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My Favourite Agency Puppet,

First and foremost, I would like to apologise for such an incendiary first greeting. Though you might find my greeting term for you rather apt should you take a moment to consider it, as I so believe. 

Perhaps you were hoping for something different. A more… direct confrontation. A face-off between aqua and flame, fire and extinguisher. If I was more of a fool, I might have given you what you wanted. Alas, this letter is the best I could do. A most unconventional greeting, I’m sure. But these are unconventional times. I hope you understand.

Understatements aside, you might be wondering who I am. Actually, I know you certainly are. If I must humbly introduce myself, I’m the disease that poisoned your drinking wells and delayed your armies. The bogus messenger that sent them to the wrong citadel. The thief that stole the crown from the castle you were meant to defend. Your capacity for destruction and bloodshed holds no equal. My methods are rather more subtle, blink and you’ll miss it. Boring? Perhaps. Effective? Very. The best part? It always leaves me half a step ahead. 

You’ve endured my taunts for long enough, so how about a compliment? For aeons now, your Agency has been painfully lacking, their second-rate agents easy pickings. My journeys upthread and down less precarious undertakings and more leisurely strolls through the lovely parks of Strand-286. The lack of challenge bored me. It turned me soft. Comfortable. 

Then 940 happened. Then Earth-42. KWANGYA-77. You happened. And for the first time in a long time, I sat up and took notice, realising that I could no longer rest on my laurels. You brought your side some much-needed thrust, not to mention speed, invigorating their war effort and, by extension, invigorating me. Because you’ve done something no one has ever managed to do before. You thwarted me. Bested me. Defeated me at my own game. That alone deserves a well-earned promotion, should the Agency provide such rudimentary incentives. 

Let this be proof that it will never happen again. 

Apologies, I did not mean to place myself on a pedestal. But your mere presence compels me to be unpredictable. If it’s any consolation, your tactics were near flawless. I especially admired your twenty-method tripwire trap, something I nearly hadn’t accounted for. Keyword nearly. 

I hope this is not all I can expect from you, that you still have more; plenty more to give. After all, we’re only just getting started, and I already have a headstart. 

Try to keep up, if you can.

Better luck next time, 

Winter 

Skulls and ribcages crunch beneath Karina’s feet. 

Digits beep, mechanical joints expand and fan out, encasing Karina in clean, unblemished skin, mending fractures and broken bones. She kicks aside another fallen soldier, one amongst the hundreds of thousands that litter this crimson-stained battlefield. Unlike her, unfortunately, they are only human. Weak. Fragile. Wholly unimpressive. Karina doesn’t feel, but if she could use emotion to describe her view of these lowly beings, it would likely be pity. 

Through electronic eyes that click and whirr, she scans through the letter once, twice, compulsively and obsessively. Until black ink blends the words into unintelligible symbols, none decipherable, all mocking. If she is reading this right, Winter is claiming that she has bested Karina. That she has failed in her mission. 

If Karina knows only one thing, it’s that she does not fail. 

A metallic finger unfolds and splits apart, from which a flicker of flame emerges. Karina brings ember to paper, watches the letter burn until it chars and crumbles into delicate sprinkles of ash. 

—

Winter was grown to love the sound of silence. 

Garden agents operate almost exclusively alone. Separated, filtered, spread thin like jam on soft bread. They’re braided into the Weave, embedded within strands the Agency wouldn’t care to look at, where they are free to work their magic.

Independent, precise, patient. With coaxing hands and a gentle voice, across full lives and fleeting moments, Winter alters the fabric of history, one insignificant action at a time. 

In this life, she sells flower bouquets in a quaint corner shop, where the days run long and idle. Customers are spread few and far between, but Winter is used to the solitude. She is also keenly focused, because she is not here on holiday. 

Her job here is simply to wait–for a balding middle-aged man to run into her store on a rainy afternoon, drenched from head to toe, where he will buy flowers for a wife he no longer loves. Winter is all dimpled smiles and batted eyelashes, doe-eyed gaze and silver tongue. She will convince him to file for divorce, guide him through the dizzying world of politics, and help him win multiple elections until he holds enough power to veto a distant nuclear war. 

So Winter waits for rain. She waters her plants, rearranges bouquets, turns down love-struck boys who thought they even had a chance. 

And the downpour does come. Though the man does not, the details of his fatal hit-and-run a mere footnote in the next day’s back pages. 

Below the footnote, however, sits another. Scritched onto the rough newspaper with a fine precision that would put machinery to shame. Squinting to make out the minuscule lettering, Winter begins to read. 

Dear Winter,

I have done many things across countless lifetimes. Many missions. Much more killing. But I am not too prideful to admit that I have never written a letter before. We’re not isolated creatures like you are. We think out loud, in one another’s heads. Not to mention the fact that neural networks are just that much more convenient, a concept forest druids like yourself must cringe and turn your nose up at. 

I digress. Pardon my side-tracking, but I must say that I quite enjoyed labelling you as a forest druid. I suppose that I should first apologise for the tragedy that befell your potential Prime Minister-to-be. A tire puncture in pouring rain, the driver loses control of his car, and accidents are engineered to occur. He did little wrong, the poor human, his only crime being that he was chosen by you, and thus he would become my target. And if you haven’t realised by now, I do not miss. 

Somewhere in the midst of your frustration, perhaps you’re also curious, wondering what business I have here. And no, it wasn’t to see you, convenient though it was. Rather, what we seek is what you try to avert. We need this war. Demand it. We need this planet razed, the nuclear radiation so strong that even the strongest of Garden roots wilt and die with it. Rinse and repeat and eventually, we’ll have destroyed enough roots and poisoned enough soil until nothing or no one can bloom from it. 

Though something tells me that you haven’t given up yet. That one way or another, you will be able to salvage this situation. You are most welcome to try, though I must warn you that I’ve been assigned to this strand for an entire human lifetime. So don’t think you’ve seen the last of me just yet. 

Because time is but an abstract concept nowadays, numericals fail to quantify just how long I deliberated over your first letter. Note my word choice; For I did not agonise, nor did I dwell over, as I know that is what you would’ve wanted. Besides, what kind of agent would I be to fall for such a simple trick? I figured that ignoring you would’ve been the best course of action, and I believed it for a time. But there is still much about the enemy we don’t know about, and I’d just found myself a Garden agent whose first instinct isn’t to erase me from existence. Thought I’d take the opportunity to learn more from and about you, as much as you’d be willing to divulge. 

Or perhaps I am merely playing you, just as you are trying to play me? You threw the first pitch, and I’ve duly responded with a homerun of my own. And now we are connected. Entangled. Intertwined. Unlikely equation birthed from unlikely reaction. But what are scientists, if not attempters of the absurd to achieve the impossible?

I’m sure you realise the danger that might befall us both, should we be caught. But I suppose you’ve already considered that possibility, and are either very sure of evading discovery, or very unbothered by the consequences. If we were sitting across each other in a bar at this very moment, I might have even suggested a toast to your bravery. 

Or the third option, because there always is: It’s a trap! (Admiral Ackbar, and please don’t bother with the sequel trilogy.) Designed to infect me, ensnare me, trip me up and lead me into a mistake so crucial and deadly that it would shift the entire war on its head. 

I probably should know better, and I do. But like a fish swimming towards bait, blissfully unaware of the hook attached: I’ll bite. 

