My grandmother was a coyote.

As a child, I was always afraid of storms. An unfortunate, but common phobia near the equator, where they happened so frequently. She'd always stand out in the rain, kept dry in a long cloak, to watch the light pour in from a hole in the clouds where the sun literally dripped into our world. She could always see something in it, dim enough to look upon directly, that none of us could. Something lonely, she said. Most worlds you can live on have a moon, but our sun had to do the work of both, without companionship.

And that's why sometimes it reached down to touch Paliputra, she'd say. But it was so massive and unknowable, and we were so small and fragile. It didn't understand that some things you just have to appreciate with your eyes, instead. One of those things adults tell little ones to help them make sense of the world, you see, but she always said it with such compassion, even when the shields went up around the isles to brace for the shockwaves. But that was like her.

I remember the first time I worked up the courage to join her, soaking wet and shivering by the time I arrived at her side, and how she took off that cloak without hesitation, subjecting herself to the same just to keep me warm. The rain didn't matter to her, of course; she always looked so joyful, even as she shivered with me.

I didn't have much time with her, after they brought me back. Her mind had been going for a while by then, sometimes it seemed like she had trouble remembering Lucia and I had long since grown up.

There was a day during my recovery I finally worked up the strength to make the arduous journey from one side of the home to the other. My veins still ached around the syrupy blood, unused to the preservatives they carried. Muscles fought against overcompensating servos and pistons. I still shivered like on those rainy days. We kept the home cold, as it was critical in these early stages that I avoid becoming too warm.

And yet I made it, slowly and painfully, to the little hallway that belonged to her, and through the unlatched door into her room, unconcerned by the heat.

I don't know if terminal lucidity is real or not. You know, the final day, where the dementia lifts for just a little bit and it seems like they're back. But that day, it felt so much like she really saw me.

I worried she would try to get up as I sank to my knees at her bedside, but she knew just as well as I did, she didn't have the strength for that. She just placed her hand between my ears and rubbed my mane, whispering comforting things in the dark.

I didn't speak a lot of Akmat by then. My grandfather had been a local. Mom was born a jackal like him, and given a Siggska name. There wasn't a lot of use for Akmat outside the home, but for that market on a seaside road. But I still retained just enough to understand my grandmother then.

I wish my voice hadn't been too weak to reply then. I wanted to tell her I loved her. To thank her. Selfishly, that I'd miss her. But she knew.

And I suppose it doesn't really matter if she was all there; if what entered her room wasn't this disheveled husk of a person, reeking of embalming fluid and iodine, but the teary-eyed puppy she always knew just how to console. I wasn't all there either, myself. I felt like I might as well have been that puppy, as we clung to those precious minutes. It was bittersweet. I want to believe it's what we both needed, in that moment, before she could finally join the dance.

She waited until long after I had left the room to pass away. That was like her, too. She could never cause someone grief on purpose.

There was no mausoleum for her. We sent her off in Ulgeng tradition, her ashes to the wind, with only a small volume retained. If she had any unfinished business, she'd find her way back to it, in some form, to see it done. But, for all the hardships of her youth, she lived a good life. She lived a loved life.

She passed on in peace, the way most of us hope to.

That day, a piece of me departed with her. I never saw it again, either.