"What do we do?" I asked her.

"We write our own stories now."

My gut twisted in on itself. I shut my eyes and nodded. And so I did. I let the old stories go. The story of empire. The story of an impossible world without guilt. I didn't know what was next out there in that endless, blank canvas. But maybe, hiding between the creases and all the other secret places, were the things that we all needed. Love. Dignity. Understanding. And maybe if we're just fast enough, and just precise enough, we can find those things for ourselves, too.