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They don't know how long they've been here but they know it's been a long time.They, perhaps isn't the right concept to use since it has been a long time since they were apart of someone other than their individual self. There is no 'they' as far as they are concerned, for they are alone. There is no thought-spark for distances, nothing that echoes back the same spinning thread of consciousness as them. Those not that are not of their own self, have been dead and buried for ages, a steel monolith left to signify of who they had been. They are alone here, a single gaze cast to the lonely sky and cold metal pressing against the ripples of their body.Moon: spinning-creativity-risk appears over the crag, a cascade of colors. They think it is closer than they used to be when they first sat here. But perhaps they are remembering things wrong and just imagining it closer, so they won't have to be alone.They watch it for an unknown amount of time before it disappears over the edge of the other cliff. They are lonely. So they get up and go, skimming the surface of their once-living world turned world of death and desolation.They go to the Place: living-small-river-iron where their nestling had at last succumbed to the disease. They had carried Name: star-gentle-bright into the mass grave, enfolding them one last time within themself, one last litany of peace and love before leaving their matter in the metal cradle, to leave behind the disease. There were many more that had put others into the cradles and then themselves. They, Name: dust-change-enduring, did not know why they did not die when everyone else did. They wish they had.They wish to rejoin their nestling and nest-sharers once more, as the dust of stars, the same matter that had made them in consciousness, inseparable even in a state without thought, without life.Perhaps, they would join them as a star, made of the same space dust, giving life to another world, a world where they would not choke themselves to extinction. There would be another life for them, one without fear and desperation clouding their minds.They drift further, following the spires that have long since crumbled to dust. the broken exoskeleton of cities, of a living planet, has long since blown away, nothing to remind them of what used to be except the loving curve of the land, well worn by centuries of use.There are the great sand-cliffs of warbeat-ascendant-history, a back drop of red against the empty dark of space. They follow the curve of the cliff-range, staring unseeing at the great river lifeblood-firstborn that has long since run dry, a giant crevice in the planet's mantle. The plains on which they had cultivated their lives are barren, soil ruined beyond understanding.There is no life on Ma'aleca'andra except for dust-change-enduring.They do not look down. They try not to focus on what was, on what they have lost; instead, they sing a verse.Martians do not speak verbally often, not centuries past Communion of Souls, where Enlightenment spread through their people like wild fire and mind-heart-speak which was once only limited to blood and close of kin. their functionally extinct language had gained a new meaning through the ages: the language of liars.Why else would you not speak with your mind, where nothing can be hidden and with your mouth, with which nothing but falsehoods are emitted.But there was still a small academic niche for speakers to thrive. Dust-change-enduring had been one of them. The words of Ma'aleca'andra held a deep longing for them, the history that they stored, unchanging unlike the shifting tides of minds.Dust-change-enduring knows how quickly meaning can change, how it can become perverted through the spread of minds. They were meant to be a soldier, like their born-of-the-same-nest, Name: fierce-wind-triumph. It had come easily to them, their bodies moving with the same strength, minds searching and quick, bold and bright like the rest of their Clan: glory-blade-desert.They knew how to had hurt their cradle-twin, their carers when he put down the violence and slipped away into dusty caves where the taboo scholars had gathered, tracing long-forgotten scripts carved into stone walls.Dust-change-enduring had learned the ancients arts of the spoken tongue; of the bright colors of fibers and their meanings, of strummed and drummed instruments, of the written word and their enduring lessons, of tens of other skills and customs that have been lost time, clinging onto the present by a thread.Dust-change-enduring likes the verse most of all. Spoken plainly or to a beat, it resonates something within the ever-changing matter of himself. It speaks of stories meant to be remembered, pain to be shared, joys to be uplifted.They first recited the verses to the other scholars and saw the spark within in them brighten. Hope, one that they had lost.They went out and spoke and sung and spun under the sky, spinning a verse to whomever would listen. They spoke of history, of stars and of emptiness, of love and rage, of life and of death. Most of all, they spoke of connection. But there is none left. There is no one left to share the verse with.So dust-change-enduring kneels on a red barren plain, looking back up at the stars. they have not changed. Logically, dust-change-enduring knows that they could be long gone by now, more than likely, but so far they are the same stars they had been under, the same constellations they had learned about from Name: iron-stillness-depth when they had made their first home together. They stare up at moon: bright-reflection-distance and begins to spin a verse, morphing and shifting in an unseen wind. Regardless of how their world has changed, space has always remained the same: cold, empty but promising light in the distance."I am J'onn dust-change-enduring of J'onzz glory-blade-desert and I will speak if you will listen. I am alone. I am the last. There shall be no more of Ma'aleca'andra or my people. But regardless, like a star shall always shine, my hope has not yet guttered out."