“Nice Day Out.”

“Nice day out.”

“Yeah, sure. Horrible night to have a curse, though.”

“It’s some small comfort that the Curse at least caught some pleasant weather in its loop.”

“The Corsairs say the weather was always nice here. It was however they wanted to make it.”

“Suppose so. Still, these flowers might not’ve been in bloom. It might’ve been overcast.”

“Something tells me mild weather and pretty flowers don’t mean much after almost three years trapped here, reliving the same three weeks over and over, helpless to do anything differently while the rest of the world just moves along.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve spent all the time I can fighting here since the Curse set in, helping keep it at bay—like you. I talk with the Corsairs, too. They can’t change what they do, but I can. So I try to do things for them, bring them things.”

“Like flowers?”

“Yes, like flowers. One Corsair friend I’ve made spends the whole three weeks in a cliffside cave, pinned down by the initial Scorn attack. For the first few cycles she was just alone in there, eventually knowing exactly when the Scorn would come out of the dark, but unable to do anything to prepare. In the third week she runs out of water, gets dehydration exhaustion, and gets wounded—not by the Scorn, she killed them all. She stumbles and gashes her side on a rock. She waits the last two days, and doesn’t quite die before the Curse brings her back to the beginning to go through it all again.”

“I know lots of stories like that—and worse.”

“No doubt. For some of our friends here, it’s all we can do to fight with them, even if it doesn’t change anything yet. For her, though, I’m glad to be able to do more than that.”

“With flowers?”

“Flowers, vids and news from outside, and just talk, when I can spare the time.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to help her avoid hurting herself?”

“I’ve tried. The Curse responds strangely to our intentions. When I position myself in place to keep her from falling into the jagged rock, she still stumbles and falls—but the fall happens earlier or later than when I’m there. I think even if I spent the whole three weeks in that cave with her, I couldn’t prevent the course of what befalls her, not with all my power.”

“…You’re right. Early on, I decided to pitch camp, just skip out on Vanguard duty and stay here. I grouped up with a Corsair squad on the far side of the mists, out toward the Watchtower. I learned where every enemy would come from, and when; the trajectory and timing of each shot; the placement and severity of every wound. I fought like hell with them, over and over, but even with perfect foreknowledge of how the attacks would come…”

“You somehow couldn’t stop them.”

“…No. It’s as if their actions would change because I knew what they’d do when. Everything would end up happening the same, just… slipping around what I did, no matter how I intervened.”

“That’s the Curse. That’s how it touches us, even though we can come and go, and act freely within its grip. And that’s why I bring my friend flowers and tell her what’s going on beyond the Reef. Until we finally break the Curse, I think the small comfort we can try to give may be worth more than all the fighting we do over and over again.”

(Spine of Keres, Dreaming City)