On the back of the photograph, in handwriting that matched Elara's own (right down to the idiosyncratic way she formed the letter 'g'), was written:
She stepped outside.
She walked home. She made tea. She sat at her kitchen table and looked at the photograph—the twelve of them, the tower, her own face smiling from 1912. On the back of the photograph, in handwriting
It was tucked inside a secondhand copy of The Forgotten Peoples of the Caspian Steppe , a book she'd bought for its absurdly detailed footnotes. The photograph was sepia-toned, curled at the edges, and showed a group of twelve people standing before a structure that defied physics: a tower that twisted like a double helix, its surface covered in symbols that seemed to move when you weren't looking directly at them. She sat at her kitchen table and looked