Tengra knows you die if they cut your silver cord; of meat and self, neither survives without the other. Not many things can do it (magic swords, petawatt lasers). But what if the cord frays? What if it parts? What if you just find it trailing behind you in the gray astral dust?

Tengra shivers, holding it, though out here there’s no such thing as cold. Time is weird, too. How long has she been wandering bodiless? Since loneliness; since exhaustion. Since she fled the prison of matter and friction, worn thin as an old hawser against a mooring of stone.