He returns on a Thursday after the full moon. Like some wafted spirit borne down from the highlands on the cool monsoon wind. Moggallana hears him thumping at the door mid-afternoon and comes downstairs, knees aching, sleep still clinging to his face like cobwebs. When he opens the door he cannot quite be sure who the young man standing there is, in fatigues, clutching a ragged duffel bag in one giant hand. His face is half devoured by a beard thicker than fresh jungle undergrowth and his nose is long and hooked and separates two eyes that glare at Moggallana so intensely that he is convinced they would be hot to the touch.
       It's those eyes he remembers.
       "I--what--what're you doing here?" he sputters.
        "Good to see you too, Little Brother," says the man.
        He strides in without being invited and Moggallana follows, dumbstruck.
       The man's boots leave smears of mud on the floor tiles and his dense military soles scrape on their rough contours. He walks into the living room and pauses. "What happened to all of Mum's stuff?"
        "It got old, Kasyapa." Moggallana wraps his arms around himself. "It's been a long time."
        Kasyapa peers at him.
       "You look like Dad." He points to Moggallana's greying hair. "Should've known you'd age like him."
        He drops his duffel bag and it hits the floor with a thud and a clink. The far side of the room is one big floor-to-ceiling window and he wanders over, silhouetted against the glaring beach and crinkled blue water beyond. He stares at the view for a while and then moves to the cluster of photographs on the wall. Moggallana and Sachi squinting in the sun in Florence. Sachi beaming and mortar-boarded, resplendent in crimson, tassels splayed over her forearm like tentacles. And then Apsara. One of her pink-faced and puffy-eyed, her tiny head capped, just after birth. Another of them at her graduation. She is smiling but looking at something off camera. Moggallana and Sachi are grinning, oblivious to her distraction.
       Through all this Moggallana watches Kasyapa with words cascading through his head, and memories also. Things he wants to say but knows he should not clamoring with things he thinks he should say but can't bring himself to. In the end all he can do is wipe the tears welling in his eyes before his brother notices them.
       Kasyapa points at one of the pictures. "And a kid," he says.
        "Yeah."
        He turns his burning gaze to the picture. "How old is she?"
        "Twenty-four, next week."
        He chuckles. "She's older than me."
        Moggallana frowns. "She's not really."
        "Yeah, she is. Really. What's her name?"
        "Apsara."
        Kasyapa leans into the picture. "Right."
        "Kasyapa?" Moggallana swipes at a mud smear with his bare foot.
        "Yeah?"
        "What're you doing here?"
        Kasyapa turns from the wall of pictures to face Moggallana. "Why, don't you want me to be?"
        "Of course, I do. I just." Moggallana shrugs helplessly. "I had no idea."
        "I need to write you a letter, do I? Get permission to come back to my own house?" He stares at Moggallana until he looks away. "Or is this not my house anymore?"
        "You're welcome. I just didn't know you were coming. It's been a long time."
        "You said." Kasyapa crosses his arms over his chest.
        Moggallana's gaze moves to the picture wall. "Longer for me than for you."
        "Yeah, I know."
        "Much longer."
        Kasyapa's voice sharpens. "I know. You don't have to keep telling me. I know what time dilation is."
        He turns away and resumes ambling, heavy-footed and loose-limbed, thumbing everything within reach as if he was doing so just because he could. "I didn't know they were dead," he says eventually.
        Moggallana tracks his brother around the room. "I messaged you."
        "I know. I got them all when I got back."
        "I messaged you a hundred times." Moggallana sniffs. "I messaged you every day for a year."
        Silence. Then Kasyapa speaks, softly. "I know."
       He wanders over to the sofa, patting his belly. He flops down on it and puts his feet up and soil drizzles onto the pristine white leather like black dandruff.
        "Please don't put your feet up."
        "Shut up." Kasyapa closes his eyes.
        Moggallana stifles a sigh. "Kasyapa."
       "Get me a cup of tea."
        "Sachi doesn't know you're coming."
        Kasyapa opens his eyes and glares at Moggallana. "Where's my tea?"
        "How long do you intend to stay?"
