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You are from a time of posters and propaganda. When news of the war effort fluttered down the painted walls of crooked alleys.
your father, who never hit you but knew other ways to make you feel small,
“I am not a mandolin. Do not attempt to play me like one.”
these fortresses overseen by watchtower tortoises, the eyes of the emperor, who in the paranoia of his later years commanded more and more of these edifices to be constructed throughout the country.
These checkpoints were similar to the ones of your time. You remember well the stopped breath in your lungs when you and your family traveled by train to the northern province to visit your distant relatives and your train was stopped at the border station for a random search.
“They called it the Burn,” she said. The hole in the tapestry of the sky that the Moon once called home, or so went one of your lola’s less likely tales; how, after one of the First Men unstitched the Moon from the sky with the tip of his spear, freeing Her from Her determined place in the heavens, She offered him one wish, and that wish was a kingdom.
there were far greater dangers than brigands that stalked the fields of a land stripped of its moonlight.
until all that remained of the man was a box of twisted flesh that somehow still rattled with breath,
The emperor turning ahuman into a pretzel and for WHAT
Our bones became a part of the edifice of this mighty prison. Our skin dispersed into the air. Our blood in the water that poured down each step.
“The old men would have you believe it shook out one way. That the road was but pain and glory. Sometimes, perhaps, life whittles itself down to these essences. Sometimes there is nothing we can do but sit in it.” She took a long drag and blew gray smoke up into the ceiling, where it lived like an opaque and swirling cloud of shape and texture. “But listen well when I tell you that your father, and your granjo, are wrong.” What were they wrong about? you asked. She shrugged. “This is a love story to its blade-dented bone.”
Now it seemed that prayer, prayer to the world, the spirits the world cradled, and to the Sleeping Sea that dwelt beneath it all, was all he had to stop himself from losing his mind.
the dance could stop at any time, that both participants know that nothing will come of the fight, and yet it goes on.
I could have pushed him over the edge of the paddy. The fall wouldn’t have killed him, but it would’ve broken something, and I would’ve liked that.
“My uncle was like you,” he said, as if he had been waiting to say it for a while.
this image vs the comment the girl made about how the women think of him. And vs the things other village people said about the soldiers in geeral
What was uncommon, but not entirely rare, was that both of the lovers were male.
It would become a thing he could return to in his mind when he pleased, elaborating on the details, giving life to the still image, and in this way it would become his, for this was the fate of all fantasy.
The Daido, traditionally, was the effigy of an old man, in cross-legged posture, with one hand held up as if to stop someone from passing him and the other hand held out, palm up, as if asking for coin. The many replications you have seen in the artisans’ corner ably captured the old man’s calm yet distant expression, and his gaunt, near-starved frame.
But you would never forget the day you felt you’d really seen him.
None of this was true; Keema had only heard about the practice of self-disembowelment a few months ago.
Fathers leave in all sorts of ways. Some of them leave in the dark. Some leave only in their heads, while their bodies remain, staring at the world around them forever distantly. Others fade out over time, like an old photo rubbed raw. Many, gone in an instant.
But none of them said anything, just as you had said nothing when your own father had left, for there are moments in this life that speak clearly for themselves.
But the truth of the matter was they fought because Jun was grieving and Keema was terrified and Jun was exhilarated and Keema was joyful and Jun was exhausted and Keema was repulsed. They fought because it was the easiest language they spoke.
“Go fuck your brother to death.”
“I’m envious, I suppose. I have always had some difficulty negotiating a relationship with my own brothers. Even my parents.”
Of all the possible saviors, you told him, it was the most unlikely that deflected the apocalypse: a tortoise. Your little brother made a face, which made you only insist that it all was true—that the creature was as big as a house, with a shell as hard as iron, and that day, when everyone else had given up, it was the tortoise alone who made the slow march across the field that lay in the moonfall’s path. Hundreds of years old and slower than a tugboat, but it made it.
When the Defect was first born from the inverted womb in the Shrike Room beside the heat beds, it received, all at once, like a waterfall, the memories of all the tortoises that had come before it, and all that now yet lived.