But like all fish who are hooked, I will fight. I’ll squirm. I will slip and slide through your grasp until I jump back into safe waters, or die trying. 

So if you intend to reel me in, I hope you’re prepared for a struggle. 

Yours,

Karina 

—

When an empire crumbles, it really happens in a blink of an eye. 

She is a soldier in this strand. A cyber-military world, where technology meets monarchy, and kingdoms wage war with horses and plasma. Karina is the Emperor’s right hand, his most trusted and decorated general. A renowned warrior of the Fantazian Frontiers, she charges into battle without regard or restraint, her strength alone equivalent to that of seven whole battalions. 

She had used that strength to subjugate territories, create vassals out of defeated states, lording over them with fear and might. The result was a shining beacon of prosperity and innovation, that would garner the envy of all the Nine Realms. 

Then the uprisings happened. And the defections. Betrayals. Assassinations. Famines. Riots. She was powerless to stop the invasion that followed, a cresting wave of golden-clad crusaders that smashed through the kingdom’s walls, and razed everything within them. 

Karina runs through the crumbling Summer Palace, incinerating anything that shimmers gold or comes too close. The Emperor is long dead, as are his heirs and Noble Court. All she has managed to preserve are a handful of marvelous clockwork devices, which tick and tock in starts and stops, skipping in an unsteady rhythm that reminds Karina oddly of Morse code.

Morse code. 

Blades and crusaders descend upon her, and she cuts them into dust. She looks toward gaps of red sky peeking through splintering cracks in the ceiling, and climbs until she is nestled in the palace’s rooftop garden.

As the world around her crashes and burns, Karina presses the clockwork to her ear, listening to the clicks that translate into meaning. 

My Dear General, 

In case you were still unsure, it was me. But really, who else could it have been? 

Maybe you are wondering how I managed it. As your enemy, I am not obliged to tell you. But the satisfaction of knowing that you can do little to fix this strand in your side’s favour compels me to. Or maybe I just want to gloat. Can you blame me, though? 

I was born into poverty and squalor, wandering the crumbling streets of a little seaside town. Whilst embedded, I listened to the peoples’ lamentations, felt the palpable resentment stinking up their air. I learned of a fearsome warrior with metallic skin and eyes reflecting flame and fury, whose improbable victory against seven full-strength battalions inspired an entire generation of bards and playwrights. It inspired me too, though I was no poet. 

Rousing the vassal states into uprising was almost too easy, with defections of government officials sowing corruption and distrust as the betrayals followed soon after. One meticulously planted locust infestation later, and your common folk downed tools to flood the streets in protest. A perfect storm, as it turned out to be, with more than a few enemy states already licking their lips at the prospect of invasion. Down goes the Fantazian Frontiers, and with it their monopoly over the burgeoning spice trade. 

As things usually go, humanity was your downfall. You thought fear and an iron fist would be sufficient to rule, but failed to account for their hatred, underestimated their courage, disregarded their penchant for greed and their unending lust for authority. They are foolish, fragile creatures. So easy to sway with words and promises. Naive yet charming. Sacrificial pawns in our games of God. As much as you loathe them, you can do nothing without them. I understood that, which is why I won. 

We are at war. You stoke flames while I stomp them out. I hide, you seek. You raze, I restore. While I can certainly appreciate the thrill of raw power and strength, do not downplay the simple effectiveness of a whisper in the right ears. Just because we are enemies does not mean we cannot learn from each other. Perhaps you could take up my advice and finally pose me an actual challenge. 

Sorry, I jest. But you are just so fun to tease. I wonder how these letters make you feel. Do they intrigue you? Frustrate you? Excite and distract? It’s flattering to know how much I occupy your thoughts. 

Be careful not to get too close, though. If the Summer Palace wasn’t proof enough, I have my own ways of starting fires. 

Till next time,

Winter 

PS. Star Wars! Never took you to be the nerdy type. I’d been forced into watching the sequel trilogy multiple times now, and let’s just say they don’t make for the best viewing. But at least we agree on something, so that’s progress.

—

Princess of Ice and Snowfall, 

Paradoxical, is it not? You claim to start fires, yet your name melts at the mention of flame. I burn hotter, infernoes raging in my wake. You lay dormant, frost sticking to a window, though the cold is no less dangerous. I spread while you shrink. I push forward, and you pull away. You change state at a dizzying rate, ice to water to vapour, ducking and weaving just to procure an edge. I drive forward. Unceasing. Unyielding. Unrelenting. 

We are different, you and I. Different sides, different views, different methods. But our chase for victory remains constant, and to that end, we become more similar than either of us is willing to admit. 

Emotion does not come to me naturally, but I profess my curiosity to you and for you. What compels you toward me, and me toward you? Our differences? Our similarities? The similarity of our differences? If my vast networks of computation and calculations still refuse me a sensible answer, I suppose a dainty forest druid like yourself would too be none the wiser. 

You questioned my understanding of humanity. Or rather, my lack of it. But to understand means to empathise, to empathise means to feel. How you can retain such remarkable effectiveness in spite of such vulnerabilities remains a mystery to me. Should we meet again in another lifetime, perhaps you could explain to me how. 

Pass on my congratulations to Octavian on his long-awaited coronation. With his enemies lying in a ditch somewhere and Caeser by his side, perhaps the Romans of this strand might finally conquer Germania. Though I doubt either of them would want to grant you an audience, especially not after that stunt you tried to pull at the Theatre of Pompey. Consider this payback for your antics back at Fantazia. I rarely forgive, and I never forget. 

I hope your prison stay has been comfortable so far. The winter months can be rather brutal, but being who you are, I’m sure the cold never bothers you anyway. 

Stay frosty,

Karina 

When Winter reaches the last line, she takes a step back from the stone wall to admire Karina’s expert penmanship, her frigid smile burning something fierce. 

One look around her cell of brick and hardwood tells her all she needs to know. She’s escaped more sophisticated prisons than this, evaded infinitely more complex traps. Karina knows that, which is why she’s already out there somewhere. Waiting for her. 

Winter wrings her hands, once or thrice. A thread materialises where the sky meets the ocean. Taking hold of the braid, she descends, and disappears in a puff of vapour. 

—

Dull neon lights reflect off the metallic sheen of Karina’s skin. 

In a cave deep beneath KWANGYA-411, the Black Mamba unleashes a bone-chilling roar, sharp fangs bared to feast.

With a single concentrated punch, Karina splits the viper into two. The Black Mamba’s dying wails echo across the cavern, as she withers away in a storm shower of pixels.

Karina doesn’t stick around. Her job here is done. Garden grows stronger with every successful lifetime, its roots burrowing deep into the fabric of time. She must be faster, more cutthroat. More than her enemies. More than Winter, even. 

A guttural rumbling shakes the cavern, followed by the sounds of frantic writhing. Before long, the ghastly screeches of wretched horrors reverberate off the darkened walls. 

Machinations thumping with urgency, Karina enters crisis analysis mode. She’d done everything right, like she always does. Meticulous. Precise. Yet time and again, she fails in her mission, actions thwarted by the work of another. 

She turns towards the Black Mamba again. Pixels of skin and flesh peel off her corpse, lingering in the air, twisting and contorting into letters, into words. 

