Graduate Assistant Four Fronds Turning had made the best guacamole that Mike had ever tasted in his original or post-revival life, and it was all wrong.
Day in and day out, the rough waters of the Pacific slam themselves against the protrusion of sandstone the locals refer to as Morro Rock. White streaks of bird shit bleed down the rock, a testament to the rare birds of prey that nest in its pocked face overlooking the bay.
When Granny came by Li’s workshop to deliver the news of Huyuan’s death, the choice in front of Li was hardly a choice at all, and even Granny knew it.
Sometimes among the fish and crabs, we trawl squid and octopus, or little sharks, all added to the pots. Sometimes it’s a fish person, a thing we cut free and do not talk of, pretend we never saw.
Today, it is part of a god.
That was Father—a storm in a drought, a comet in the night. Acting first, thinking later, carried on not by foresight, but on luck’s slippery feet.
And so we were not as surprised as we should have been when, one warm night in our tenth year on the mountain, Father showed us the flying machine.
You are a young god. You are sweet volcanic soil and the rumbling voice of the stone and banners that snap in the wind. You are the best and deepest desires of your people. You are, in the body that is only somewise yourself, pleasing to mortal eyes, easier to petition than the mountain, and as they forget the form that they speak to is not precisely yourself, you forget a little, too.
The last person in the world lay asleep at the top of the tower. She waited not in a bed of silk and roses for the kiss of a destined lover, but huddled at the foot of a steel door in the hopes that she wouldn’t have to be the last person for more than a few hours, that if she stayed right where she was, her family would come to their senses and return to her. Her name was Lena. She was nine years old.
