In all of Hai’s enormously tiny life here in this valley, he’d never witnessed the budding of April blooms. It always seemed the trees were barren for months of ash and pewter greys, and then, as if overnight, the new, card-sized leaves would unfold, fluttering in the morning breeze, open and fat and already done with arrival. But this morning, for the first time, he saw the becoming of the season—and it looked to him false, the tips too hearty and dense against all that dead wood, as if placed by an artist with tweezers and superglue in a futile attempt to cheer up the world.