        "As long as I want." His eyes narrow. "Unless it's a burden too far for you, Little Brother."
        Moggallana watches him for a bit longer and Kasyapa glares back, feral.
        "She likes to keep the place clean."
       "She'll adjust," Kasyapa says. "Besides, this was my place before it was hers. It was my place before it was yours. Now get me a cup of tea. I haven't had a decent one in three years. Everything tastes crap in space."
       He wraps his arms around himself and closes his eyes. An instant later, he is asleep.

       The day after Moggallana buys his first bike the brothers come downstairs together in the rapidly heating dawn. Their father wanders out of the kitchen, diminutive and mustachioed, and inspects them as they stand there in their half-leathers. He casts a glance over his glasses at their mother, sitting by the window with her tablet lowered, smiling. He shakes his head and walks back to the kitchen without a word.
        "He's making watalappan," their mother says.
        Kasyapa grimaces. "Hate watalappan."
        Their mother chuckles and waves them out the door. "Don't die, or he'll blame me."
        They head roaring down the road, the asphalt already blooming with the gathering heat. Old dead lumber mills squat lopsidedly at the edge of thin-trunked coconut trees, vines clambering over their roofs. Soon it is too hot for helmets and Moggallana flicks his visor up and feels little flecks of stone ping sharply against his skin. Kasyapa takes his off altogether and by the time he turns his bike onto a sandy little path winding through a sparse patch of trees his hair is full of fragmented leaves and brownish-grey dirt and toothpick-slim shards of wood.
        Moggallana brings his bike to a halt by the roadside and toots his horn. Kasyapa stops and swings his bike around. "What?"
       "Should we be going through there?" Moggallana points at the undervents on Kasyapa's bike. "What if they get choked?"
       "You're thinking of this now?" Kasyapa grins. "Don't be lame. It's huge."
       "How huge?"
       Kasyapa stretches out his arms. "Giant."
       "Fine." Moggallana revs his engine. "Fine."
       They take off through the trees and after a while the soil turns to sand. Sunlight flashes through the canopy like Morse code and then they are out on the brilliance of the naked beach with the sea sighing to shore off to their left. Seabirds squabble here and there over the detritus lying about in stringy clumps. After a while Kasyapa slows down and Moggallana sees the overtumbled ruins of a train carriage from long ago, skeletal and rusty and half subsided into a dune. They glide their bikes over and the instant they stop Moggallana gets a whiff of rot.
       "Oh god." He covers his nose with his hand.
       Kasyapa chuckles. "Yeah, it's rank. C'mon."
       He takes Moggallana around the side of the carriage. Off to the left is a giant reptilian corpse. A splay-legged thing, bloated and stomach split, its skin vivid green and its insides as red and wet as melon. There are crustaceans in a fidgeting carpet picking daintily at its flesh.
       Moggallana clamps his hand over his mouth. "That's disgusting. It's the size of a boat."
       "Radiation," Kasyapa says, his face grim.
       "You sure?"
       He shrugs. "What else?"
       They stare at it for a while. Kasyapa walks off into the trees and comes back with a stick and when Moggallana realizes what he is going to do he looks away. Behind him is the ruined carriage and there are little tufts of flowers growing in its soil-choked recesses. Behind that and looming over the trees is the back of a great statue of the Buddha, soap-white and flawless, his head covered in buds of celestial hair. And beyond that, dimmed by haze and distance, are towering factories, their complex structures smoothed with distance.
       When Kasyapa is finished the lizard's guts are strewn across the sand, putrid and pink, and the stench is unbearable. They head back to the bikes but halfway home he veers off the road and up a side path.
       "Where're we going?" shouts Moggallana.
       "To pick up Sachi."
       "Who's Sachi?"
       Kasyapa doesn't respond. They pull up to a slim three-storied house clinging to a hillside and he toots his horn three times. After a few moments a girl comes out in purple shorts and a white vest, hair loose, smile wide. He has seen her before, Moggallana realizes, at school, and once on the beach. She waves at Kasyapa and he waves back, grinning, and pats the back seat of his bike.
