It’s incredible how the progression of time heals.

It’s the only dimension we interact with that we cannot change our momentum through.

I can move left to right, back and forth and back again, and I can jump and gravity will return me to the ground.

However, I can’t choose to just turn around in time, I’m firmly moving along, seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years…

Our momentum through time is beautifully constant, a fact I am reminded of each day.

I’ve spent the last three years watching the world around me blur by, watching and coming to love a world healing from a wound inflicted upon it by a maniacal terrorist.

I’ve struggled to reconcile my involvement in the attack. While I know that the wholesale destruction of much of the industrial district of Oatis wasn’t my fault… I was certainly involved, and it’s hard to avoid a feeling of guilt in the matter.

I’m grateful the Aurunians are an enlightened people, because losing thousands of people isn’t a wound society easily heals from. The site was cleaned, landscaped and memorialized, and slowly life returned to normal.

The first couple years I felt a certain trepidation about living here, on a world inflicted with a wound I felt I helped cause. Over time I realized that people would never remember me over the face of the woman whose body crushed those people.

They remembered her face.

The face of my wife.

When I pass by the industrial sector of our city, Oatis, I never quite see the memorial, or the pomp and circumstance surrounding the memorialization of such a place… I look closely and see the imprints in the ground, the shape of her legs, the imprints of her feet carved forever in the surface of this world.

While Aurunian structures are quite strong, and they protected many people from a grisly end on that fateful day, it was the most devastating attack the world had endured since the end of the age of war thousands of years ago, when the Aurunians formed a society that valued life and progress over pride. A world where, amusingly enough, men lived under the feet of women, and were happy to do so!

Fortunately, many Aurunians realized that Violet had no real part in the attack, that she was a mere puppet in the matter, a veritable tool for a more menacing foe. A man who lost all regard for human life.

Upon later examination the sigil stone was shown to exhibit controlling abilities upon anyone who interacted with it. Thus, she was exonerated from the consequences which could have been leveled upon her.

While there are obviously people who hold resentment, I’ve not encountered many who seem to. If she had been turned on Earth, the people there wouldn’t have been so forgiving. They likely would have demanded her life at the stake and would have been blind to the truth of the events as they were.

Goddess, I’m grateful we don’t live there.

For her part, Violet has no real recollection of what happened, just a few vague memories and what she saw on the news reels.

I’m grateful for that too, remembering such a horrible experience…

Actually, it might have been better to know what her body did. What do I know though? I’m not a psychologist.

Living your life after missing a part of your memory, where someone else made you into a living weapon must be so confusing. A life where other’s eyes sometimes linger on you. Silently and ignorantly accusing you.

Despite all of this… she has recovered somewhat, she is normally quite like herself. Unless we must take the train through ground zero. Which unfortunately we are about to do.

I caress Violet’s back softly, I don’t need to ask, she says nothing, but grabs my free hand and squeezes it tightly. I pull her in, wrapping the hand I was caressing her with around her. I do my best to be reassuring… but what do you say?

Sorry you were used by a madman to commit horrible crimes?

Or, sorry you crushed this part of the city?

No… nothing to be said, only silent feelings and emotions restrained with weak strings.

I rub her back and hold her as much as I can to comfort her, until the train passes into the major tunnel network sitting under most of the downtown area.

Violet breathes a sigh of relief, calmer already, she looks up to me, and we lock eyes and I mouth, “sorry.”

She simply nods and rests her head on my shoulder for the last part of the ride.

My poor wife, I wish I could take this pain away from her.

When we get off the train, Violet is smiling again, informing me that the mental anguish was fading.

Good.

I sigh happily, taking her by the arm and lead her out the door.

My eyes are drawn to the smaller train cars, rapidly organizing themselves onto the little tracks built into the floor. The men accelerate away toward their smaller destinations. I muse silently that I used to be as small as them, in another life.

I smile because I’m happy they have productive, and hopefully happy lives on Auru. Despite the “wonderful” example I had in my father, I do realize that many men are wonderful upstanding people. They deserve all the best, just like us.

Despite that fact, it is amusing to me how I would accidently destroy those little trains if they weren’t protected by Aurunian structural engineering. Thoughtlessly stepping upon the little occupants trapped inside.

But, they are safe inside the trains, my thirty-five tons of mass distributed around them.

The streets flow past us, my arm around Violet, hand resting on her hip. I hold her close, our hips to sway together as we progress toward our apartment building. My eyes are drawn up, I look for our floor, so high up. Despite knowing we live on the 345th floor, I can’t ever seem to see our apartment from the outside.

For all the good it would do at this angle, light refraction and all. I can see the last glimmers of the setting star on the edges of the mirrored window panels.

We continue silently into the lobby, and while I’m a little distracted I feel Violet’s lips on my cheek, “Go call the elevator dear, I’m going to get the mail before we head up.”

Fine with me, I tap the elevator panel which lights up with the current position of the elevator and a time estimate to arrival.

I notice it’s close, hopefully Violet runs!

The doors slide open nearly silently, clicking into a fully open position with a characteristic squeak. I step in and hold the door open when Violet turns the corner and jumps into the elevator car. She breathes deeply to get her breath.

I rest my finger on the elevator pad and we begin our ascent.

Violet wheezes lightly, “That was a fast arrival…”

I laugh, “Yeah I was surprised, nothing in the mail?"

“Nope, empty box!” She smiles and tugs on my hand, pulling me to her side, as we look out the window at the enormous setting sun rising over the horizon. It shines brilliantly against the expansive ocean spreading out around the horizon.

Auru’s star Allo is an enormous O-type blue giant, so while it’s more distant to Auru, it fills more of the sky then Sol does on Earth. I used to cover the sun with my thumb to feel more significant, and despite being a significantly larger woman here, I certainly cannot cover Allo with a single finger.

“I love that we get to watch the sun rise and set again, it’s such a beautiful sight.”

She rests her head on me, tightening her grip, “Well, rising nearly nine kilos can do that, angular math being what it is.” I turn and kiss her forehead, and she nuzzles me as we stand there happily together for the rest of the ascent.