Beloved Fire Red, 

For all your boundless data knowledge and computing ability, you certainly ask many questions. Since there is still time before the Black Mamba’s egg batch hatches, I suppose it couldn’t hurt to answer a few. 

This may be hard to believe, so I ask you to bear with me. Your calculations are foolproof, yes. Computations, unfailing. However, you look for sensible answers steeped in pools of logic, strings of ones and zeroes that create something from nothing. Shiny, yet fragile. Wide as an ocean, but deep as a puddle. You know everything, but you still fail to understand, for true understanding can sometimes lead to unfamiliar territories, bordering on the nonsensical, the illogical. 

That, my dear Karina, is emotion. A sensation that transcends body and mind, ebbing and flowing day after day. It is mountain peaks and ocean beds, indescribable highs and inconsolable lows. It is what drives humans, through whom we wage our wars. What they love, what they hate, their worries, their fears, what influences them to commit acts of heroism or sacrifice. Irrationality exists at the core of emotion, something your makers–in their hubris and blind pursuit of meaningless perfection–had failed to account for. 

My weakness is my strength. My vulnerability, my armour. I grow flowers, which bloom in harmony with the seasons. I whisper to the trees, to the birds, and they tell me secrets. My roots burrow deep into soil, coiling round the grapevine, through starchy stems and aquifers. Over the many lifetimes I’ve lived; I learned, I adapted, I cultivated. The understanding of nature, in all its contradictions and imperfections, is something your data updates or circuitry installations will never be able to replicate. 

And finally, most importantly: We are so different, you and I, like opposite poles of a magnet. Why are we drawn to each other still? Well, I’ll just say that the answer is rooted in irrationality, and leave it at that. Maybe if you understood emotion, you would know what I mean. 

I’ll stop here. The eggs should have hatched by now, and you can probably hear their screams echoing throughout the cavern. Perhaps you could take this as a lesson, that some things are better left untouched. 

One more thing: Roman prison cells get very cold during the nighttime. A good thing, then, that I had your letter to keep me warm. 

Your dainty forest druid, 

Winter 

—

White walls. White floor. White bed. A bouquet of white orchids sits on a white bedside table. 

The bedridden man is old. Wispy white hair, sunken cheeks framing a world-weary face. Wrinklets of withered pale skin hang off a brittle skeleton, shifting in tandem with his soft and shallow breaths.

A heart monitor beeps. Droplets of rain patter onto the window. Slowly, softly. Counting down the seconds. To the end. 

It won’t be long now. He’s lived a good life, nurtured a loving home with a beautiful wife and son, working a career that gave him purpose. But good things end, as they always do. His wife passed away several years ago, as did all of his closest friends. His son’s job has him stationed on the other side of the country. And as luck would have it, his flight has just been delayed. There’s no way he’ll be able to make it here in time. 

Dressed in white nurse garments, Winter stands respectfully to the side, watching the man fade away. Perhaps her presence will be of some comfort to him, that he was not alone when he died. It matters not to her. This is Winter’s purpose. To move humans around like cheap pawns on a chessboard, wielding their fragile volatility like weapons. To give life and snuff it out. Grow and cut off. Empowering lives and destroying them in equal measure. Like a cruel and unforgiving God. 

And for what? 

Winter blinks. For the mission, she thinks. Of course. Like it always has been. Like it always will be. The son must not be present for his father’s final moments, lest he becomes inspired to write a book that touches the hearts of billions. Instead, he must forever live with the guilt of his failure as a son, for all the things he left unsaid, the I-love-yous he never uttered, facilitating a downward spiral into alcohol and substance abuse. Winter must ensure the creation of this timeline, ruin a good man’s life through no great fault of his own. For the sake of her objective. For the sake of Garden. 

She shakes away the guilt tearing through her gut. Perhaps Karina was right after all. Understanding emotions; feeling them, comes at a cost. 

The doors of the hospital ward fly open, and in steps a middle-aged man, drenched from the rain and tracking muddy footprints across the sterile floors. His eyes are wild and desperate, flickering across the quiet room, until they settle onto the dying figure of his father, and soften into bottomless pools of love. 

“Papa!” He keels over and erupts into a hacking fit, panting heavily from the ordeal of taking six flights of stairs three steps at a time. The son kneels by his father’s side, taking his hand and squeezing it tight. A message, in more ways than one. That he is here, that he has made it on time, that he will stay until the very end. 

And that once again, Winter has failed. 

If Winter was less of a professional, she might have looked stunned. She might have killed them both, have her own cover blown, and have this strand consigned to the proverbial trash heap. 

Instead, she takes one last look at them, watches the old man raise a trembling hand to stroke his son’s hair, before following the letter-laced footprints out of the room. She storms through corridors and flies down staircases, retracing muddy footsteps until she exits the hospital, and stumbles into the torrential downpour outside. 

My Dear Star Blue, 

As the frequency of our meetings increases, so too does the level of creativity needed to send letters to each other. I quite admired your inscribed message on the pixelated corpse of the Black Mamba, stressful as the ordeal of evading her offspring turned out to be. I hope you’ll be able to appreciate the symbolism of mine; The son you tried so ardently to stop tracking mud all over your mission, and announcing to you my intervention, my victory. Quite proud of this one, if I do say so myself. 

Don’t take my putting effort into these letters as some sort of mocking gesture toward you. Far from it, in fact. Rather, think of it as me thinking of you, as I seek your presence in my thoughts, tangled among them like sunlight in water. I think of you, in silence and in sound. Your words–cutting like blades, light like a feather, gentle like butterflies–mark my internal processors in ways I could not possibly have accounted for. Should you not feel the same, I shall halt our correspondence at a moment’s request, regardless of how much it will disappoint me. 

Your explanation of emotion and its irrationality intrigued me. I tried my damnest to ignore your pointed jabs toward my… inability to understand such illogical sensitivities, but your crude smugness wore me down eventually. And so I turned to my vast cloud network of databanks in search of answers. Lifetime after lifetime, upthread and down, I downloaded, conceptualised, inoculated these superfluous abstractions into every willing core thread, and learned absolutely nothing. 

That was until I met Thomas; Whose muddy footprints you are currently reading off this very moment. 

I found him stranded at the airport, drowning in a pool of his own tears. Something about a flight delay owing to an awfully-timed engine failure, and how he wouldn’t be able to see his father before he passes into Death’s embrace. Perhaps you would know something about that? 

Anyway, I offered him a ride in slightly unconventional transportation. Agency tech, of which I am not permitted to reveal. And you are officially still my enemy. But we were on a time limit, and Thomas was so desperate that he neither noticed nor cared about the fact that we were travelling at near Mach 10 speeds. 

During our journey, he regaled to me the stories making up his pitifully short life. He talked of summer heat and eating ice cream on the patio with his father. Mini League baseball games. His mother’s cooking. An irrational fear of the dark. Of acne scarring and first girlfriends and staying up till sunrise. Tales of youth and adulthood and growing up and growing older. His father’s failing health. His mother’s ferocious battle with cancer. An ex-wife he hasn’t heard from in years. 