       "No." Sachi comes to a halt. "No, no, no."
       "It's safe."
       She looks over at Moggallana and her smile wavers. "Who's that?"
       "My little brother. Moggallana."
       "Really? This is him?"
       "Yeah."
       They both look at Moggallana and he looks back.
       "I've seen you before," he offers.
       She arches her eyebrows. "Oh yes?"
       He gulps. Heat rises in his cheeks. "I'm not stalking you."
       She laughs--head slung back, hair hanging like a black waterfall--and swings her leg over the back of Kasyapa's bike.
       "He's funnier than you," she says to him.
       Kasyapa rides like a fool and Moggallana can hear Sachi squealing and cursing with every rev and swerve. They swing by the cafe just down the road from their house but it is closed and its shutters are down. The shop next to it is closed too. As they drive back other shops begin closing as well, and closer to home there is a clutch of people standing by the road watching something on a public screen. Eventually they pull up to their house and they wander in, dusty and exhilarated, to find their parents standing in front of the TV in each other's arms.
       "What's going on?" Kasyapa says.
       Their parents don't respond. They are staring at the screen. Something is burning on it and it takes Moggallana a moment to realize that it is Centauri Station. As they watch an explosion rips through it and a great shimmering hail of ruin scatters out and over the bulging surface of the planet below.
       "Oh god." Sachi's hand flies to her mouth. "What's happening?"
       "It's an attack," their father says.
       "By who?"
       "We don't know," their mother says quietly. "But they can move faster than light."
       They watch in silence as the attacks continue. There is no commentary. There is only the spectacle of the greatest and most fabulous of humanity's works being ripped apart without mercy or respite.
       "Damn," Kasyapa says.
       Their father smacks him on the shoulder. "Not in front of your mother."
       "Sorry."
       After a while their mother buries her face in their father's chest. Moggallana looks over at them, speechless. Then his eyes settle on Sachi, leaning against the doorframe, mouth open, hands behind her back. Her eyes flicker to his, and she smiles. A brief and fragile thing. For an instant he forgets what is happening. He looks away. When he looks back she is still looking, and this time it is she who looks away first.

       Moggallana drives down to Matara through the raging monsoon. It abates briefly as he nears the elevator and he sees the great grey tower of the thing rising into the streaming clouds, thunderous and absolute. Pods he knows are twice the size of houses scuttle up and down its sides like glimmering bugs.
       He knows which exit Sachi is coming out of and lingers there into the oily dusk, toes wet from the rain, watching travelers straggle out. A gaggle of disheveled schoolchildren and a shouting adult. A clump of businessmen, suits crumpled, silent and thin-faced. A solitary priest, chatting on his phone, fumbling in his saffron robes for something.
        And then, her.
        Every time he sees her the same brief madness possesses him. That she will look straight through him as if she does not recognize him and walk past him without a word. That she will climb into some other vehicle and take off to some other life without a thought for the one they have together. It is the same feeling, like needles in his heart, he got the day he first met her, all those years ago. The day the war began.
        She sees him and smiles. The madness passes.
        Moggallana watches her as she comes towards him. Hair greying and little heavier than when they were young, and wrinkles now fanning the corners of her eyes like rays from the sun. When she smiles they deepen and perhaps that is why, at times like that, her face is so bright. She wraps her arms around him, travel-sour, and he loses himself in her presence.
        "How're you?" she says.
        He shrugs. "Surviving."
        They return hand in hand to the car and watch each other, smiling and in silence, until the vehicle has hit the highway. Then her smile fades and he knows what she will say next.
        "How is he?"
        Moggallana looks away. "Not good. He screams at night. I think he has nightmares. And he's spaced out all the time." He pauses. "The house is a mess."
        "A mess?"
        "Yeah. He flings things everywhere. I don't know how long he's staying."
        "It doesn't matter." Sachi strikes a bracing tone. "Come on. We should let him stay as long as he likes."
        Moggallana sighs. "I suppose."
        "Mog." She touches his arm.
        "Alright. Yes."
        She watches him for a while, expressionless. Then: "Has he said anything?"
