she’d concretely sensed a past life.

The answer was immediate and absolute. Just as with Venus at the oasis, her body flushed with a certainty that her mind reeled to understand.

She needed new heroes.

Her habits had calcified too.

Niloux felt that she should start addressing disappearances by studying pistas: a contemplative approach, this time, instead of a quantitative one.

Pistas, meanwhile, were singular to each person; individuals’ paths that formed an inscription upon the land, like a text that could be read.

God as place.

In Laviaja, “god” was the sum total of the natural history of a place, known and unknown, integrated over time.

The god of the place is time integrated over space.