The next morning broke without color. A wind stirred the dust along the road to the lower quarter, where the buckets hung dry over the old well.

The girl had not cried in hours. Her breathing labored, her body tired and aching to give up. A monk knelt beside her cot, one hand resting above her brow. He had learned not to touch.

It was the morning of the REM Ritual. Outside my window, a silver-winged plane drifted through the pink clouds. It blinked softly against the sky. Graceful, slow, quiet. Just the way everything was supposed to be.

A grayish-pink dawn light casts over a desolate beach. Trash is strewn as far as the eye can see. Waves lap lazily at the shore, nudging old plastic bottles, rusted cans, and crumpled wrappers.