        "He just sits there, most of the time. Staring out at the sea or at his fingers or dozing on the sofa. He drinks a lot of tea. And eats watalappan."
        Sachi cocks her head. "He hates watalappan."
        "I think he's changed his mind. He eats it by the fistful."
        She shudders. "Hate watalappan." She closes her eyes. "I would murder you for some kottu, though."
        He feigns ignorance. "No kottu on Betelgeuse?"
        Sachi chuckles. "No kottu on Betelgeuse."
        It is late and drizzling when they pull up to the house and disembark with three packets of kottu, dense and warm and heavy in their hands. Sachi pauses by the door and takes a deep breath.
       Moggallana squeezes her shoulder. "You'll be alright."
        "It's not me I'm worried about," she says.
        The instant they open the door they hear Kasyapa clambering to his feet. When they walk into the living room he is standing by the TV holding an empty box and a bottle and some socks in his arms. He looks around the room as if noticing the mess of clothes and lunch-boxes and books for the first time, and then at Sachi, and then at his feet.
        "Hello, Kasyapa." Sachi holds out a packet of kottu. "I brought us dinner."
        "Yeah," Kasyapa says. "Sure. Yeah."
        He follows them around, watching them as they lay the table, looking at Sachi when he thinks she will not notice.
        "How are you?" she says.
        He shrugs. "I'm alive. I'm here."
        She ventures a smile. "It's nice to see you."
        "Is it?"
        Sachi pauses, and squeezes his arm. "Yes. Of course it is."
        She begins laying the table and he follows her around, questioning.
        "Where've you been?"
        "Betelgeuse."
        Kasyapa stays a few steps behind her. "Moggallana says you're a professor now."
        "I am indeed."
        "I didn't know you liked bugs. You look older."
        Moggallana holds his breath, waiting for Sachi to take offense.
       But Sachi just smiles. "I am older."
        They begin to eat. Kasyapa stays with them for a while, fidgeting. Then he gets up without a word and takes the food over to the sofa.
       Sachi winks at Moggallana and moves to join him. "How goes the war?"
        "Yeah, I was lucky." Kasyapa takes a giant mouthful and speaks through it. "We knew what we were doing by the time I got there. My first week there they dropped us down onto one of their colonies and we pumped gas into their warrens and set fire to it. You could hear them popping for miles. When they came scurrying out we'd just let them burn, you know? It smelled like pork."
        Moggallana and Sachi lower their forks and look at each other but Kasyapa keeps on, oblivious. "Yeah, yeah. We planet-hopped and the closer we got to their homeworld the more desperate they got. By the end they were eating us."
        Sachi sets down her fork. "Eating you?"
        "Yeah." Kaspaya shrugs. "Like ripping bits off the dead and stuffing them in their faces. I was down by a dune once and they came swarming out of the sea. You know what they look like, right? They've got these gross bug eyes. Can see in the dark. Anyway, they come out and they grab a bunch of us and we're running down to the beach, shooting, trying to get them back. And they're chomping on them as they go. Ripping legs off and swallowing them whole. You could hear the bones cracking over the gunfire." He stares at the wall for a few moments and then stuffs another piled spoonful of kottu into his mouth. "It's alright, though. Apparently we whipped them so hard they've got nothing left to eat but us. Means we're winning."
        Sachi blinks and a tear streaks down her cheek. Moggallana looks out the window to where a strip of moonlight shines down through the black clouds like a searchlight. Silhouetted against it is the great statue of the Buddha, back turned, black and featureless and oblivious to them all.

       After the attack shock slowly curdles into rage and humanity girds itself for war. The iron veins of industry gush with steel and fire and up in orbit the vast docks begin churning out warcraft bigger than skyscrapers. There are parades and recruitment drives and the airwaves are full of furious argument. We must strike back, say some, hard and fast, and eliminate them altogether. The universe is a dark forest and it is best to be safe. There are other voices too, ones arguing that the right to life is not a uniquely human trait, that we are treating the enemy like animals, and the treatment of both is a shame. But these voices diminish, and by the third attack and the death of another six million at Bernard's Star, they are mostly silenced.