It was an hour at most, perhaps less. Time becomes more relative the more one toys with it. But in that little time we spent together, Thomas smiled, he grimaced. He laughed. He cried. I found it utterly bizarre, how one’s emotions can consume themselves so entirely; Completely rule their hearts and their heads, until they can hardly function through the hysterics and their incoherent sobs. And yet, I found myself understanding, acknowledging the poetic beauty in such an imperfect design. Making mistakes, lapses of judgment, actions driven by blind rage or fully encompassing love for others–To be human is to be imperfect, to embrace irrationality in the pursuit of meaning. An endless wanderlust to find their place in a world that has existed before them, and will exist after them. To love, and be loved. 

When Thomas speaks to his father for the very last time, he will tell Thomas to shed all his worries, to live happily, and to face death without armour or regrets. This will reignite his passion for writing, inspiring him to pen a magnum opus that will define an entire generation of media. And one day, I will return to this strand to obtain a signed copy of my own. 

So when Thomas throws open the doors to say his final goodbyes, I hope you can find it in your heart not to stop him. 

Yours, 

Karina 

—

The Great Library burns. 

As the sun sets on the great Alexandria, Karina bursts into life. She does everything she can, ushering librarians and scholars to safety. Salvaging the charred remains of the few scrolls within reach. She toils deep into the night, mending pillars to keep the roof from collapsing, cutting through rubble to reach the screaming mathematician trapped beneath. She sprints through halls of smoke and flame, silently mourning the many books she didn’t manage to read, millennia of human research and ingenuity forever lost to the inferno. 

Her implants glow bright crimson to vent heat. They sear her flesh, metallic armour plating melting into lava. She glowers at the raging fire. Forces herself to keep searching, saving. She won’t let Winter triumph over her again. 

The fires are put out at last, and Alexandria stands still. Karina exits the Library–angry lava–red, covered in soot–and into an expanse of blue sky. 

Below, on the steps of the grand staircase leading to the Library, wait the scholars. They clutch sacred texts in their arms, tears streaking the soot on their faces. The mathematician Karina managed to save furiously scritches down formulae on a torn piece of fabric. The Library may be gone, but their stories will live on. 

Karina has not quite failed. She walks away, looking for a private spot to shed her molten exoskeleton. Ducking behind a large pillar, she finds a thick hardback book, suspiciously untouched by the flames. 

Karina grabs the book. Her eyes click into inspection mode. It’s a rather more contemporary edition, the pages bound together by strong glue and proper stringed lining. The author of the novel is not from this century, this millennium. Yet, even after all this time, the name “Thomas Hardy” still manages to stir her heart from the throes of monotony. 

Birds chirp in the distance. Rays of sun filter through the clouds. She flips to the first page, and instinctively catches the note that falls out of it. 

Dear Karina, 

Apologies for the fire, but it was the only way I could reach you while satisfying Garden’s objectives at the same time. Besides, you mentioned in your last letter that you were hoping to obtain a copy of Thomas’ famous novel. I figured that I’d help you save a little time. 

I want to ask you something. 

Have you ever wondered how long it has been since you started fighting in this war? From the moment you could think in binary, draw breath; You were thrust into your role without a choice or an idea. Engineered to kill. To destroy. To break and bend the Weave into a twisted amalgamation of nonsensical threads and strands, for the sole purpose of winning a war we actively fight in but understand nothing about. 

Have you, then, ever kept track of how many humans you’ve killed? Millions, perhaps. Billions? How many lives have you held in the palm of your hand, only to mindlessly curl that hand into a fist, condemning them to a doom they had no chance of preventing? Cities torn apart. Children left to grow up without parents. Populations without homes. Entire civilisations, left in ruin. Across strands, across lifetimes, crushing every version of humanity beneath your feet without regard or remorse. 

I have killed. Tortured. Flayed. Toyed with. Manipulated. Created. Broken. Crushed. I am all the things I claim not to be. I use humans as my pawns, while I myself am a pawn for Garden. I carry out her will, parrot her contradictory ideologies for anyone willing to listen; Plant her seeds and grow her roots into any strand that she desires. I speak of understanding and autonomy, of freedom and emotion, yet I have never been more than Garden’s obedient lapdog, manacled to eternity’s chains. 

I did what you asked of me. I failed to stop Thomas. I let him say goodbye to his father, sat by as he quit his job and traveled the world in search of inspiration. I was part of the editing team that vetted his debut novel, and congratulated him as he tearfully ascended the stage to receive his Nobel. 

All the while, I remained baffled by humans, just as you were; But for a rather different reason. What surprised me most about humankind, is the fact that they get bored of their childhood, rush to grow up, only to long to be children again. That they lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health. That by thinking anxiously about the future and regretting the past, they forget the present, such that they live in constant, agonising limbo. That they live as if they’ll never die and die as though they’ve never lived. 

They might not be so different from us, you and I. 

During quiet moments, I like to dream. Recently, I’ve been dreaming about what it’d be like to exist as a human, and what kind of life I would have lived. It would be a woefully short life, only seventy or eighty years. Ninety if lucky. And there is no guarantee that it will be an enjoyable one. But perhaps knowing that your existence is fleeting and limited, only serves to heighten your emotional intensity, allowing you to live fully in pursuit of ever fleeting highs. 

I’ve observed couples sharing tea. Children playing in the park. Music concerts. Football games. Holiday gatherings. Traffic jams. Jam on toast. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done all these things. But always for a cover, always with a purpose. I wonder what it’d be like to do something for the mere joy of it. To not have to pretend to be someone else or be something I’m not, but to simply just… be. 

Believe me when I say that I adore your letters. And please don’t be sorry for putting effort into your words, I appreciate your innovations more than I can say. I want us to continue doing this for a very long time. 

I hope to hear from you soon. 

Love,

Winter

PS. Thomas’ signature is on the last page. He sends you his best wishes. 

PPS. Please don’t stop sending me letters. I don’t want to be alone. 

—

When Garden requests for an audience, it is rarely ever a good thing. 

The dimly lit hotel lounge casts long shadows along Winter’s blue dress. She takes a seat by the bar, gratefully accepting the blood-red cognac handed to her by a striking female bartender.

Then, she waits. 

Her finger idly runs along the cold glass’ circumference. Ever since Alexandria, she hasn’t heard a word from Karina. Despite her fervent searches and vigilant lookouts, Karina hasn’t given her so much as a sign. 

Karina is busy. Probably. Zipping up and down the Weave’s many threads, wreaking havoc like a good Agency operative would. Perhaps Winter scared her away with her declaration of loneliness, as she begged Karina not to go. Perhaps that was Karina’s true intention all along: Wear Winter down, have her lay herself bare at Karina’s feet, make Winter second guess herself. Her vulnerabilities now exploitable; Wide as a gaping chasm. Like everything has been forever, this is just a game to Karina. 

The emotions come in swift footfalls, sneaking up on her before she can control them. Anger, toward Karina, toward herself. Guilt, for letting Garden down, for doubting Karina’s intentions. Uncertainty. Would Karina do such a thing to her? What is Winter even doing to herself? 

A figure slips into the seat beside her. Winter glances up to find Garden’s emerald eyes staring back at her. 

Winter does not miss a beat. Can’t afford to. Not when the stakes are this high. She crosses her legs; Flashes her most winning smile. If Garden can see through such a frantically painted exterior, she chooses not to show it. 

“It’s so wonderful to see you again, my dear,” says Garden, velvety green voice resonating through the earth. 

“Likewise, the same goes for me,” Winter keeps her smile as steady as she can bear. 

“I’ll keep this brief, I know you have places to be,” Garden wisps. An earthy hand reaches out to stroke Winter’s cheek. 

