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  "C'mere," she told him, sliding closer. "Let me."

  He moved his hand away and let her take over. She was surprised when his hands moved to her face, his fingers―smelling like himself―went to her mouth. She sucked them, taking them inside and around her tongue, as she continued to stroke his cock. She sucked, then stroked, sucked, then stroked. Her eyes were wide open. She saw the blue hues of his muffled cries.

  "Come for me," she said. "Louder. It's okay―I want to see."

  "You can't see..."

  She didn't know if he stopped talking because he realized she could see him, all of him, or if he was just overwhelmed by his own orgasm. It didn't matter. She sucked around his fingers, then slid her middle one lower into his body.

  "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." Josh fell into chants as she hurried her fingers. Her tits were moving along with her, and she could feel that her thighs were wet, soaking her tights. She wondered if she and Josh would come at the same time, and they could be the most perfect romantic fantasy. But Josh's breathing changed before she could get the thought out, and he clenched around her.

  "Fuck," he stated, taking his fingers out of her mouth. He placed his palm against her shoulder, breathing heavily for quite some time. Tyler held him and stroked his back.

  "You're beautiful," she said this time. He laughed, his breath hot against her tits. "I want you," she added. His hand curved around her breasts, then around her waist. When Josh turned her around, she let out a cry of delight. His hands found the base of her dress, lifted it up, and then slid her underwear along with her tights halfway down her thighs.

  "Oh, wow," he murmured against her neck, realizing how wet she already was. Josh's fingers separated her folds, exploring her, and touching her clit. His waist, with his pants still unbuckled and hanging around, pressed into hers. She spread her legs even wider, allowing him a larger berth.

  "Fuck," he murmured into her ears. He slid inside of her, thicker than she remembered, and then started to thrust. Tyler groaned. God, he felt good. He always felt good―mouth, tongues, and strap-on, no matter what he used. But now it was surreal. She could feel him, all of him, as if the phantom limb had become a full fledged organ and he was fucking her deep inside. She closed her eyes and the shapes, colours, and motions still stayed―but she became undone. Language left her. Moans shattered sound. She felt loose, and hot, and then oh, so drunk with him.

  "Oh, God," she murmured. They weren't being quiet―not in the least. But who would really pay attention to them anyway? Who really cared? She let out another moan, and another, then felt Josh bite into her shoulder. His teeth marked her, then he sucked the area, before he slid another hand around to touch her clit.

  "God," she hissed again. She hadn't been touching herself―so now, engorged, she was almost there. He only had to press a few times before she was crying out. She slid her fingers over his and guided him to a stop.

  When he pulled out, she turned around and met his mouth. They were both still half-naked, still in the dark, but something had changed. He combed his fingers through her hair, touching her cheek, and caressing her bare breasts. He laughed, but soon quieted as he shook his head.

  "What?" she asked. She waited on the tip of his breathing to hear what she needed to. "What?"

  "Nothing... I just..." He laughed again. "I can feel my jacket in here. My coat."

  "Oh."

  "No, no, that sounds weird," Josh said, correcting. "I can feel my keys is what I mean. And I realized I have too many."

  "What?" She shook her head. Had her orgasm really left her so utterly useless she couldn't make sense of Josh? "What are you trying to tell me?"

  "I want to trade keys with you. I have too many and I want you to be able to see me whenever you want." He shifted in the closet, letting her go for a few moments as he found his jacket by touch. She heard the jangle of keys, and then hie pressed one into the centre of her palm.

  "Is that okay?" he said after silence had passed. "You don't have to exchange if you don't want."

  "No, no, I do," she said excitedly. She found her jacket, slipping her dress back over her breasts as she did, then took out her set. "I don't have a spare one made yet, but I can do that."

  "Okay." Josh caressed the side of her face, kissing her. "Take your time."

  She nodded. They waited like this, still inside the closet, for a while. When the nonsense chatter of the academics down the hall drew quieter, Josh fidgeted. He slid his belt back on and did up his pants. "We should go outside again."

  "I know. But this was nice."

  "It was."

  It took Tyler a moment to realize, that when Josh opened the closet door, she still had her eyes closed.

  "Harsh light?" Josh asked. He extended his hand to her, as if to help her make her way through the unfamiliar world.

  "Yeah," Tyler said. "Something like that."

  They moved from the closet to the kitchen, then back into the party room. Herbert greeted them again, but didn't seem to notice they had been gone. For the last hour of the party, Tyler stayed by Josh's side, the key burning a hole inside her hand.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "I think I almost have it," he said. He gave her the poem to look at. More words had been filled in and there were only a couple blanks remaining.

  "The Waves of "

  A month left, our people sing together.

  Mermaids breathe under black skies; fish gills.

  Not us. We build and rebuild. Scissors-like

  dancing legs.

  fighting with waves:

  So we began to sing with the waves.

  Do not name what you don't understand.

  Our people dance over strange land,

  we can't meet in the night to sing ―

  but the waves still go on:

  "Nice," she said. "I like it."

  "Is that it?"

  She slid the page back across the library tables. "I don't really know what else to say. I like it, but I don't know what the next step is. Do you publish? Write a paper? Go to a teleconference?"

