresses as the implants no longer compensate, the small cell becomes blurry.

And he sits with his thoughts.

Earlier, the sergeant brought him his ancient notebook and writing stylus, which sits cold and unused beside him on the hard bed.

A voice explodes in the cell: “You have a visitor, inspector. Doctor Dodson.”

The door silently slides open.

Dodson enters the cell.

She hands him a small case. “I thought you might need them.”

He accepts the small case, opens the case, and takes his glasses out.

“Thank you, Catherine” he says.

She continues to stand, her back against the cell door. “It’ll take a full twenty-four hours for your implants to cycle down. From the look of you, you’re probably already feeling it.”

Yama shrugs and pulls his glasses on. “Autopsy report to the Commander’s liking?”

She exhales, but says nothing.

“’Death by Misadventure?’” he says.

“Still all business with you,” Catherine says. “Even now when you’re locked up for no wearing a firearm. On an Ag Corps’s Complex!”

Yama nods. “Apparently.”

“My god you are stubborn,” she says.

“How was she murdered?”

“Your stubbornness,” Catherine continues, “that’s one of the reasons I left. ”

A surge of vast emotions flow over Yama.

“That, and your wife.”

She kneels down in front of him and takes his hands. “Cedric. Listen to me. It’ll only get worse as the implants fade. Spare yourself this agony. Do what the Commander wants you to do.”

He removes his hands from hers.

Catherine stands up. “ I’m done here.”

The door silently re-opens.

“Before you go.” Yama forces smile. “Tell me one thing. Why did you really leave?”

She says nothing. He watches her turn and leave his cell.