City on Fire (Metropolitan 2) (79 page)

Images seem to pulse on the backs of Aiah’s eyelids, mere phosphor glow at first, then things more concrete, images of airships and dolphins, children and trees, sky-topping buildings and birds in flight, all processing through her thoughts, dissolving one into the other... like the sisters’ aerial displays, but far more stately, each image lingering, impressing itself on Aiah’s mind, like figures in an eternal dance. And with them there is a sound, like a primal wind keening across the sharp corners of the world.

Ah
, she thinks,
it’s true! The plasm
does
sing
.

And then she topples into dream.

THE END