It's a little later, closer to town, that Tayrey's eye catches a familiar streak of white in long brown hair. It makes her pause, even after all this time, even knowing that losing Cassandra was part of the heavy price paid for their freedom.

She doesn't regret it. She can't regret it, knowing what she does about where every single one of them would have ended up had she taken no action. It's one of the elementary lessons a spacer has to learn. Saving the people you can is better than waiting for a perfect solution and losing everyone as a result. Last-second miracles are for the holovids.

Her lack of regret by no means equates to a lack of grief, and when she first spots the woman, this is what she believes it is. A figment of the imagination. A local woman who would in fact look nothing like Cassandra if Tayrey got closer.

So she gets closer. Walks right up to her. Tayrey's still in that Tradeline uniform of hers, but the keen eye may spot the differences. The jacket is wool, the shirt beneath it pure linen. Not a trace of any synthetic material. She wears an elaborate lapis lazuli bracelet around her left wrist. The gun she carries isn't her energy pistol but a revolver.

Tayrey stands right there in front of the woman, and the discrepancies she expects aren't there. It's her. Impossibly. The comrade Tayrey had mourned, had held a memorial for, safe and healthy. She can't speak, at first. Can't do anything but stare, completely overwhelmed by emotion.

'Cassandra de Rolo,' she says at last, in a small voice full of wonder. 'It is you, isn't it? You're alive.' She swallows, trying to ignore the lump rising in her throat. 'Do you remember me?'