'Sylviana. You say you are not from the Island. How then did you come here? In all my years I have heard of no other tribe for many miles around, surely none so fair of face and skin, that wear such garments.' The girl looked down, and realized for the first time how odd her own clothes must seem to him: the gauze top, the worn and fading denim jeans. And her hair, somewhere between blond and brunette, with streaks of both. Silver earrings and bracelet. But these thoughts were as a passing shadow on her mind. How could she possibly tell him the truth of her existence? Somehow she had to try. 'This is so hard. A lot of it I don't know myself.' She looked across at him. 'Please be patient, and let me choose my words.' 'It's all right. I am patient.' After several halting starts, she saw there was no other way but to tell him straight out. Let him understand or believe what he would. 'A long time ago, many hundreds of years I think, there were infinitely more people on earth. Our civilization had advance so far, that we could build or do almost anything. We lived in cities as high as this mountain, and many times as broad, all over the world. 'Unfortunately, one of the things we built the best were weapons, devices to..... Well, the argument was that they were to protect ourselves. But really, they had no other purpose than to kill. Some of the more primitive of these are in the Mantis' cave, though I have no idea how they got there.' It was useless. 'We destroyed ourselves, Kalus. I don't know how else to say it. I suppose there were reasons for the War, and in fairness I don't think either side wanted it. But it happened all the same. We launched weapons that could kill millions of people from thousands of miles away, and go on killing years after..... I don't know why I was left alive.' DON'T CRY. 'All my friends and family are dead. Everything I knew is gone.' Kalus answered softly. 'Is that what the voice in the mirror was trying to tell me?' 'I thought you had forgotten.' 'I do not forget, Sylviana. And I think of things more than you know. I am not one of the lesser animals. I am only different from you.' 'I'm sorry.' Again she hung her head. 'Don't be sorry for things that are not wrong. You have your sorrows and I have mine. Do not think of it now. There is only one more thing I must ask you.' 'What is it?' 'Why did you not die with the others? And living, how have you not grown old? Is your flesh so different from mine?' 'No, Kalus. It's very much the same.' She felt weak and tearful, but also a strange determination to see it through. An unusual emotion for her: direct rebellion against despair. 'My father was a scientist, a man of learning. Somehow he knew the war was coming. Maybe I should have known it, too, but try to understand. My friends and I had lived with the threat of nuclear destruction all our lives. It just didn't seem real.....