       At first the young are not keen to go. It is so far, they say, and when we come back everyone one we know will be old or dead. But wouldn't you rather see them old than dead, say the recruiters. If you don't go there will be no one left to see, soon enough. If you don't go, you will only get to watch them die. If you do go, you will see alien worlds. You will see skies with three moons and the rings of planets, razor-fine and shining. You will fight aliens and when you come back it will be the future. Don't you want to see the future?
       They do not tell them about the horrors that wait for them. They do not tell them how the first soldiers to go come back, even after victory, babbling and drooling, and take months to recover. They do not tell them that the enemy does not fight with guns but with thoughts and that these will lacerate them from the inside. At first they say nothing because they do not know. Then they say nothing because they do not want. And then finally they come to a rationalization for not telling them: that war is war, and traumatic no matter what weapons it is fought with.
       Sachi and Moggallana know none of this and even if they did they would not have cared, for they have their own secrets to keep. Through the summer and into the next Kasyapa keeps lavishing attention on Sachi and she does not have the heart to tell him to stop. Every time he hugs her, her eyes flicker instead to Moggallana, shy and silent, and Moggallana can see the guilt that builds in her like lava. She tries to keep her distance but Kasyapa is persistent. She tries to evade him but he appears outside her house, smiling and revving his engine. She tries not to speak too much but he does not mind, because he has so much to say anyway.
       "We have to tell him," Moggallana finally says one night. They are lying on the roof of her house on an evening as warm as breath, watching the brightening light of the Fourth Armada's thrusters amidst the stars overhead. "We can't go on like this."
       Sachi rolls over and props her head on his chest.
       "How?" she says.
       Moggallana brushes her long, dark hair from her face with a gentle hand. "I don't know."
       "I thought maybe your parents would have said something."
       He frowns. "They won't."
       "Why?"
       "Because they don't think it's their place." Moggallana sighs. "Besides, it's humiliating enough for him as it is."
       In the end they do not have to tell him. One day he and Kasyapa return from a ride and Sachi is there waiting for them. Kasyapa wraps his arm around her and though she does not reciprocate and just stands there with her arms limp, he does not seem to mind.
       "I need a drink," he says, and brushes past her.
       Moggallana and Sachi follow him to the living room. She sits next to him and for the briefest of seconds leans against his shoulder and closes her eyes. Moggallana closes his too and breathes her in. When he opens his eyes Kasyapa is standing by the door, bottle in his hand, frowning. They stare each other, and Moggallana watches realization turn his brother's face slack.
       Kasyapa turns and walks out without a word. Moggallana tries to go after him, but Sachi holds him down. "Let him go."
       "I have to talk to him."
       "He won't talk to you right now."
       Moggallana sits back. He hears Kasyapa's bike roar to life outside, and then race away. He already knows they will never ride together again.

       Sachi can never sleep the first few nights Apsara is back. When she was young and started sleeping on her own for the first time she would press her ear to the wall and through the muffled and inchoate clamor she would find the gentle rhythm of the child's breathing. Sometimes she would shift and a mattress spring beneath her would ping and creak, and for a few instants the storm of tension roiling in Sachi's stomach would settle. But then it would return - the fear that she was not there, the fear that she had climbed out the window and fallen in the sea, or else that someone had snatched her away. Stupid fears. Silly fears. Fears all the more terrifying for being ridiculous and, in that instant, utterly believable.
       This night too, it is the same thing. Sachi and Moggallana pick Apsara up together that evening and if the girl noticed that the two of them were quieter than usual she did not mention anything in the torrent of updates and stories she always brings with her. But when they get home she looks at the mess in the living room and Kasyapa sprawled on the couch and turns to Sachi.
       "Who is that man, and why does he get to make a mess, Mother dearest?"
       Sachi puts her fingers to her lips. "You'll wake him."
       "Who is he?"
       "I'll tell you in the morning."
       Apsara chews her lip and looks askance at her father. Her hair is wilder now and thicker than Sachi ever let it get, as furious as tropical undergrowth, and her nose is pierced. "You consented to this, Father dearest?"
