From Shadow to the Longest Sun
The plane lifted through the twilight, and Manhattan dissolved into a blanket of starlight.
Ten hours. Three time zones. One life, buried.
I did not look back.
West Africa. Dawn.
The sedan jolted down a dirt track. Smoke from cooking fires tangled with the scent of fever and despair.
A mother knelt in the dust, cradling a boy no older than five. Purple lesions bloomed across his neck. His breath hitched—a fragile bird trapped in a cage of bone.
Evola.
Nearby, a line of children waited silently outside a thatched clinic, eyes hollow, arms marked with IV scars. One girl clutched a rag doll, whispering to it: "Doctor will fix you."