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I woke for the 146th morning to the sound of wind. Even so it took a minute to place myself. I wavered on the border between sleep and wakefulness, unsure which sensations to choose as real. In the confusion that comes with waking I couldn’t decide if my Universe was the one where wind shrieked and whistled overhead without a break, of if mine was the one where beautiful women aged eighty years in my arms. They seemed to blend together at times, the wind becoming the labored breathing of the dying woman, or the woman lifting up and blowing away through the walls.

I rubbed my eyes and broke the moment. The withered crone that had been Roxanne evaporated away. The wind grew stronger.

I had been on Glacia for nearly six months by Earth’s calendar, and in that time the wind had never once let up. I heard it roaring every moment of my waking day. My shelter, an insulated dome anchored to the slow-moving ice, muffled the sound to a distant rumble, but the walls couldn’t block it out completely. I had grown used to it, but it was always there. Only in my sleep could I find escape from the wind, but other torments awaited me there. Wind and dreams, mortar and pestle for my sanity.

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