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You dream of Earth, of the verdant forests, the golden fields, the craggy mountains, of the soil dark and rich and full of worms. It surrounds you on all sides, yet you are not Earth. You're what is left when the Earth is removed. You are black, like a sky once the bright lights are taken out of it, and empty, empty, empty... Struggling, you reach to grab the Earth that is all around you, so dark and moist, with all its worms and edges, the lives and the fullness of it. You reach and you grasp and you pull, and it all falls into you, but you feel no less empty. You feel bigger, and more powerful, but also more alone, for the Earth is further away, now. It fears you, or it longs for you, but even as you embrace the Earth it falls away and is gone, and you are even more alone with your black and empty sky.

Your dream shifts, and still you are not Earth. You are standing on Earth, feeling its moistness between your toes, knowing it to be dark and full of worms. You hold in your right hand your tool that you use to move the Earth, and you stand before a grave, a grave of the Earth. You did not dig this grave. The Earth that was moved from it was more than moved, it was re-moved and un-moved and now there's no telling where it is, or if it even is at all. In your left hand you hold a heart - the heart of a god dead long ago. It needs to be buried properly, but you don't think this grave can do that. Proper burial requires the Earth to be moved back into the hole. If the Earth isn't there...

The graves aren't there. Old gods were buried here, amidst bedrock and mineral vein, hearts stilled, forgotten. It ''they'' aren't here...

The heart in your hand whispers, purring. ''It's okay,'' it tells you. ''You have a future. You have hope. All is not yet lost. Family and friends, superior materials, capital efficiency, moomin trolls. These things exist.'' It is a panopoly of warm and solid feelings, all the comfort in the world to counter the horror. You don't fully undrstand it, but you also ''get'' it, at the same time. This is what's missing. You don't need to bury it, you need to put it back.

You look at the heart, then back in the hole. And then you bury the ''hole'' in the blank and empty sky.