"I never saw them alive again," said Ina, her eyes glistening as she peered up at the winking north star.

"Alive?" Wilder said, watching Ina's feet sway in the cool night air as they dangled from her seat on the thick magnolia branch.

She closed her eyes for a long moment as she savored the sounds and smells of the Cambodian jungle. The ruins of Angkor Wat spread out behind her, its sandstone towers, shaped like massive pine cones, glittering in the silvery moonlight.

"Did something happen to them? Did the hunters-?"

Ina said, "No, it wasn't the hunters. All that happened to them was life. The next thirty years of my own life went by incredibly fast, and by the time my path returned me to Tobacco Port both were buried in the local cemete...

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