No one ever asked him what he feared most. They feared too reasonably for that. But dreams didn’t have any reason to cower from him, and they crept up to ask him in his sleep, when all answers were honest.

He feared finally finishing his boat. Pushing it out to sea, finding it sound and worthy, filling every berth with refugees from the falling city. Setting off for the horizon, where there had to be hope if any was left at all, and turning back to smile at his crew of survivors only when the sunset crashed in orange and gilt freedom ahead of them.

Seeing only then, only by its light, the slack, death-gaunt or -swollen faces staring back at him. The eyes bulging empty of anything but light. Bobbing there alone in a fiery tide of silence and knowing, too late to turn back, that he’d saved nothing but the dead again.