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—So, in the cave where you see things and the stars whirl, you should not touch anything.

The one looks at the other above the patient, whose hand is—

—Do we know? That it was touch that caused this.

The patient’s eyes flutter open. She is sick of this attention. —Discuss this elsewhere, she says.

—But we need to understand.

—It is my hand and not yours, she says, and with that hand fails to grip the bedsheet.

The researchers leave the room but as the door closes she yet hears: —Is it? Still her hand?

* * *

So consent has been revoked. The patient is the only one to have stumbled upon this cave since… ever? There are not records. Even now there are barely records. She has said her entry point and that she turned right after the vaulted-ceiling room where it was still a natural cave.

Dr. Saria Ēse-Sal looks at Iśja Seafarer and li looks back at her and both know the same thing.

—Should it be I, or you?

* * *

That is an oversimplification. There are other researchers. Even a specialist they both know.

But. Dr. Ēse-Sal recites the facts.

—Her hand could not grip the sheet.

—As if her hand was not there.

—A transparency to it.

—Did the stars whirl beneath?

—Like an infection.

—Like someone infected her.

—In a cave with an entrance buried for hundreds of years.

—Entrance only visible after the landslide.

—A cave made by a person long-dead.

—Infected by a person long-dead.

Iśja Seafarer listens and loosens the hold on lir curiosity. It is Ēse-Sal who specializes in the oldest manifestations she can find. This is not among them but it is still made by the dead.

Unless.

—Could be an angel.

Iśja could laugh at how much that dampens Ēse-Sal’s mood. Li adds, —We could ask.

—Could be a secret. Someone could lie.

Ēse-Sal has little experience with angelic manifestations, that is, with the study of them. Of course she like everyone else lives on and breathes and eats nothing but such. Would she recognize one?

—I’ve dabbled in that subfield, Iśja says. —I might.

—Isn’t it not settled, if you can tell at all?

—Trace elements of God.

—Are debated.

An impasse. They stare at each other. Iśja states the obvious: —It doesn’t have to be only one. Who goes to it.

—Still a first.

—Second, technically.

—First who consents to its research.

—To perhaps lose a hand.

—Yes.

—And who knows else.

—Yes.

—Even death?

Ēse-Sal admits: —That would delay my monograph. But. How many are killed by the long-dead?

* * *

So of course it is Dr. Ēse-Sal. She has skill in a cave, though so does her colleague. That was why they were called here.

—God I hope it’s not just an angel, she says to herself.

She seeks history. She wants the past. Humans have made their mark on this world. Human souls have pressed their workings into it.

—Not-the-world entering the world, she thinks.

Maybe that’s when the Resurrection will happen. When only a small fraction of the world is the world, as it was.

But to reach Not-The-World she must pass through the world. A cave only of limestone (an angel’s soul) weathered by water (another angel’s soul).

The air stiller. Lime and lime. Salt. Calcium. Her headlamp against the dark. Trailing a wire behind her, to lead her way out.

She hardly got a chance to see. The way that hand didn’t grip the sheet.

—Now I will, she mutters.

Dark. Stone, slippery with the makings of bats. Probably no bats where she is going. Might avoid it instinctively. No one’s noticed anything unusual with bats in this area.

Deeper in. Deeper in. The dripping sound of calcium-laden water. Slowly making pillars and pillars of rock. Dark.

She notices the shapes in her eyes before she notices the headlamp is off. Clicks it back on. Plenty of batteries. But she turned it off. Doesn’t remember.

Turns it off again. Maybe her own deeper self is right. She’ll need the darkness to see where it begins—

Stepping forward, her foot jamming against something. Light back on.

—Not safe to walk forward in the dark.

—Don’t I know that?

She steps forward. —Remember to see. Steps forward. —Remember to see. Steps into the dark where her eyes buzz in static.

She’s turned it off.

She stares into the dark.

—This is not the way her hand faded, she thinks. This is not what happened to the patient. Or not something she said.

She turns the light on and turns it off just as quick.

—My fingers? she asks. My nerves?

A manifestation cannot cause another manifestation by contact.

But what else can she call this?

—Who were you, who made this cave?

* * *

They didn’t get much from the patient. Can’t get any more now. But she implied the cave where the stars whirl was only a few hours away.

—It’s been twelve, Iśja mutters.

Dr. Ēse-Sal could have gotten. Caught up. Distracted. Or— caught up. Lost.

—Rescue teams.

—Yes a disappearance.

—The caves, the new ones after the. Yes the same one that patient...

—Yes. There is danger of that.

—No, you are not trained for this.

—She is.

—If there is such a training.

Iśra slumps. Could go in lirself but if both are lost who will be there to explain the data? Twenty hours now.