  "Nah, I can't go to a teleconference. They'll be upset I'm using so much paper. Everyone's so focused on networks now, anyway. Going backwards won't appeal." Josh thought for a moment. "But I think I'll have to publish it. You remember what I said at the party?"

  "Oh, how could I forget?" she teased coyly. "You wanted to keep this to help someone... I'm just not sure how. I don't think we got that far."

  "I think the poem will help explain why everything disappeared. If you translate the poem, we're given a window into the world before, and also the downfall of that world. We can prevent this from happening again."

  "How do you know people will listen, though?"

  "We can't ignore something like this. Wanting to prevent destruction is in our blood. Bones. We don't speak the poem's language anymore, but we know it."

  "So we can pick up where they left off?"

  "Yes. Something like that."

  "Well, that sounds viable. Like a good academic plan." She smiled, but it was strained. She wanted to tell him it wouldn't make that much of a difference; that the civilization would still be lost like all the lives you live and don't live at any one time, but she didn't bother. With his history and body, she figured he knew the risks, and that it was exactly why the poem mattered.

  "What would you do with it?" Josh asked.

  She traced her fingers over the original. She expected the black ink to come up with it and stick to her, like her colours did. When it stayed put on the paper, she answered. "I would paint it, I think. My grandmother had a huge canvas in her living room. It was the one piece of paper, when they started to collect them all after the forest fires and dry air became too much, she refused to give up."

  "That's badass. What did she paint?"

  "The water. Any kind, really. Sometimes she'd just paint it inside a drinking glass. But I like the waves she used to do. The way they rode up and over the page. I know you can't see what I see," Tyler said, p
ointing to the original poem. "But I see blue in front of me when I hear their word for waves aloud. And when you wear that blue sweater, I hear the waves too."

  "You do? And they sound like krish-krish?"

  "As close as they can. Maybe I should have been a painter instead of a librarian."

  "And me, a poet?

  "Yeah. Maybe."

  They considered this for quite some time. Moments later, Josh seemed to get a realization like he always did when they didn't speak for more than three minutes, and he wrote it down. As his pen scratches continued, Crispin cleared his throat, and everything inside Tyler's head reminded her of crows cawing.

  "I have to go," Tyler said. "Will I see you tonight? My place or yours?"

  "Maybe." He looked down. "I think I want to finish this. Get it out of the way."

  "Oh."

  "Then I can focus on you," he said, pulling her hand into his. "And poetry, maybe. My own. But I have to get this done first, hand it into my supervisor, and then rest. You understand?"

  "Sure. Call me, though. It would be nice to hear your voice."

  He gave her a knowing smile. She never told him what colour his voice was to her, but he knew her vision was different. She liked keeping the secret, and was relieved he never asked her to elaborate.

  "I love you, you know," he said. It had been a few weeks―and time was different now anyway―so this wasn't fast. She squeezed his hand.

  "I love you too."

  *~*~*

  The night was dry. Tyler could see and hear the sparks against the cinderblocks in the vacant lot across her apartment from the wind against the sand. She opened the curtains, then hissed when all she saw was moon bisected by too-large clouds. The air was getting too acrid again, the clean machines that surrounded their city not-so-clean anymore. The water reserves were running low. And the Day-Glo paint outside, meant to keep the solar light inside the city grid overnight, was fading under the pressures of the day.

  She closed her window with a sigh. History repeats itself was such a boring, old bumper sticker. She walked across the carpet in her bare feet and took out one of her canvases from before. She had to rehydrate it, allow for the nearly ancient art supplies she had hidden for years to become new again. She found eggs in her fridge and made new kinds of tempura. By the time it was midnight, and the skylights were on again, Tyler was thinking of the ocean.

  She saw her ancestors laid out on a beach. Josh had not given the people he was studying a name yet; he said he couldn't do that until he finished their story. That still didn't stop Tyler's imagination. She saw each one of them with darker skin and longer hair. She saw them as mechanics with steam-powered gear. Then as people, just like her and Josh, with their own internal worlds that no one understood until they opened their mouths to speak.

  Or write down. Or paint, she corrected. Her canvas was ready now, so she began.

  At first, she painted Josh. She imagined his body like the earth outside, pulled the colour green from her memory, and laid his torso out like grass. She painted green hills over his chest that became worn down with time until flatlands happened. She painted water at the apex of his thighs, then rocks that were sharp and jagged. She painted the people of Krish-Krish in his head, keeping him up until everything around him was filled with few spaces and dark night.

  When Tyler was young, she used to want to invent things. She thought her paintings were the first step―her blue prints, her prototypes. But every single painting led to the same endpoint: unity, progress, the problems of the world solved and shelved away.

  But what's after that? she asked herself. And what's the point in all of it, if we're alone?

  Her grandmother never hated progress, Tyler realized. She hated arrogance, the kind that pulled people apart instead of fusing them together. Tyler put down the canvas of the former landscape. She knew how that story ended.

  So she flipped it over to the back and painted the sky. She filled it with balloons in each colour of the rainbow, so that it also formed a song inside her head.