“You know as well as I that there are no odds in this world. There is only the Rhythm, and the Dance. That we are but the dancers.”
Rivers had a habit of changing their minds, the myth waking from its slumber to shift position, and a boat, certain it had come this way before, might circle on its own path and make a trip not planned for, into territory dark and deadly.
Keema glanced at Jun, and it surprised him how much comfort he found in the other’s gaze, despite the red tattoo that sparked in the others so much ire.
The man told Keema the story of this river they now traveled, the Yan-Tsi. How the Yan-Tsi took its name from the snake demon that fell in love with the three beautiful brothers of Twin Fan Village—the same village whose carnage Keema and Jun had been witness to earlier.
“I have lived a long time,” she said. “And the longer I live, the more it surprises me, and saddens me, how wise the young must become to live in this world.”
the Gathering. The name explained itself. The two of you walked along the docks of your town, your hat threatening to fly off into the sea as you gestured at the boats—the skiffs as slim as blades of grass, the fat tugboats, the puzzling catamarans, even the warships—and you described to him how the fishermen of the Old Country would congregate to form this collective and discuss amongst themselves the trials of the day. How they would lash their boats together, with ropes, with planks, boats of all different sizes, and create, in effect, a temporary town on the water, stepping across this
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he and Keema spared one last glance at each other, the look in his partner’s eyes burning like the afterimage of the sun in Keema’s mind.
“The mother? No. This one has not met the mother. Not in the way you humans mean. You do not meet the land you walk on, and this one does not meet its mother. But this one feels its mother, underneath its thoughts. Its mother is the land its mind walks on. Its mother is what binds it to its siblings. It is because of its mother that it is never alone.”
“All this one knows is that you smell of worry. It comes off of you in a most vivid color.” “Am I now?” Keema said, amused. “What color is my worry?” “The color of a gray and broken sky.”
I told him that he forgot himself. “I—I—I—” he said. I told him that I am a god. “I—” That a god needs no mortal’s permission. No false emperor. No human.
I told him not to forget his station again. That he was but a stain of his father’s bloodied seed. That by my grace alone was he deemed worthy of breath.
He wanted to show Jun this side of him. He wanted to stand up and reach out and offer Jun his hand and ask him if he would like to dance. But he was afraid, and in fear he could find no words to pull out of his parched throat. And so he tackled him.
“I hope that brings you much comfort as you sleep.” “Oh. It does.” They were both grinning.
Idk fam this is flirting
“Fear keeps you alive.” “Not always.” Jun tilted his head. “Not when fear kills your good ideas. Not when it makes you run and your enemy shoots you in the back with his arrow.”
If only there were a way to prolong the inevitable. If only there were a way to hold a moment in your hands and keep it alive forever.
I knew that if I let myself remain in that form any longer, I would disappear; a new Moon would take my throne, and it would no longer be my light that the animals and the forests bathed in. It would no longer be to me whom the dancers presented their finest arts, but some other lesser creature who would not be able to appreciate and love the same things I did; and such a thought I could not bear.
What a selfish god
I took our revenge, and afterward I sewed my son’s head back onto his body, but I saw that ever since then he was not the same.
Blame is an endless circle.
if I reminded him that I was a god, and that with my power I could help him change tradition, and give him a child who was strong regardless of how they presented to the world, he would become testy, and ask why I needled him with such pointless questions.
You can fault the dancer, but more often than not, it is the dance itself that has to change.
I like to imagine what the Daware man must’ve experienced in that moment.
hilarious interaction between keema and the empress as a bear
At the head of the last flight, the Daware man glanced behind to see if I was still chasing him, and he cursed with loud disbelief when I turned the corner and gained on him.
I made love smell like spilt blood.
I heard him call the Daware man’s name. The Daware man was on a skiff he had cut free from Luubu’s disintegrating ship. The Daware man called his name back. If one listened, one could hear it in their voices. One can tell a lot, even in such a state, by the way someone speaks another’s name.