       "All will be revealed, Daughter dearest," Moggallana says. "It was through no choice of our own."
       She makes a great show of storming off to bed, but she is smiling.
       Later, when Sachi presses her ears to the wall, she hears footsteps coming up the stairs and along the corridor. Then the sound of a door creaking. By the time she has flung herself out of her bed and opened the door a crack - a soft blade of humid air sighing in against the air conditioning - Kasyapa is already at Apsara's door, peering through it, lost in shadow.
       "Hey," she whispers. "What're you doing?"
       He does not say anything and he does not move. Sachi wraps a robe around herself and comes out, a mosquito buzzing in her ear. She stands next to Kasyapa. He stinks of coffee and sweat.
       "What're you doing?" she says.
       Apsara is in the bed, sprawled on her back, legs splayed and mouth open. There is a thin line of drool running down her cheek, silver-blue in the moonlight. Sachi watches her for a few moments, and when she looks at Kasyapa she realizes that he is watching the girl with the same slack-jawed amazement that she did a hundred times when Apsara was growing up.
       "She's perfect," he says, his voice hushed. "She looks just like you."
       They stand there, watching, and a thought flits through Sachi's mind like a bat: that he has imagined this very scene, many times, except the child they were watching was theirs.

       With war comes a pulse of money and the old lumber mills on the outskirts of town roar back to life. The old men who work there squat outside in the mid-afternoon shade, gap-toothed and saronged, and joke that if this was the result then Earth should go to war with aliens all the time. The last of the shanties disappears too and soon afterward a factory down the road buys the first of the floating Japanese diggers that move over the ground without wheels, silent and sleek. People gather to gawp at it, but it is followed by another, and then another, and then a bus. By the end of the year they are used to them and some are even complaining that they are not as nice as the new Chinese ones down the road.
       Through all this Kasyapa rises early and leaves home and does not come back till late. Later in the year he finds work by the sea a few miles away. Before he leaves he hugs both his parents in turn and sobs until he cannot speak and they both sob too, not because they are sad, but because they cannot understand what has broken him so. He is gone by the time Moggallana is back from work. He finds a note on his bed. Good luck, it says. Be good.
       A couple of weeks later Moggallana and Sachi take a trip down the coast and lose themselves at the winding and sandy seaside. They spend hours clambering over half-drowned reefs and she cuts her feet on the coral and limps for the next few days. Towards the end they are in a little lost cove watching an octopus scamper awkwardly over a few rocks and Moggallana casually says, "We should get married, you know."
       Sachi looks at him askance. "Are you proposing?"
       "Kind of."
       She arches an eyebrow. "Kind of?"
       When they get back to the hotel he sneaks out and buys a ring and proposes to her on their balcony, properly. Two people down by the pool see them and they hoot and clap. After that they both retreat into the cool dark of their room, embarrassed and elated.
       After they return Moggallana calls Kasyapa and the instant his brother answers his mouth goes dry.
       "I have news," he says.
       "What news?"
       "We're getting married."
       Silence. And then: "Great. Congratulations."
       Moggallana's stomach churns. "I have something to ask you."
       "What?"
       "Will you be best man?"
       Another silence. Then: "No."
       "What? No?" Moggallana looks away from the receiver and snorts. "Why not? I know–-look I know it's--"
       "It's not that. I would if I could, but...I can't."
       More silence, and now Moggallana can hear things in the background. Bleeps and the sound of colossal pneumatic pumps and announcements about departures and arrivals. "Where are you?"
       "At the elevator."
       "The elevator?" Moggallana sits up. "Why?"
       "I'm leaving. I'm going away."
       He leaps out of bed, suddenly fretful. "Where?"
       "I've signed up."
       "What!" Moggallana walks out of his room and out onto the blazing balcony. Down below his parents are weeding the garden, sunhatted and chatting, the sea azure and placid behind them.
       "Signed up for what, Kasyapa?"
       "I'm going to space. I'm going to fight."
       His mother looks up and waves and Moggallana drops his voice. "That's crazy. You're joking."
       "I'm not joking."
