The question moves out of her before she decides to ask it — not through her throat but through her chest, the same channel the figure uses. Why didn't you come before the burning? The sand_figure's palm does not close. The silence lasts long enough that a grain of sand drops from its collarbone and disappears into the cold. Then the melody lowers in her sternum, becomes something slower and heavier, almost grievous: I could not reach you through the city. Too many names stacked against each other — walls, fires, daily bread. The burning did not make you. But it unmade the distance between you and the sand. The spiral where its mouth should be deepens once and then smooths again, the way a wound shows before the skin tries to close over it. I was not built to arrive in time, it continues. I was built to be here after. Its palm is still open. Still a question.