text: Kirana splashed through the rising waters, screaming. That was how she became aware of herself. Cold, screaming. The taste of salt. A rush of memories overcame her, tangling in her mind like hopelessly knotted nets.
  
  She was cutting down a woman called Nava Sona. Murdering her coldly. Marrying her. She was a cobbler, like her mother, drowned early in the toxic rain that fell from the sky. Her brother was pulling her from a burning building, poor little Ahkio, his hands, his hands… poor Ahkio, whom she loved, whom she had to protect, because Oma was coming and he would not be prepared. He was too fragile for this world. She loved her country. She hated her country. She had no country, a refugee from some other lost star, stumbling into this world during the last two years of Oma's rise.
  
  She was all of these things, and more, an infinite number of selves, of memories, of choices, all colliding painfully, overwhelmingly.
  
  The water filled the room, pushing her toward the far side of the cavern. People were missing – far more than could have been lost already. Zezili was gone, but there, there! Yisaoh!
  
  Kirana reached for her. Took her by the arm as she whirled past.
  
  "Yisaoh!" Kirana cried, and embraced her, but Yisaoh pulled away, her eyes so very black, gazing at her as if she were a stranger.
  
  "No, no," Kirana said.
  
  Yisaoh punched her in the face.
  
  Kirana reeled back in the water, nose burst, bloody. The sea rushed in and pushed her under and out through the back wall of the great structure.
  
  She screamed under water, bubbles rising all around her. Kicking, up, up, what about her children? Would they know her for what she was? Who would they be? Which version? No, no, she knew who she was, didn't she?
  
  Poor Ahkio, too soft, and her mother, too soft, and Nasaka, always scheming. Nasaka…
  
  No, I am not that woman! Kirana wanted to cry, but there was only the ocean around her, the sea. She flailed, bumping into a bit of detritus: a bit of wood already rising to the surface.
  
  She came up out of the water and gasped. Spit, choking on seawater. She splashed all around. There were others not far away, heading toward the sandbar. Her mind seethed with memories, hers and others, so many others. I murdered my brother. I murdered my country. I destroyed everything and everyone that mattered to me.
  
  "No!" Kirana screamed. "I'm not… I did this… I'm not that woman. I'm not a fucking monster, I'm not…"
  
  Another wave of memories overcame her. She lost her grip on the piece of wood, and splashed further away from the sandbar. She would go back, start over, go to Saiduan, where she had been queen, where she had married the Patron, where her children became gods…
  
  What life? In what world? In the memory of the worlds, of all her desperate choices: choices that she could no longer flee from.