It’s snowing in Mexico, each flake a crystal skull. The end of the world sticks out her tongue and tastes sugar.

He stumbles out behind her, onto the tired road and its oily freckles. “Is this nuclear winter?” he asks, shielding his eyes. “Why is the sun so bright?”

“Humanity,” she says, “toyed with forces beyond its control,” and traces in the air: a dot, the center of three ellipses.

“With the atom?” he asks.

“No. The symbol.”

He opens his hand to catch a snowskull. There’s a name on its forehead, but it melts before he can make it out.