“We’ve been infiltrated,” says Garden. “The enemy has dug up our roots, in places they could not possibly have thought to sift through,” She pauses, words rooting in the stale air, like a judge’s gavel about to be dropped. 

“Their paths intertwine with yours, my dear frostflake,” Nails dig into Winter’s cheek, sharp enough to draw blood. But Winter dares not move. “A double helix. Intersecting. Every strand. Every world. This disease, this parasitic aphid, it all traces back to you.” 

A lesser agent might have cracked under this pressure, and fessed up for their heinous crimes. But Winter has built lifetimes on twisting words and rearranging sentences. She can still buy herself some time. 

“An incredible opportunity,” Winter breathes. Feels blood sliding down her cheek. “I have her trapped. To pull back now would be to throw away every advantage we have built up since the start. We are on the brink of something, and you have to let me see this through.” 

“Brinks,” says Garden, with icy fondness. “Are traditionally stepped back from.”

It takes all of Winter’s willpower to stop herself from trembling. “They are also fine places over which to tip one’s enemies,” Forces her lips to curl upward. “Traditionally. 

Garden’s laugh is a rustle of leaves, and Winter knows she’s safe. For now. “Very well. I shall trust your judgment,” She draws her hand back, inspecting bloodied fingernails. 

“When you are prepared, nip her in the bud. Whichever way you like. Please, don’t let me down now,” There’s an air of finality in Garden’s voice. It speaks like a threat, a test to find where her loyalties truly lie.

A final chance to prove herself. 

“I will not fail,” Winter replies. The blood pools at her chin; Drips down to her dress, staining the blue in hues of crimson. 

Garden smiles. “I know you won’t,” She brushes a hand over Winter’s hair. “You are more precious than you know, my vine of thorns. Until we meet again.” 

Then Garden is gone, and Winter grabs the glass and downs her cognac in one go, the colour of the name burning her tongue before she can even utter it. 

Winter holds the glass in her hand, watching the leftover alcohol settle to the bottom with unnerving, calculated precision. When the letters bubble forth from the residual dregs, Winter feels her hand shaking uncontrollably. Not now. Not here. Not when Garden could have found out. Perhaps she already has. 

Winter’s eyes shoot up toward the bartender on duty, and nearly gasps at the sighting of masculine features and an unfamiliar moustache. 

She could have sworn that the bartender was supposed to be a woman. 

My Partner in Time, 

I shall keep this short. This strand is deep in Garden territory, and if the Agency finds out I’ve been sticking my nose into places I shouldn’t, I will have more than hell to pay for. Though I suppose that would hardly be the most egregious thing I’ve done thus far. 

I suppose I should begin by explaining where I’ve been. I’ve been busy. Or rather, Agency has been sending me to plug holes created by your pesky colleagues. It was never my intention not to send a response. The first chance of respite I found, and I immediately tracked you here. Please enjoy the taste of my sincerest apologies. 

It is interesting to know that you dream. I don’t require sleep, thankfully, since I wouldn’t even have the time to. However, in recent times, I find myself returning to that lovely park you recommended to me on Strand-286. I lie down on the grass, close my eyes, listening to the birds and the secrets of the trees. For that brief moment, I envision living life as an ordinary human; Inherently unstable, inordinately fragile, but free. 

During my travels, I noticed that humans across strands love to keep animal companions. Cats, in particular, are my favourite. They are independent creatures, proud of their feline nature, yet succumb to pleasures as simple as fur petting. Not to mention they also make for excellent hunters. 

Walks in the park. Tea in a cafe. Stargazing. Jam on toast. You yearn for something so rudimentarily simple, yet so incredibly human. A shame, then. That such simplistic, blissful lives will forever remain elusive to those like us. 

I dream as well, sometimes. I imagine myself sitting on a balcony overlooking the city’s skyline, sipping on a cappuccino as I pet my feline companion. I shall name it Cheese. Do not ask why. I simply like the name. 

I wonder what kind of life that would be, and whether I’d enjoy it even more if I was able to spend it with you. 

Well, I already know my answer. 

Yours,

Karina 

PS. This entire letter was a front. Your drink is laced with a dose of lethal poison. You’ll be dead within the hour. 

PPS. Just kidding! But I made you worry, didn’t I? 

PPPS. Don’t worry. I will never leave you.  

—

Embers from the campfire crackle and curl. Karina quietly steps away from her band of merry adventurers, and ventures to the edge of the woods.

The sky is clear tonight, devoid of clouds or man-eating dragons. The stars are out in full force, illuminating the heavens in an eternal cosmic dance. 

Settling beneath a large tree, Karina lies down on the grass for a rare night of stargazing. And like iron to a magnet, her thoughts are immediately pulled toward Winter.

Across timelines, lifetimes, braids and strands and threads, everything changes. From the people she meets, to the food she eats. The culture, the battles, who or what she is tasked to kill. But their letters always stay the same. 

Sometimes, when Karina closes her eyes, she is greeted by Winter’s presence. An unfamiliar companion whose face she’s never seen, with a voice she’s never heard, whose touch she’s never felt. The only evidence that she even exists lies in the prose that is birthed from a disembodied hand. 

Words should mean nothing, but they mean everything to Karina. And though her blasphemous connection to Winter should scare her, it intrigues her instead. Excites her. And she finds herself yearning for more.

Right on cue, gravity yanks a piece of fruit dangling from its branch, landing it into Karina’s waiting lap. An apple, she inspects, though not at all an ordinary one. For starters, this one is coloured blue. Its flavour, however, is undeniably exquisite. Fresh, succulent, crunchy sweet flesh that ignites all of her nanosenses. 

Satisfaction courses through her receptors, along with the most curious flash of danger. 

Karina closes her eyes, and tastes the syllables bursting across her tongue. 

My Burning Flame, 

As of eleven lifetimes ago, I am no longer an agent of Garden. 

For a while now, I’ve known–perhaps I’ve always known–that my understanding of humanity was not a pedestal to stand upon. The horrors I inflicted upon these poor souls wracked me with guilt, wore me down until I couldn’t bear to even glance at my own reflection. I could go through with it no longer, which is why I left. 

I am being hunted. An expected outcome of such a rash undertaking, I suppose. Garden and her agents are symbiotic in nature: Without Garden, there is no me. But without me, there can be no Garden. If you couldn’t already tell, Garden is a possessive master, and she will not rest until I am safely returned to her clutches, or lay dead at her feet. 

But never mind that. There is still something I must do. Before the noose tightens around my neck, before the day turns to night and the sky withers to grey, and I continue my soundless escape through the threads. My heart holds only a single wish. 

I want to meet you. Face-to-face. Heart-to-heart. I tire of this endless game of hide and seek. While I still have agency, while I still draw breath, I refuse to let Garden hold control over me. I refuse to let her win. 

Coffee on the balcony. Beautiful views. Walks in the park, hand-in-hand. Jam on toast. You say we yearn for the impossible. That our dreams are but blissful escapes from the grim reality. But nobody decides that. Nobody except you and me. 

We could do it, you know. Shall we bend and break and reweave the braid until we create a place downthread, somewhere Agency and Garden cannot find? Shall we move earth and heaven for the benefit of ourselves alone, and create a sanctuary for the both of us–a place in which to brew coffee, to stargaze, to keep a cat named Cheese? 

