In the hazy space after he died, when she lived in a sort of timeless underground grief, she saw on the internet a video about what would happen to our galaxy in billions of years. 'We're lonely down here,' he said, 'it's true, but we're not alone.' The things he didn't know about her would sink an ocean liner. She felt a sting behind here eyes, but couldn't say why this thought touched her. 'Did you know,' he said, 'they just found out just a while ago that there are billions of worlds that can support life in our galaxy alone.' There were no stars, there was too much smog for them.

'They deserve this place more than we do,' she said. 'The ants and the jellyfish and the cockroaches, they will be the kings of the Earth.'. By the time they were home, he'd be sozzeled. 'They'll still be here when we're gone,' he said. When the curtains closed against the backdrop, an enormous bolder blocking their future had rolled away.

She said, 'Did you know that the total weight of all the ants on Earth is the same as the total weight of all the humans on Earth.' She, who drank to excess, was a little bit drunk, it was true, there was so much relief in the evening. She thought of all the life just underfoot, the teem of it that they were passing over, unknowing. It was so late, there were few other people out, and it felt, just for this moment, that they had the city to themselves. 'Chthonic', he said, booze letting loose the pretension at his core, which she still found sweet, an allowance from the glory. And so Mathilde and Lotto decided to walk home, her arm in his, chatting about nothing, about everything, the unpleasant, hot breath of the subway belching up from the grates. “The glow lasted through the night, beyond the bar's closing, when there were no cabs on the street.

Fates & furies lauren groff