  CHAPTER SIX

  "It's done," he said.

  Tyler groaned as she crawled out of bed. She checked the time and realized it was 3 a.m. Josh was here, inside her apartment, and not a distant echo or dream this time around.

  "Okay, good job." She propped herself up on her elbows. "And?"

  "And they died." Josh swallowed hard. In the low lights, even Tyler could trace the space where tears had been on his cheeks. "The poem was a eulogy, a goodbye verse before they all drowned."

  "You knew that already, though. It was a lost civilization. It couldn't have a different ending."

  Josh nodded. "I know. But it wasn't written down then. Now it is."

  She didn't tell him that it had already been written down in a language that he couldn't read. A dead language for a dead civilization that had walked willingly into The Flood. She shuddered at the thought. She understood the bravery of doing that, of completely annihilating yourself in order to leave one last thing behind.

  She looked across the room at the place where she kept her paints, under lock and key. She then looked at Josh.

  "So what happens now? Are you still going to publish?"

  "I… I don't know."

  She shifted on her bed, allowing him to sit down. When he did, his breathing quickened, coming out in a violet ah-ah-ah. She rubbed his back until his voice caught up with his mind.

  "I'm… I don't think I can. All the stories are always the same. They always end in death."

  "Death and rebuilding," she reminded him. "There is always the rebuilding stage. It's hardwired into us. Remember?"

  Josh laughed. "I thought you didn't believe in evolutionary memory?"

  "I never said I didn't, not really. Only that I don't think it matters."

  "Why not? It changes everything. If we understand."

  "That's exactly it. It's always an if. We can't know the future the way we know the past. And you can't forget something until you learn it." She paused, knowing that her answer wasn't the greatest. Josh always wanted practical solutions. He wanted paper and pen and ink. She longed to show him the painting then, to show him what she had discovered while he was gone, but she didn't dare upset him more. "But I like the idea of something beautiful coming from nothing. And I think that no matter what happens in the future, I don't want to be alone."

  "Me either." He turned to her, grabbing her hand. He kissed each knuckle. "It's why I came here."

  "I'm glad you did."

  They sat for a long time hand in hand. When Tyler eventually got up to put on a vinyl, Josh didn't argue.

  "Is that why you listen to so much music? Because it's something beautiful from nothing? Like the picture at Herbert's?"

  "Maybe. I listen to music because I like it. And I'm with you, right now, and not at the library, because I like it." She extended her hand down to him, and with a smile, he took it and swayed with her. Not quite dancing, not quite with either of them leading, but something was happening to their bodies with the music, and she liked it a lot.

  "Yes, I supposed that's true." He kissed her neck on the spot she liked. "But what happens tomorrow?"

  "You'll probably go to the library. Uncover a new mystery. Solve another puzzle."

  "And?"

  "And I'll be there, watching you, and slipping you paper to solve." She smiled. "Maybe painting at night."

  "Painting?"

  "Yes. But that's all I want to say for now."

  Josh pressed his hands into her hips, their bodies closer than ever before. Sometimes, after they had made love and stayed naked for a long time, he'd press his face to her stomach, right by her uterus, and cling onto her for dear life. He had his uterus removed a long, long time ago, "scooped out" as he said. But he wanted kids. She knew he wanted them, and in those moments, like them dancing, she knew that he wanted them with her.

  "Sometimes I hate science," he said, swaying with her. "Sometimes I hate the way the world has been
laid out."

  "Yes, but it's all we have. So we have to work with it. And progress," she whispered, kissing him in time to the music, "isn't bad. It's just never an ending."

  "Stop talking about endings," he told her playfully. "I never want to end."

  He kissed her, tongue exploring, as if to make the point stick. And because she liked this song, she let them keep dancing.

  *~*~*

  The next morning, he was there. A new book was in his lap and his music player on with the volume too loud so feedback spilled out. When the old couple made faces at him and expected him to shut it off, Tyler didn't tell him to.

  Instead, she walked by Josh and listened to the waves a little while longer.

  EPILOGUE

  Summary, Analysis, and Proposal For Text 798

  By Joshua Dubsky

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank The Tristero Library Centre for their dedication in preserving resources and maintaining a paper-based culture, even in these dry times. My supervisor, Dr. Herbert Monsoon for pushing me when I wanted to give up.

  And finally, for Tyler Roland and her dedication to get me to consider my research from multiple angles. I could not have even begun writing without her.

  Part One: Overview of Study

  The past six months, under the supervision of Dr. Herbert Monsoon, I have been working on translating one of the last poems from the New Rivers tribe. The New Rivers existed before The Flood and Global Warming changed the composition of the country. It was thought that they lived along the Florida coastline, but I speculate now that they lived exactly where the poem was first discovered, locked inside a glass case.

  Here is the poem as it was found in the original language we are calling Sea-Shriek.

  "Krish-Krish De Loxzo"

  Moonblah savagala shish.

  Kribright leigh, ahayel von

  samyeki twizur, lashikrish.

  battarla krish-krish:

  shish-see wong pur krish-krish.

  Ihault emafaurlt; see-swongleigh vonnal.