This is our chance. You and I. Our fates rest in the palms of our hands. A place to call ours. A place to call home. If you have ever in your miserable existence on this material plane yearned for something like this–even just the slightest, most minuscule bit, let’s not waste another moment. Together, we shall make it happen. 

The Weave is vast, with new strands popping up by the second. But do not be afraid. If you ever find yourself lost, allow my name to be your guide. 

I hope to see you soon. 

Yours, 

Winter

—

In Winter’s version of Wonderland, nothing beautiful blooms here. 

The world is smothered by a suffocating sheet of hard snow. Abandoned buildings reach for the skies, as icy winds whistle through the gaps of shattered windows. Mourning, barren. Moss does not grow here. Neither do Garden’s roots. Winter made sure of that. 

Hidden amidst the frost, Winter lies invisible. A ghost of frozen white. In her hand, a plasma pistol. 

Her target…

She rolls the plasma capsule between her fingers. Flicks the chamber open to slot it in. The pistol loads with a whisper of a click. 

She brings the pistol up. Aims into the eternal snowstorm raging throughout the lands. A tense breath escapes her. Garden demands her loyalty; Asks her to prove it. Feelings are irrelevant now. She’d dug her own hole, skirted over the edge, and fell in way too deep. This is her only way out.

Just one shot will do it. A single round to the head. Quick. Painless. Karina won’t feel a single thing, a tiny solace to soften the guilt somewhat. Besides, she’s had plenty of practice before. Like Bonaparte before the revolution. The Führer before Poland. The countless Agency operatives who thought they stood a chance against her. They never did. 

Winter is still thinking of kings and archdukes when she sees Karina. 

Time stops. 

Assassination is nothing new to her. A crucial skill to aid in Garden’s time war. She’s done this a million times before, to a million people. Perhaps more. After a while, they all become the same person. And somewhere deep down inside, Winter hoped it’d be the same for Karina. 

But it’s not. It never could be. Karina is the ember. The fire. She burns and roars in glorious shades of crimson and orange, powering through the buffeting storm and into the clearing, as a cacophonic symphony of flames trails in her wake, charring through the endless expanse of snow.

Karina is red. Scarlet. Shaded deep as the roses Winter grows in her gardens. Metallic plates unfurl and retract along her robust body. Her face, icy from the chill; Steadfast, unwavering. Abomination. Unhuman. Monster. 

She is the most beautiful thing Winter has ever seen. 

But the hardest choices require the strongest wills, and Garden does not take kindly to failure. Betrayal, even less so. Winter cannot afford to lose herself here. The scope narrows, locks in on its target. Her finger poised on the trigger. 

Cats, in particular, are my favourite.

Winter tightens her grip on the pistol. She has never failed before. Not a mission. Not Garden. Not until Karina. 

I dream as well, sometimes.

Her hands begin to tremble. 

I shall name it Cheese. 

Stop. 

If I was able to spend it with you. 

Frozen tear tracks trace Winter’s frostbitten cheeks. 

Don’t worry. I will never leave you. 

Winter’s hands fall to her sides. She furiously crushes the frosted tears breaking across her face in waves. Sobs choke her airways and tear her lungs apart. What was she thinking? In a choice between the fate of every world and her own little sanctuary, how could she ever give up the latter?

Standing in a pool of melted snow, Karina waits. Her eyes–white sclera surrounding striking red irises–dilate and contract. Searching for something. Someone. When her scans inevitably turn up empty, Karina wordlessly trudges back into the icy hellscape, until she is engulfed by the storm. 

Desperation clings to every bit of her skin. Self-preservation or discreetness be damned. Winter uncloaks herself, diving into the storm in pursuit. Icy shards pierce her eyes and nick her skin. A strip of frost seals her lips together. She stumbles aimlessly through the storm, kicking away snow mounds and swiping at the wind, until she succumbs to the cold and collapses to the ground.

A traitor. She has been corrupted. Ensnared. Enraptured. Completely and unreservedly. Willingly. Worse still, she has failed. But frankly, she doesn’t think it matters anymore. 

Winter raises a shaky hand, hovers the gun barrel over her torso. Pulls the trigger. Embraces the searing pain as her warm blood dyes the snow deep crimson, melting the whispers embedded within the frost. 

Dear Winter, 

Do you still remember the first letter you wrote to me? The very one, that found me amidst a sea of the dead and dying. An unconventional greeting for unconventional times. In your unwavering self-confidence and arrogant pride, you had taunted me, asking me to keep up, and I’ve been chasing your elusive shadow ever since.

We were younger then. 

In the aeons and eternities since, as our battles raged loud and fierce across the chaotic order of the Weave, you showed me the true meaning of strength. Honey-coated murmurs slid down a grapevine, while subtle, are a lot more effective than a pyrrhic victory secured through bloodshed. You taught me that, on more than multiple an occasion. 

But beyond the war, in which we hide our secret correspondence. Our little sanctuary, where we slice through our own flesh and openly share our secrets. Through your letters, I learned more than battle techniques, more than the trivial gossip of Garden’s favourite flavour of fertiliser. For you have taught me meaning. Taught me life. Taught me living. In those lessons, I felt a love and a lust for companionship that I couldn’t possibly have prepared for. And I am all the more glad for it. 

Time to drop the pointless pretenses: You brought me here, not to meet me, but to kill me. I know a trap when I see one, dear Winter; Queen of frost and freezing. Your message tasted off.  You sounded over-eager. Desperate. Afraid? The unbecoming inflections in your letter so painfully glaring for it to simply not sound like you. 

Perhaps a part of you hoped that I’d see through your cunning scheme, that I’d never come at all. 

But I came. And I would’ve come still, even if it meant my demise. For you, I would take that chance. 

I will go now. Despite the fact that I already expected as much, your betrayal still stings me in ways words cannot explain. I will run now. To the hills, to the lakes, to the skies. To places I don’t belong, where you can no longer reach me. Even now, I mourn the red rose, sprouting from ice-frozen ground, who died before it had the chance to bloom. 

But as you lie in your wonderland and your blood stains the snow scarlet, here I linger; A disembodied voice carried away by the howling winds. You’ve seen my face. My body. My parts. My fires. Here I stay; In your thoughts, in that little beating device pulsating in your chest cavity, baring myself to you. To you, I give all that I am, everything that remains of me. 

So in these messages, I am yours. Then and now. Forever and always. In life and in letter, blood and beating heart. Not Garden’s, not your mission’s, not the birds or the trees or the snow, but yours, alone. 

Always, 

Karina 

—

Love is dead. But the Weave still lives, breathing and screaming and kicking, waiting for deliverance, for a saviour. Karina takes on new jobs with a vengeance, seeking out the roots of Garden and burning them to char, strand by strand by strand. 

In the fifteenth-century Atlantic, she shoves a drunken Columbus over the railings of the La Santa María. Twenty-first century; She marches a legion of Ukrainian mothers and widows down the streets of Moscow. 1962. She is the commander of the B-59 submarine deep in enemy waters, and this time, nobody opposes her order to launch the nuclear torpedo. On the summit of Mount Olympus, she slays Zeus with his own lightning bolt. 