There must be someone else. Oh, li knows—

* * *

Are there stars whirling? In her eyes.

—There is something in my hands.

She turns to the cave. Addresses.

—You like the hands?

Of course the cave is dead. The one who made it, who is it. Dead.

Her nerves that turn off the light. Are those dead?

She reaches out to the sides. Reaches out to find a wall. Patterns are dancing in her eyes, in the dark. —You don’t want to be seen. See-able.

She is warned not to touch anything. She shuffles her feet carefully to not trip. There is only her and the dark.

—Well.

The cave isn’t the same thing as the dark. Because it’s patterns buzzing. Do nerves buzz, too? She turns the light on for the splittest second. But turns it off so fast. This alone should not be possible.

—Of course that’s a simplification. God manifests within bodies. Lilith.

—But no demon or Holy can make another such by touching them.

—And you’re dead.

What will happen if she touches the wall?

First she must find the wall.

She shuffles her foot. To the right. Just like the turn to reach this cave. To the right. It stops against something. Hard. Rock. She reaches out for—

She reaches

Her hand?

Doesn’t touch it—

Like there is no wall like she is just reaching through empty space that could extend and extend, forever.

She lifts her foot. Touches the wall higher. It’s there. Reaches her hand to where her foot touched. Nothing. Only an expanse. Feels like forever.

That’s her right hand. But even the left always turns off the light.

—Let’s be reasonable, she reminds herself and keeps her left hand firmly to her side.

While her right—

She can’t see how it does and doesn’t touch the wall. Because she can’t have light. Because her hands.

—Wall, she reminds herself.

Because it’s hard to imagine. Feels like there is no wall. Only an emptiness that is so full in its infinite span.

She should pull her hand back. Find how much of a hand it still is when she returns to light. She should. But doesn’t want to.

* * *

To enter the cave that can make a hand unable to touch what it touches: one who does not touch what she touches.

Iśja greets her: —Asriel Argon.

The one whose voice does not touch the air says:

ah, you who touch things and allow them to corrupt you

Smiles.

what am I to investigate this time?

* * *

come out

Ēse-Sal hears this. A disruption. She is grasping the emptiness and this voice does not belong to it.

This voice does not belong to anything.

She blinks against the dark that whirls against her eyes like stars.

—Asriel?

one and the same. you have been gone almost a full day.

Oh. —Oh.

Has this manifestation disrupted feelings of thirst, hunger, sleep? She thinks. Desires the fulfillment of all three. But her hand is so close to touching nothing at all.

saria.

She sighs.

you do realize you can come back, lover-of-infection.

She pulls herself. From the wall and toward the voice. The patient was not like this. The patient described running. If there is a compulsion to stay here it comes from herself.

But. With her left hand she turns on—off—the light. That is not from herself.

And with her right hand she

Is grasping, still

An emptiness

do I have to pull out the gloves that interface me and world. do I have to grab your flesh with them and pull you.

—No. —No. I… no.

She stumbles behind Asriel into a cave that feels like air and stone. Turns on the light.

It stays on.

So she looks down. At her hand. Or at—a hand? The hand?

Half an arm

Up to her elbow it is an is-not. A shadow behind which is

She feels it

Grasping it

In the hand that

fascinating. in the lab I would like to examine this with my fingertips.

—Shh.

She wants to look. Tense her fingers. Can see them move where they would be if they were. But they aren’t. Instead, somewhere else.

Like the hand before her isn’t her hand but within the emptiness her hand still is.

She reaches to it with the hand that’s hers—

Passes through nothing at all.

But a nothing that she can almost feel cling, to her left hand now--

She shoves it tight against her side. Manifestations cannot create manifestations by contact. But just in case.

* * *

Two hours later Iśja catalogues the facts.

—The hand fades into a shadow.

—You touched the wall but you did not touch it.

—You could not keep a light on in there.

—It is in both hands at least. But one more than another.

Dr. Ēse-Sal asks.

—How many hands do I have?

A quick response.

—One.

Again.

—What does my right arm lead to?

—A hand.

—Can you say it? Can you call it mine?

Iśja works lir mouth.

The third person in the room rubs her forehead.

how many steps can this thing spread?

The fourth person in the room sighs through nerves contented, like turning over in sleep.

Ēse-Sal starts. Addresses a hand.

—Are you aware?

It does not respond. Except perhaps a vibration in the nothing that she grasps. Something like a snore.

—Dormant is supposed to be more dormant than this.

Iśja snorts. —And a manifestation cannot make another.

I need to investigate this. the eyes and microscopes of my fingertips might find something. no chance of spreading to me.

—I want to touch it, Iśja says.

Ēse-Sal stretches out her hand

So that Iśja can touch

Nothing at all.