Aniridia closes her eyes and it comes burning at her, the one memory she never summons, the day her father didn’t come home. It was incongruous and beautiful, a sunset like brushfire. She sat and watched television until fear beat in her heart like wings.

No note. No trace. No end to the questions, all these aching lost orphan years later, and finally she knows:

The end of the world’s not a girl or a dream.
The end of the world’s not a house.
The end of the world is the story you tell when your reasons for living run out.