The sun is hidden behind jungle.

Night reigns, and as always, a portion of the corona pretend to be tiny furious fires churning in the holy void, and after a healthy time, night draws the next day into existence

The coronas do their work again. The jungle grows and every mouth is fed, and each day ends with them filling their homes with confidence, tending to private needs and private pleasures before passing into states that are not quite sleep.

Day and night, everyone talks about the ancient creature and what she wanted in the other world.

Bold voices find bold answers.

“She has decided to punish the monsters,” they say. “One final battle for the flesh.”

No other explanation seems likely for that kind of soul.

Twenty-nine is a blessed number. One third is a lovely partial number. Twenty-nine and a third days pass, and she is half-strong again. And again, she pierces the shimmering barrier, emerging at the Creation’s center, working furiously to fly in a great slow circle. The monsters notice but they are too slow. Exhausted, she falls back through the barrier, and she eats again and rests, saying nothing about her mind or this crazed adventure. And the other Firsts never offer opinions about what their sister wishes. They want her left alone, and they talk quite a lot to one another, but always with private voices, wearing concern on their ancient bodies while they tell their scions to mind the jungles, to care for their own souls.

There is a third voyage and then a fourth. The old female leaves at night and each is uneventful. But she has established a ritual that even stupid creatures can understand. The final journey is buoyed up by sunlight. She emerges to be met by a great flight of monsters. The coronas drifting below count the approaching machines and the little beasts riding inside the machines. Never has the enemy been so numerous, so close. Young voices and harsh voices renew the arguments about what the First of Firsts wants, and more to the point, what she deserves. Plainly, everyone should follow her. The monsters are sick with urgency, racing to catch her and butcher her, and this is a rare rich chance for the good world to rise in force, destroying every machine and a small, critical portion of the tree beasts.

But that is not the coronas’ way, of course.

The elders firmly remind everyone that they are tenaciously peaceful. Their power and speed are not attached to any rage. But talk doesn’t stop the more belligerent souls. Calming scents are more effective, but even then not enough. The most violent coronas gather near the barrier, waiting just out of sight, each spotting the machine that he or she will kill first, and in their minds, in secret, they see themselves bathed in the searing white light that the coronas like to aim at their heroes.

A thousand young coronas make a momentous decision:

If the old female fights, they will fight too.

That is the honorable way.

But when the monsters arrive, not even one of her heads snaps against them. With bladders swollen and empty, she remains in one place, inviting them to pierce her with spears and explosives. Then the monsters grab her limp form with bags of gas—bags made from the bladders of her own scions. Every corona watches the murder. Then the monsters drag the dead gray flesh to the emptiest piece of reef. An ugly night arrives, and a few coronas sneak into the other world, watching knives hack the body to pieces and then toss the pieces aside. The First’s glorious parts, too old to be given an age, are also too old to be used for even the ugliest purpose.

The waste is astonishing. What more proof is needed that the other world is ruled by insanity?

That wicked night is crossed at last, and other days and nights follow in turn. Another First is judged to be the eldest now. He is more male than female, and he might well be the same remarkable age. But his voice has never seemed as wise as the one who is lost, and where she was dramatic, he holds a duller kind of soul.

“She is not gone,” he reminds them. “Can you hear her echoes? Do you see her bright voice roaming in your brains?”

But the old female is gone, and without that living breathing body in this world, something has changed.

The Creation feels diminished, feels a little wrong.

Young coronas grieve.

And the First only makes the suffering worse. “What she did did not need to do be done,” he says.

Everyone aches. Everyone is unhappy with this tale’s finish. The Egg-of-all-eggs died among the worst kind of strangers, and where is the value in that?

“It was a worthless waste,” he says.

Every waste is worthless, is it not?

But then he offers something unexpected, unexplained. “I don’t know why anyone should care so much about one old obligation.”

“What obligation?” a few ask.

The old fellow acts confused by the question. Perhaps he didn’t mean to speak. His thoughts leaked free of his skin, oblivious to his wishes.

“What old obligation?” everyone asks.

He pauses. He reflects. Then with all of his strength, he says, “Once and for good left-behind reasons, she made a promise to another. All of this nonsense grew wild from that one foolish promise.”

“What promise? Which other?” the coronas want to know. And not just the young ones, and not just the loud brilliant ones. Even the elders beg for details, knowing nothing about this pact.

“Details are not important,” the First claims with bright, defiant flashes of high-purple. “To act on a pledge after so long . . . under these circumstances . . . well, her judgment was rotted through.”

One of his daughters is just a hundred days younger than the world. To him and everyone, she says, “I don’t recall any obligations.”

He says nothing.

“This promise was hatched in the other world,” she guesses, every head gazing at the demon floor.

“Not in that world or in ours,” he says. “I was with her when it happened. The other Firsts were elsewhere. I alone saw the agreement made. It was during the earlier Creation, and ask me nothing else.”

But a singular opportunity is been exposed. In one voice, thousands say, “Tell us about the world before this world.”

“It is not important,” says the old corona.

His voices are solid, but his colors are less than confident.

“That world is gone,” he says. “What value could it possibly have?”

No one in the world is working now. Bodies hold still and no one speaks, the jungle growing wilder by the moment while every eye and mind is focused on that ancient man.

“Our obligations are aimed at this day,” he says. “This day reigns, and I will do everything possible to see your work fulfilled.”

Days are like flesh. Each one is dressed in the same kind of flesh, and likewise, every night looks like every other.

But when have the coronas not done their important, eternal work?

Suddenly the old one flashes with rage. “We should have attacked those brutes,” he says. “When the beasts came for my friend, we should have killed them. And we would have dragged her home again, and she would die among us, and that story would be finished.”

He sounds crazy and looks crazy, talking this way.

“Those little monsters are getting strong,” the First warns. Talking to himself as much as to the others, he says, “I won’t surrender. Not to those little beasts, those foul murderers.”

The world is silent, but for him.

“And I won’t honor promises made to the dead, certainly not for reasons that I can’t pretend to remember anymore anymore anymore.”

“You made a pledge too?” one child asks.

Then another wants to know, “Who is dead?”

“Everyone is dead,” says the crazed old corona. “Haven’t you been damn well paying attention?”

Days are like flesh, worn for their time before dying, and the soul of the day, what matters most, is what lingers.