"Why did you go?" she asked. The question was small, but it had carried a weight through all the years.

A soft chirp interrupted them: the attic window had cracked open and a breeze carried in the scent of rain and the distant metallic tang of the river. AV flickered. Its light dimmed as the battery indicator shrank into a tiny red bar.

AV showed her other mornings: the man who repaired shoes on the corner, the woman who braided hair at midnight, a protest where people held up candles. It remembered them with the tenderness of a catalog, turning each memory like a pressed flower.

On one of those nights, AV projected the image of an old paper boat, afloat and intact, turning slowly in sunlight.