I found myself in a white void, human again—legs, body, arms, and head all as I remembered them, my clothes perfect and spotlessly clean, still fresh with the jamintha-petal scent of Pel's favorite brand of laundry detergent. I realized this was &alon's space, yet, I'd never seen it this way. There was no darkness. No stars. Just… light.

My mental body felt more real than ever before. It was surreal, just like my surroundings. The floor was strangely solid, like clouds made from marble. The clip-clop of my loafers' soles echoed oddly as I shifted about, as did the rustling of my coat.

Yet I wasn't alone. The totality of my mind was here; every root and fiber.

I gawked like a seagull as I recoupled myself into a single valence.

"What are you…?" &alon said.

I turned.

The Fungal Angel stood beside me in her starry raiments and cerulean flame wings.

But something had changed.

She'd been so petulant the last time we'd talked. Petulant, belligerent, irate. Now, all of that was gone. She held one of her hands by her mouth, as if to gasp. The other was by her side—fingers pursed—visibly trembling. She stared at me with a piercing awe.

Tears pooled in her blue, blue eyes.

Was this how I'd looked at her, right before she told me the terrible truth of who and what she was?

What had changed? What was going on?

"What are you…?" she said. Her voice cracked. "How… how did you know that?" It was a struggle for her to form the words.

"I don't understand," I said. "What do you mean?"

"My heart." She pressed her hand on her chest. "How do you know my heart…?"

My breaths were audibly tense. So many feelings were streaming out of her, and I was their antenna—the proverbial lightning rod. The emotions hit me in waves, one after another.

Deep heartache. Loneliness. Desperation. The gnawing, grinding agony of wanting to be loved.

In this white space, &alon's emotions took physical form. The waves were literal waves of blue mist. They rippled and undulated through the void.

Not understanding what was happening, I reached for the simplest explanation that came to mind.

My transformation must have finally finished. Now, &alon "saw" me at the same depth and intensity with which she saw all her other wyrms. I was now fully uplinked to the fungus' mind.

But… wait. Why now? Hours and hours of real time had passed since I'd fully transformed, back in Springfield. Why didn't she reach out to me then? Why now?

I inhaled sharply. "Angel's breath…" I glared at her. "Did you make me silver-eyed? What did you do?"

She just stared at me, clutching her hands at her chest.

I stomped my foot and yelled. "Answer me, &alon! What did you do?!"

She stammered. "I… I…"

Was this some kind of ploy? Maybe I hadn't gone silver-eyed just yet. Maybe there was a chance I could still fight her off!

"&alon," I growled, "I told you, if you tried anything, I'd never speak to you again!"

She cried. "I'm not doing anything! It's… it's you! It's you!" She pointed at me, as if I was to blame.

More emotions billowed out of her. Ripples swept through the azure tides.

I made a shield of my rage, cementing myself in my hatred and pain.

"You will not have my sympathy…" I muttered.

I squeezed my fists so tightly, it felt like my fingers would pop.

A wall of fire sprang up in the void in front of me—and it worked. Her emotions hissed into steam where they met my rage.

I took a deep breath.

"Get away from me…" I said. "Get away!" I yelled.

My flames shot up higher, only for &alon to rise above them, floating over their flickering tongues.

All around, the white void began to darken, blowing away like the morning fog. Dark things seethed beneath the white.

Oh God…

It was the fungus, laid bare.

Giant tendrils, roving wyrms; amalgamated fungal monstrosities writhing and crawling in every direction. &alon's demented visions of life filled my sight from horizon to horizon, bathed in a dim glow of green and gold.

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The tendrils lashed through my flames like the arm of god. I fell to my knees with my arm raised—half defense, half defiance.

"You don't know how long I've been looking!" she said. She cried. "I… I…" She shook her head, wings streaming behind her; blazing. Her bangs shadowed over her face. "You will tell me. You will tell me…"

"What?" I snapped. "Tell you what!"

She lowered her head for a moment, panting slightly. Her gaze looked into some unseen distance.

She was looking for the right word.

"How do you know my soul?"

"Your soul?" I said. "What are you—"

—But she answered it for me.

The destroying angel in front of me dissolved into motes and streams of swirling rainbows, filling the void with every sensation I've ever known, and a million more I could scarcely fathom. It crossed through every medium, weighing down on my imagination in full in a great whirlwind.

It knocked me back. I fell on my bottom, but kept myself from toppling over by bracing myself with my arms.

The whirlwind towered to the infinite. My hair and clothes fluttered about. The tempest danced and bobbed like a living thing, even as it churned with memory and meaning, and, somehow, I perceived it all, every nuance, and every facet and form.

Each strain was as clear as day.

Was this &alon's "soul"?

Her voice spoke to me, through the whirlwind.

How do you know my question? My why? My soul?

I shivered. Testament verses wound through my mind.

The presence soared beyond my understanding. The roars of the four winds split through my mind. A shriek beyond sound revealed my shattered soul

Oceans slept within His Sword. Oceans and storms. They held the Question of Creation. Her Question. The Question we must answer.

"Wh-what?" I muttered.

Could it be? Could this be… the Great Question?

Theologians had puzzled over its meaning for millennia, all to no avail.