Every lifetime. Every moment. She sheds old skin, discards outlived masks, and becomes reborn. Always different, always more cutthroat, more dangerous. The Agency will suspect if her efficiencies drop, so Karina works riskier assignments, succeeds beautifully, brutally. With no one to thwart her, she wins. Again and again and again. Triumphant, yet empty. 

But of course, like a bad habit she can’t seem to break; She still finds herself sifting through every note. Straining her ears for every tap and every whistle. Still glances at rippling water surfaces for unusual reflections. On clear nights, she still gazes up at the star-dusted sky, looking for a sign. 

It’s all so unfair. But isn’t it always? She would be naive to forget that they are fighting a war. An infinity-old skirmish spanning beginnings that never end. Still, she searches. Finds it in her heart of metal and heat, to hope. 

One chilly evening, she lays herself on frozen grass, and waits for the stars to come out. In a moment, she must depart to send Shakespeare’s works to Socrates, so that in two centuries’ time, the infinite monkey theorem becomes fact. This is just a brief respite. A pit stop to refuel, until she returns to the Weave, spitting oil and wailing. 

The stars do come out eventually, gleaming and shining in mystical wonder. Then the heavens split apart, and a rift shatters through the sky, spewing forth runes of frost and starlight, symbols that twist and bend and break apart, before forming into words. 

Dear Karina, 

I know that you warned me. That you’d run. That you’d keep your distance. I don’t blame you for not wanting to hear from me again. Unfortunately, as you can tell, I’m not a very good listener. 

Where to begin? Yes, I tried to kill you. It’s pointless to deny it. I had close to full intentions of going through with it too. But at the last moment, I faltered, as your words clouded my mind with elusive worlds and unattainable domesticity. I realised then, that you have found your way inside of me, worming through the tiniest of gaps in my defences. You built your kingdom on the foundations of my soul, and I was only too happy to let you. I knew, there and then, that I could never allow myself to hurt you. 

I am safe. For now. Stashed away in one of Garden’s most beloved strands, confined until she decides what to do with me. 

You are everywhere now. I see your mirage in vast open fields, hear your fury in the cries of migrating Vermillion Flycatchers. I can smell you. In campfires and kerosene lamps, smelting furnaces and lit candles. In broiling ovens from where I can taste you, in the charred bits of roasted meats and burnt crusts cut from bread loaves. 

I can feel your heat, hovering close to me. Igniting my senses alive. A radiant sun that grows my crops and brightens darkened days. Now and forever, you warm me in ways nothing else ever could. 

But the idea of you is not enough anymore. I’ve seen your face, strong and fierce and beautiful. I want to be greedy. I want the real thing. All I want is a way out, to leave this wretched prison behind and be rid of my chains. The possibilities splayed out before my eyes: A cottage in the mountains, breakfast in the mornings, a cat named Cheese. To touch your hand. To run my knuckles along your cheek. To brush your nose with my own and press my lips to your shoulder. I want everything. All of it.

For you, I would rip the skies apart. 

So here I lay at your feet, soul bared open to you, as is yours to me. I will fight to the end. I will go against Garden, my mission, my entire life and entire world. I will do all of this for you. And more. 

I know that I am unworthy of redemption. But the road ahead is shrouded in darkness, and I cannot see. You are the only one who can save me. 

So please, my Karina. My beautiful, dangerous, furious Karina. Be my flame. Blaze the path forward, through fog and foliage. And I shall follow you to the ends of the universe. 

Yours, 

Winter

—

Winter melts beneath the blazing sun overhead. 

Fields stretch on endlessly, far beyond the eye can see. Life grows here. Seeds that take root in soil, growing tall and strong under tender pruning and care till maturation. Once fully formed, they are thrust into the Weave, condemned to an eternity entrenched in brutal warfare. 

Winter heaves the watering can in her hands, winces at the lingering throb jabbing her side. A rash decision, in hindsight. But it was the only way she could cover her tracks, and pass off the mission as one that went awry. Perhaps Garden will accept her explanations. She probably won’t. Honestly, Winter doesn’t care anymore. 

The days blend together, more so than usual. Winter has lived infinities like heartbeats, time bending and twisting to her will. Now, she is trapped. Escape would surely bring on pursuit, fiercer and hungrier than anything Winter can manage. As long as she remains in this wounded state, and without Karina to ignite her heart with fiery determination, she can do nothing. She is an animated corpse, dancing to the strings Garden pulls. 

But a fire burns within her still. It’s small. Tiny, even. A barely smoldering ember, struggling to ignite. But it’s there.

As long as it still yearns for life, Winter continues to look out for signs.

A long time later, a bee zips past her ear, trailing pollen in its wake. Winter blinks, and the bee is gone. But the pollen lingers still, floating in the air like undulating whispers from a breeze. 

Winter reads the letter, and her thawing heart erupts into flame. 

Dear Starry Sky,

Do not seek my forgiveness, for I had forgiven you before I knew you. Before the skies split apart to let in the sun. Before light. Before names. My heart held the soil you bedded your seed in, from the root to the bud to the sky, a tree of vastless trunks of oak and wood. And on the top of that tree a treehouse was built, and in the treehouse was where I sought you. 

My snow. My storm. My ghost in white. I knew then, that should the world conspire to keep us apart, then I shall fight back against the world. 

Agency or Garden be damned. Let them fall. Let them crumble. I’ll burn hotter, more furious, brilliant enough to melt their realities into puddles. They can’t stop me, not when I have you. For you, I would move mountains. For you, I would drain the oceans. For you, I would raze kingdoms, continents, nebulas. Even the chasing hands of Father Time wouldn’t be able to halt my advance. 

For you, I would defy the gods. 

For you, for you, for you. 

Do not despair. Though the future seems bleak, so long as my heart burns infernal and your roots remain sunken through the braids of the Weave, there is still a chance. The Agency fears you. I listen in on their radio comms, transmitted across threads and strands. They speak of your legend in reverent disdain, terrified of the destruction you are capable of wreaking. You, who can bring empires to their knees with the gentlest of whispers. You, who can change the tide of wars with a single, piercing gaze. You, who can destroy worlds with the gunpowder in a bullet cartridge. You will be the one to destroy the Agency. It can only be you. 

As for me? I will deal with Garden. My weapons are primed for war, and I am the army. They will never see me coming. And no matter what wretched beasts or thorny vine whips they throw at me, I will emerge victorious. That, I can wholeheartedly assure you of.

Look to my fire, and follow its light through the darkness. The future we so crave together hangs just beyond our grasp. No more Agency. No more Garden. No more masters. Green grass, blue skies, and Cheese. That’s all I want now. It’s all we’ll ever need. 

Believe in us. After all, we’re the best there is at what we do. They will hunt us, no doubt–fiercer and more desperately than they’ve ever hunted each other–but something tells me that you’ve been waiting for this moment. 

It’s just ourselves and each other now, Winter. Will you trust me? 

Yours,

Karina 

—

❤️,

For you, I will. 

Always.

⭐

—

It’s rather fitting, then. Poetic in a sense. That by destroying the Agency, she carries out exactly what she was supposed to be doing all this time. However, this is not for a mission. Not for a war she had stopped caring about aeons ago. And most certainly not for Garden. 

This time, she has herself a witting accomplice, whom she colludes with to tear the world asunder. 

