She followed the mountains, the sea, and the stars in her memory.

A few dark indigo strokes wound together, enclosing a stretch of emptiness without ever closing it. They were like ridges worn down by years, their outlines slowly loosening, until only a pale ache remained.

Like mountains, and not mountains.

Several faint wet marks spread outward, their edges clear and almost formless, like water left on the shore after the tide has withdrawn, holding a coolness not yet fully gone.

Like the sea, and not the sea.

A few scattered dots of ink slowly opened into the paper, far from one another, unable to meet, like the dim light left at the edge of the sky after night has lifted, carrying a wordless loneliness.

Like stars, and not stars.

The traces of the past were like a sheet covered in writing and lowered into clear water. They did not dissolve line by line in the order of time. They faded at random, unevenly, out of sequence. Only when the parts meant to arrange the world—the parts people most wished to preserve—had dissolved first did the hidden, unyielding things begin to show. They had been there all along, concealed for a long time in the deeper layers.

There was cloud there.

That faint shape, that breath, had formed from the meeting of many small and honest traces, yet it belonged to none of them.

Like cloud, and not like the word cloud. It hid inside a silence without edge, withdrew into the shadow of time, lingered where meaning had come loose, and moved through the narrow seam between resemblance and difference.