Tzerennho exhaled, thin curls of smoke falling gently from his lips onto the smooth, flat stones.

"Must you smoke?" Aymaxhan's lip curled in distaste. Dark curls hung, heavy with sweat, to his shoulders.

The guards stood on the stone balcony of the Northern Watchtower of the Ithyrosian empire. The great desert that stretched before him was milky pale in the silver moonlight. Like a sheet in the wind, the white sands seemed to move in quick ripples through the flickering screens in Tzerennho's goggles.

"No," Tzerennho said. "but I will anyway."

"Why? Simply to spite me?" Aymaxhan's eyebrows knit together.

"No," Tzerennho breathed, closing his eyes. An airship drifted silently overhead in the sky. He waved.

"Why do you wave?"

"To remind myself that we are dead..." Tzerennho said, his voice faraway and tense. "That nobody knows that we exist. We are no longer real. Ghosts of the empire."

Aymaxhan's gaze softened. "We are wraiths."

"Yes." Tzerennho said, gracefully tossing the still-smoldering cigarette onto the sand below them.