Glanced up and caught Ammo's gaze. Centuries telescoped into one evanescent moment. History was wrong-footed, caught off guard. Sloughed off like an old snakeskin. Its marks, its scars its wound from old wars and the walking backwards days all fell away. In its absence it left an aura, a palpable shimmering that was as plain as water in a river or the sun in the sky. As plain to feel the heat on a hot day, or the tug of a fish on a taut line. So obvious that no-one noticed. In that brief moment, Delta looked up and saw things that he hadn't seen before. Things that had been out of bounds so far, obscured by history's blinkers.... This knowing slid into him cleanly, like the sharp edge of a knife. Cold and hot at once. It only took a moment. Ammo saw that he saw. She looked away. He did too. History's fiends returned to claim them. To rewrap them in its old scarred pelt and drag them back to where they really lived. Where the Love Laws lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.

The God of Small Things