Once upon a time, there was a girl who did a stupid thing for love. As punishment for her crime, she was locked away for five hundred years in a perpetual state of semi-consciousness. But she did not dream; those who had imprisoned her had stripped her of everything she had, including her dreams. She remained in her semi-conscious state, devoid of any concrete sense of self. She experienced only those states of being deemed objectionable by those with the capacity to perceive them: shame, worthlessness, fear, hate, agony, and—on occasion—severe nausea.

     So long had she been kept on the brink of non-existence, that when she was finally freed from her prison, she rejected reality, burrowing further into the cozy den of oblivion inside what was left of her shattered mind. But reality persisted, smothering her, penetrating her every pore, tearing down each and every wall she constructed around her delicate ego. And when at last she could stave it off no longer, it occurred to her that her sentence had only just begun; existence was to be her punishment.

***

     The first real thing she latched on to was violet. She knew it by name because it wasn't supposed to exist in her world; that much she could remember. She'd been called maqpi, which meant cursed child, because of the colour of her eyes. It was only fitting then that her saviour should have violet hair. Maybe she was a maqpi too.

     "Where... am I?" The girl's voice cracked as she spoke. She asked not because she needed to know (she recognized the yellowed slab that comprised the holding chamber, though she knew not the specifics of how she'd come to be there), but because she had forgotten the sound of her own voice. She flinched upon hearing her voice flutter in her throat and clumsily tumble across her tongue only to fall apart at her lips.

     "I was hoping you could tell me." This maqpi... it was female, but it was not alpen. The girl knew this because the maqpi had rounded ears and no aura. The maqpi, who wore a strange sort of coat fashioned out of a roughly-hewn faded blue material, sat on the stone floor, fiddling with a plastic wrapping. She removed a porous, yellow substance and tore off a piece, handing it to the girl. "You hungry?"

     The girl accepted the offering, subjecting it to much scrutiny before tentatively nibbling on the corner. It was soft, like a sponge, and had a dulceous taste. When she said as much, the maqpi gave her a funny look.

     "Dulchi-what? I think the word you're looking for is sweet."

     "Sweet?" The girl tasted the word. Ironically, she did not find it very dulceous.

     "Guess that's not a word where you come from, huh?" The maqpi bit her lip. "Um, I guess this place is where you come from. Which is where, exactly?"

     The girl thought hard, mining the caverns of knowledge that remained accessible to her, despite her stupor. "Home."

     The maqpi's shoulders shook with laughter. The girl was uncertain what she'd done to elicit such vulgarity. But the maqpi seemed to think nothing of it; she wiped a bit of moisture that had collected in the corners of her eyes.

     "Guess I walked right into that one. Okay, let's come at this from a different angle. You got a name?"

     The girl placed a finger to her lip but quickly removed it. Only children touched their fingers to their lips while they thought, and she was no longer a child. In response to the maqpi's question, the girl could only shake her head. "The elders revoked my name."

     "Elders?" The maqpi glanced over her shoulders, as if expecting to see something. But of course there was nothing, only the yellowed slab surrounding them. And thick blankets of vine, which slithered down the walls of the chamber, their rotten smell mingling in the musty air. "What do you mean revoked?"

     "As punishment," said the girl, hanging her head.

     "Punishment for what?"

     The girl raised her head, slowly. "I... did a bad thing."

     "Haven't we all. What exactly did you do?"

     The girl jerked her head to the left and then to the right.

     "You don't wanna say?"

     "It's not that I don't want to," said the girl, finally growing accustomed to the sound of her own voice as it echoed throughout the room. "I don't remember. They took away my memories of the crime, as part of my punishment." She wasn't being completely honest; she did know that she had been in love and that this had been the motive for her crime. But saying so would only raise further questions, questions that she did not have answers to.

     "Well, we'll just have to give you a name, won't we?" The maqpi rose to her feet. "My name's Apostrophe."

     "That's a pretty name."

     "You think so?" The maqpi grinned. "Ooh! Brain-flash. Let's call you Comma."

     "Comma?"

     "You like?"

     The girl felt a twang of guilt. She took comfort in the feeling, recalling her time spent in purgatory. It felt right, somehow. "The elders won't let me have a name," she said. "I am dishonoured."

     "Again with the elders." Apostrophe made a cracking noise with her knuckles. "Got some bad news for you. Maybe I should just show you." She stretched out her left hand in front of her and then made a half-fist, like she was squeezing a coco-lemon. Slowly, she drew back her arm. The air made an awful tearing sound that made the girl want to vomit. When Apostrophe had finished tearing, there was a hole in the air, the size of a gopher-chuck.

     Through the hole, the girl could see only an endless sea of nothing.

     "I don't understand," said the girl.

     "It's simple, really," said Apostrophe. "See, while you were doing time, well..." She cleared her throat. "The world kind of ended."

***

     "Score!" Apostrophe ducked into the makeshift shelter, nearly bumping her head on the rusted iron bar that protruded from the ceiling. The scrap metal that comprised the walls of the shelter appeared perpetually unstable. Still, when Apostrophe went out on her inner-city scavenging trips, Comma preferred to wait for her inside the shelter; it had Apostrophe's smell, and she found that comforting.

     Apostrophe dumped an armful of custard-filled sponge cakes onto Comma's lap. A bit of soot had smeared over their plastic wrappings, but otherwise they were in pristine condition. The technology of this particular world was not all that impressive to Comma, being an alpen and all. But there was something to be said about a food so chemically altered that it would not spoil.

     Comma watched Apostrophe carefully as the two of them ate. They'd been travelling together for what had felt like several months now. Of course, there was no legitimate way to keep track of that sort of thing. This was the first world they'd discovered that hadn't yet been through The End. Some sort of nuclear catastrophe had wiped out all sentient life-forms on the planet, though enough time had elapsed for the radiation to no longer be a large concern.

     "You've got custard on your chin," said Apostrophe with a mouthful of sponge cake, reaching across the stash pile to wipe Comma's chin. Comma flinched away, going red in the face.

     "How much longer do you think we have?" asked Comma, averting her gaze.

     Apostrophe swallowed and then wiped her lips. "You mean before the glowdarks get here?" She drummed her fingers on her lap. "Could be weeks. Months. Maybe even years. Why? Are you sick of this place already?"

     "N-no." Comma lowered her head. "I... like it here."

     "You don't have to lie to me."

     "Huh? I'm... I wasn't..."

     "You're... how old again?"

     Comma went to place a finger to her lip before thinking the better of it. "I don't know. Seven-hundred, at least."

     "In elf years, yeah."

     Comma pouted. "How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not an elf! I'm an alpen! Big difference."

     "Whatever." Apostrophe shifted her legs. "If you were a human, I'd say you're about... thirteen? Maybe fourteen? You probably want to hang out with other kids your age."

     Comma growled. Who did Apostrophe think she was to speak to her that way? The violet-haired maqpi was only about seventeen or eighteen in human years. "Don't call me a kid. I'm older than you, by several centuries."

     Apostrophe stuck out her chest. "Biology says differently."

     "Screw your biology." Comma sighed. Then, after a brief pause, she added, "I don't, you know."

     "Don't what?" asked Apostrophe.

     "Need to be with other people my age," she answered. "I'm fine with just you."

     And so the pair of them continued in this manner, surviving together in what was left of the barren world they'd stumbled upon. It wasn't much, but it would do.

     Three weeks later, the glowdarks came, and Comma and Apostrophe were forced to abandon the lopsided scrap heap they'd come to call home.

Author's Note:

Finally, Comma's secret is out. But what could she possibly have done that was so bad she had to be locked away for 500 years?  

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