But here…

&alon had said she knew the Angel… the Angels. And I'd be lying to myself if I said the maelstrom in front of me wasn't the spitting image of the Great Question as it was described in the Testaments.

Skittering forward, I pushed myself up onto my knees and reached toward the storm. Sensations cascaded through my mind as my fingers neared the tumult.

Yet, impossibly, I felt something… familiar.

I roved my hand around, moving toward wherever the familiarity was strongest.

There: a thread of sound.

I brought my hand close to it. I pulled it from the whirlwind like a needle in a haystack. The thread sang as I held it, glowing brightly between my fingertips. And I heard it. The sound was grainy and distorted, too loud in some places, barely audible in others, and just of shoddy quality all around. But it was a sound I knew. It was a sound I'd made.

It was my sonata. Specifically, the slow movement; my epitaph for Rale. I cupped my hands to shelter the thread. With its touch, the music flowed through me, louder and stronger.

Listening to it made the hairs on my neck stand on end. I wept.

"No," I muttered, "this… this can't be."

In my shock, I lost my hold on the thread, which flowed back into the whirlwind.

&alon stuck her arms down against her sides. "It is! It is!"

I stood up and stared into the vortex. I heard my music as I stared.

It wasn't just the one thread. It was every thread. Every single thread, down to the last, was my music, transmuted into a different medium. I saw the color of the music, and tasted it, and felt its kind, melancholy caress.

I stepped back and covered my mouth with my hand.

I was crying.

"Mr. Genneth?" &alon asked.

"How did you know this?" I asked. "Explain it to me!"

She shook her head. "No, you first! You explain it to me!"

And so I did. "&alon… this whirlwind, this Question of yours… it's my music! It's my Clarinet Sonata!"

"So… na… ta…?"

"You heard it! You heard me play it! I played it for you, before the hospital was attacked!"

She shook her head. "No! I knew it before then! I hadn't remembered it yet, but now I remember!"

"&alon… your Question is my music. It's the music for my family, to remember all the people I've lost."

"My Question is… your music?" she asked. "Then…" she hovered close to me. Beyond, the tendrils receded. The void-fog swept over the horrors.

"That means…"

She reached for me. Her wings of flame folded back as her bare feet settled on the pure ground.

"It… it can't be," she said.

&alon's face contorted, lips burbling, cheeks puffing.

"You… Mr. Genneth… you're my answer. The Question is who I am, and where I come from, and why. And you're the answer. My Question is your sonaty."

Tears trickled down her cheeks. She reached for me with open arms. I glowered at her grasp. My flames swirled around to protect me. But she didn't relent. She walked toward me like they were the first steps she'd ever taken. Her face was like a glass suddenly broken.

"You made me," she said. "You made my soul. That… that means…" Her voice cracked. Her eyes went wide, filled with tearful sunshine.

"You're my Daddy… Daddy. Daddy Daddy Daddy!"

She muttered it through broken words. Her voice cracked.

My mind spun. "No… this can't…"

&alon threw herself on me, weeping with inconsolable joy as she wrapped me in her arms. "You're my Daddy…" she said. "I've looked for so long. So, so so so long. Daddy! Daddy Daddy Daddy! I knew I'd find you. I knew I knew I knew!"

"You're not my child," I said. "Rale is gone! My son is dead! "

I staggered back, my flames rising higher—but they didn't stop her.

"Stop this!" I yelled.

She tightened her vice-grip hug on me, even as my flames made her shriek in pain. I felt her shiver against. Her carbonized hair and peeling skin regrew in between my frantic heartbeats.

She was a sobbing mess of agony and ecstasy.

"Why does it hurt, Daddy?" she cried. "Make it stop! It hurts! It hurts!"

"Stop," I begged. I got down onto my knees. "Please, stop!"

But she didn't let go.

"Daddy! My Daddy! The bestest Daddy!"

Finally, I relented. My protective fire barriers flickered out as I gave in. I… I just couldn't bring myself to hurt a child. It didn't matter if she was evil, or if she wasn't even real. What was the point of making her suffer? She didn't understand what she'd done wrong. It would serve no purpose. All it would do would bring more pain.

She knocked me down with her hug, burying her sobs in my chest. Her fire-wings shuddered, sputtering with her body-wracking sobs.

Angel's mercy…

Waves of love poured from every fiber of her being. I was more than just a witness of her affection, I was a participant. I felt the ardor of her naïvétée as if it was my own. But I couldn't love her, not with what she had done, and the dissonance of those irreconcilable feelings was simply unbearable.

&alon was a broken monster, deserving of pity. Perhaps, somewhere, in the great unknown, there was a being capable of loving the twisted thing sobbing into my coat, but it wasn't me.

It couldn't be me.

This was impossible. There had to be some kind of mistake!

Peeling her off of me, I backed up, dragging myself away.

&alon sat up on her knees and reached out to me with both arms.

She stammered in disbelief. "Daddy—"

"—No!" I snarled. "My name is Genneth, and I'm not your father! I don't care what you feel, or what I feel, this is just plain impossible! You're not my music! I'm not your father!"

And she sobbed and sobbed. "Daddy Genneth! Daddy Genneth!!"

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