       "You haven't even finished training."
       "I did. Where did you think I was going all summer?"
       "Do Mum and Dad know?"
       "I told them not to tell you."
       Moggallana feels his jaw drop open. "They knew? They agreed? People are coming back brain damaged, man. They attack you in the head."
       Kasyapa chuckles. "In the head?"
       "You know what I mean. Don't be a dick." Moggallana pauses. "Is this about Sachi?"
       More silence. So long this time Moggallana thinks that maybe Kasyapa has just hung up. Then: "It was never about Sachi, Little Brother. It was always about you." Kasyapa sighs. "Though I did love her, you know. I really loved her."
       "Kasyapa--"
       The line goes dead. Moggallana calls back, but does not get an answer. He calls again the next day, but the line is out of service. Three days later they deliver Kasyapa's bike to the house. There is a small note attached to it.
       Teach her to ride, it says. I love you both.

       He lies awake for most of the night. Outside there is nothing but the murmuring sea and a chorus of bugs and the light of the scything moon, heavy and cold on the sand. Sometime just before dawn he drifts away but his dreams are all of blood and bone and when he wakes from one he decides it would be better to just stay awake until it is time to leave.
       He tidies up the living room, as quietly as he can. Every now and then he pauses to look at a picture or to watch the dawn creeping in crimson and purple against the distant reaches of the night. He goes out back to empty the dregs of a bottle into the patchy grass in the garden and he sees two bikes parked on their tripods in the shed at the far end. He runs his fingers along their glossy sides and checks their vents. One of them is cherry red and gleaming and he mounts it and sits there with his eyes closed and his hands on the handles. But not for long.
       It is a Saturday and Sachi staggers out of bed just before noon and comes down the stairs rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She casts her eyes around the pristine living room, frowning, and notices Kasyapa's bag packed by the door. He comes in a few moments later, in uniform, and stops in his tracks when he sees her.
        "Nice rags," she says.
        "Nice rags, sir. I'm a lieutenant."
        "Nice rags, sir."
        They stand there looking at each other and no more words will come. Then Moggallana comes down the stairs behind Sachi, bare feet splatting on the tiles, and he too notices the bags. "Where're you going?"
        "Back," Kasyapa says. "The war's not over."
        Moggallana's eyes widen. "What? I thought you were back."
        "I was. Now I'm going."
        "You can't go back. What're you doing?" He comes down the last few stairs and right up to Kasyapa. "I thought you were home."
        They look just like father and son, thinks Sachi.
        "I'm not done, man," says Kasyapa. "Look, my taxi's here. I've got to go."
        Moggallana flails his hands. "Now? Right this second, now? Are you serious?"
       Kasyapa looks down at his shoes.
       "Stay." Moggallana holds his hand out. "Find a job. You can't go back."
       "Why not?"
       "We'll be ancient when you come back. Or dead. You can't just turn up and then disappear like this."
        Kasyapa doesn't say anything.
        "What the hell are you going back for?"
        Apsara comes down the stairs and wraps her arms around her mother's waist. Sachi hugs her back and the two men turn to the two women.
        "That," says Kasyapa.
        Moggallana frowns. "What?"
        "This." He points at Sachi and Apsara, and then at Moggallana. "This is what I'm going back for, Little Bro. Look at the three of you. You're perfect. You're beautiful. You have this place and this life and you're good people. You're better people than me. You're what I'm fighting for, now." He breathes in, ragged and deep. "I love you all."
        He turns and walks out. Moggallana follows him, stammering and huffing, but he cannot say anything that makes sense. An instant later a cab arrives and Kasyapa gets in without looking back. An instant after that, he is gone.
        Moggallana wanders back to the house, face buried in his hands. Sachi takes him in her arms and they stand by the doorway, the creeping heat of the day on their faces, staring at the empty road.
        "Who was that man?" Apsara says.
        "My brother," says Moggallana.
        Apsara frowns. "Why've I never heard of this brother, then?" she says.
        Moggallana turns to her and takes her in his arms.
        "Let me tell you all about him," he says, weeping, and looks at Sachi. She smiles, and nods.