Like Winter always does, she makes plans. She packs seeds into the earth, sprinkles lead-spiked water over hardened soil. She poisons aqua ducts. Floods vents with mustard gas and burns through paste dispensers with locusts and beasts of pestilence. Impersonates leaders, and descends their utopias into anarchy. She climbs upthread and down; she braids and unbraids history’s hair. 

Her efforts span decades, millennia. Expansive infinitudes of vastness and ubiquity. Until the planets of her enemies lie dormant and slumbering, and nothing rouses or wakes. 

Her job here, at last, is finished. She is rewarded with a sharp pain in her side, and a violent bout of coughing that has her throwing up blood. 

Out of time. She calls for the Weave, and it responds to her summon a beat too slowly. When it eventually arrives, Winter clings to the braid, and her eyes widen as the thread begins to fray. 

—

Garden’s locations are incredibly guarded secrets, something even the Agency’s most senior commanders don’t know. Garden agents are hard to find; Harder yet to catch. And as is Agency policy, they do not take prisoners. 

It’s a good thing, then, that Karina has help on her side. 

When she arrives on Garden’s doorstep, her Sentinels seem to be caught off-guard. Perhaps the infinities of time had turned them complacent, blinded them to the possibility of a crazed assailant busting through the front entrance, burning with rage and armed to her teeth. 

Vicious beasts and earthen warriors block her path, demanding Karina to identify herself. She tears them apart. Eye from socket, limb by limb by limb. They do not ask her again. 

Recoiling from Karina’s intrusion, Garden’s leafy groves come alive with danger. Agents slide down vines in droves. Giant taproots yawn and heave. A sea of murderous stars descend upon the soil.

Karina is swift, mighty, indomitable, and in pain. She throws caution to the wind, removes her limit breakers, deploys her armour, her weapons, and razes them all into dust. Then Garden comes. Formless, wailing, eternal. Their battle is long and fierce. Karina is pricked by thorny vines. Roots the size of tree trunks slam into her frame. Stumbling to her feet, again and again; She loses armour, bones, fingers, teeth. She blazes through appendages of bark and blinds Garden with fiery punches. Then, she calls upon her last secret engines of war, and brings Garden to her broken knees. 

The haunting voice of Garden reverberates throughout the universe, horrible and shuddering, her curses condemning Karina to a thousand hells and a million lifetimes of torment. 

Karina fires a charge beam into her mouth, and Garden’s dying screams echo across the charred remains of her kingdom. 

Then, in a blink, the stars collapse and explode at once. The ground disintegrates beneath her feet, and Karina finds herself freefalling through the Weave. 

Without the Agency or Garden to keep the threads tethered, the Weave crumbles. Braids of history fray and snap apart, broken bits of rope scattering like dust in the wind. 

She tumbles between threads, in silence and null time, counting down to zeroes from infinities. Until, at last, she crashes into a lonely, frigid desert. 

Destroyed, barely conscious, and in agonising pain; Karina succumbs, drowning in dreams of Winter. 

—

Karina awakens to snowflakes falling gently from a greyscale sky. 

A muted groan escapes her lips. Everything hurts. She’s missing an arm, an unfortunate casualty of Garden. Her foot is twisted the wrong way. Her exposed chestplate reveals a sputtering metallic heart that blazes hot as molten fire, desperately fighting back against the freezing cold. She won’t last much longer like this. She’s badly in need of a comprehensive repair and overhaul. Hell, what she wouldn’t give for a simple recharge right now. But it’s a long climb back upthread to the nearest maintenance station. Besides, the Weave has been completely destroyed. There’s nothing left for her to even return to. 

Karina is still thinking of oil baths and neural rewirings when she sees Winter’s crumpled body lying a stone’s throw away. 

Time stops. 

Each movement is torturous, each breath stinging her lungs. Karina tries to stand, but no strength remains in her ruined limbs. So she grits her remaining teeth, and crawls towards Winter on a dislocated elbow and peeling knees. 

Winter is deathly pale, porcelain skin white as a ghost. Silky locks of light hair frame a hauntingly beautiful face. Karina is almost surprised by how young she looks. Her eyes remain shut, long lashes rustling in the wind. A gaping wound stains her torso deep crimson, and her chest neither rises nor falls. 

Karina reaches for Winter’s limp hand. Her malfunctioning eyes stutter, scanning through incomprehensible error screens, praying for the slightest hint of a heartbeat. But Karina finds nothing, the hand in her hold cold enough to freeze hell over. 

Winter is gone. 

There’s a beat, as Karina shifts to curl up beside Winter, gripping onto her hand like a lifeline. Like a memory. There are no screams, however. No tears. Instead, a cresting wave of emptiness comes for her, washing her out to sea. Filling her lungs to bursting point, eating her up from the inside. 

“I love you,” She whispers, broken voice swept away by the galing winds. She rips herself apart for not saying it sooner, when she had the chance. When she thought, in all her naivete, that they still had time. 

Karina shifts her gaze; Upwards, now, watching her shuddering breaths crystallising into mist, as wisps of snow continue to fall. 

They land on her face in a thousand frosted kisses, numbing the remnants of her mangled body. The lines form along the parting of her lips, letters falling through the open hole in her chest. Words, sentences, paragraphs, promises, memories, and goodbyes. They melt around the dying embers of her smoldering heart, giving life to the tree that flourishes within. 

My Karina, 

Oh, if only time machines were real. 

Or perhaps they are. I’m not sure. I probably didn’t search the lower strands thoroughly enough. Not that it matters now. 

When your plan eventually came to me, fully formed and burning with the lust for freedom, I think both of us were aware of the potential consequences. That, as Garden and the Agency languish in their ruins, the Weave would destabilise to the point of total self-destruction. And that you and I, created for and as dependents of the Weave, would be destroyed along with it.  

But I went through with it, because I trusted you with all that I had, in faith that you wouldn’t let me down. I had also made a promise to follow you to the ends of the universe, and, well; Here we are. Though, I do feel sorry that I wasn’t quite able to stick the landing. 

Please find my apologies falling all around you. 

Still, I really wonder what it might’ve been like. A small place in the Outer Wilds, a dog (my favourite!), your stupid cat Cheese, a field of sprawling green grass to run and play and grow rosemary. A clear night sky, to watch the stars dance. All the same things those silly little humans do? I suppose it might be nice. 

However, dear Karina. Sweet, strong, beautiful Karina. I don’t need to yearn for such impossible things. I don’t need time machines. Because if knowing you were already more than enough, then loving you was everything. 

I love you, Karina. I have loved you, and I will continue to love you. In echoing caverns and ruined cities, in nature parks and high places. In every moment and every lifetime, in life and in death. In every past, present and future. From the first word to the last. 

Should your final moments feel lonely, seek comfort in the me that blooms within you. For here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud, and the sky of the sky of a tree called love; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide. And this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart. Be not afraid, Karina, for I am always here with you. 

And should the gods look upon our works with favour, perhaps we will be granted the privilege of rebirth. We might get to be humans this time, finally. Maybe neighbours, even. Lovers, for sure. Or we might be birds, sharing the same tree branch and singing the same songs. Frogs on the same lily pad. Bees pollinating the same flower. Leaves on the same plant stem. Sediments in the same riverbed. Oxygen molecules occupying the same air. With you, Karina; Nothing is impossible. With you, Karina; Our next lives will be everything we have ever dreamed of, with no more time wars to get in our way.

And I cannot wait to meet you there. 

Always, 

Winter