The Price of a Meal

CLICK TO GO BACKthe afternoon sun is brightening, a ripe rain of warmth onto their kitchen counter. it falls in thick cotton rays, yellow and orange and like the kumquats their mother sent them. they had been plucked from the small tree that sat in her apartment, soaking up the sweet shine beneath the window.the light reminds them of a candle’s glow, casting a dreamy and draping haze over their crowded kitchen. it’s like living in a photograph, the light is perfect and rich and it ripples down onto them all.the table is a tiny thing with a pot of piping hot earl grey tea sat upon its right side, the old kettle snug in a side of the simple circle.this is not to say their home is cluttered.the pots and pans are neatly hung, clean and well maintained. there is a scent of lemon on the pans, lemon to lather away the old scents of things long cooked.smell is the last memory to go. it is the thing that draws a smile to the sides of your face. but they cleanse it, because those pans need to saute new memories into matter. because there is always another day and another dawn.tomorrow is another day.yang pulls a bowl from beneath their utensil drawer, a simple bowl of white porcelain. it is not ornate, but it doesn't need to be. all it needs to do is hold their heart. all it needs to do is hold the hot meal they've made for dust.all it needs to do is carry their adoration.the wind is mild and lazy, a gentle breath of hot air. a little huff that moves the clouds at a snail’s pace. the curtain flutters in the breeze, waving at them.the jook is still steaming, still piping hot.they smile and soak up the scent of savor, chasing the feeling of brine on their teeth. the taste of the lake that still lingers.they think a good meal can numb the greyness out of you. that it can set you to the shore when stuck at sea.they think food is full of goodness, is rich with a mundane divinity that settles into your bones and soothes them.food has feelings, has intent embedded into every inch. in it is the hard work that is never done, the things we want to do but never do.give us this day our daily dish, feed the body truths through gritted teeth.they need you to understand: it took patience to say i love you.they set the dish down on the counter, near the still hot pot.they had rinsed the rice three times before they cooked it, bringing the water to the indent of their finger’s first joint.they had watched the pot until it boiled, until the water bubbled and bit at the sides of the metal pot.they had waited until the air was coated in the scent of rice, waited until the rice broke to bits within the bone bathed water.this is to say, Yang has done their best. they have given their time and thought.the pot is no longer steaming, but the jook is still warm, is still fresh and full bodied.the plate settles like a sun, the shine of its reflection coming nearer and nearer until it becomes none.the bowl clinks as it meets the warmed marble.this dish is their mother’s and now theirs, it is handmade and intentional, it is hemmed with a history of hunting hunger, and it serves now just as it did hundreds of years ago.it is soup for the soul, saying that it is okay to rest your strength. it is okay to sit at the table with tiredness. it is okay to say nothing at all.slump, if you need to.they cook out of love for things that move.they lift the ladle from the drawer and dip it into the porridge, stirring in slow circles as they slide the silken soup out and into the waiting bowl.they will not taste it, not before he’s here, not before he’s had his fill. they do thisCLICK TO GO BACK

Starter

CLICK TO GO BACKThe road is a chorus of leaves piled neatly off the sides of the asphalt. The dried leaves hue red and orange, and the summer rains have weaned into a lighter wetness. Heat has bled into something more manageable. Nature is cordoned off by a wall. The retaining walls he passes are patched in moss and creeping vines.The roadway is empty. Tadashi passes by no other vehicles. The closest thing to company he has is the dull drone of the engine. Even the small towns he drives through are abandoned.The road is cracked and faded to a gentler grey. Grass and underbrush congregate beneath the traffic barrier studded into the side of the mountain.The day has been long, uneventful, and fruitless.Tadashi is of two minds upon this. In a way, this is a good thing. His lack of work is an indicator of peace, if not an unfaltered belief in God’s vision. The ultimate goal of a society is to have no need for enforcement of law and order.On the other hand, Tadashi is bored.The mountainside is an endless crawl of green matter and small stone shrines pit onto formations of rock and dirt. The occasional torii gate sits proud in the maws of trail heads. Trees rustle in dense clusters along the lines of his vision. He speeds, even through the curves of the road.The steady movement of his surroundings and his speed create an illusion of greater width and connection. This is the sort of thing Tadashi would pull someone over for. Pull God over for.This is the price of order; the strong decide the nature of sin. Tadashi does not claim to be powerful. He is merely part of someone else’s; he answers to the Minister of Japan.Who answers to God.The difference lies in this: he is an officer, and it is within his duties to be available at all times. Legally, he is allowed to speed. God, unfortunately, is still subject to the long arm of the law. He has no political standing beyond being God. By all means, he should not have the sanction to bypass the rules everyone else is subject to.Alas.The cedar trees stand tall upon the scattered wall slabs winding through the road. Between their torsos, he can see young deer nosing through the fall detritus. There are three of them—one of them, a particularly lanky deer has the starting bumps of horns. Another, small and hornless, has its face buried in the bright ground cover.But what is grass to someone who is always looking up?Their thickening flanks are obscured by the dead insects smeared upon his window. A particularly whole creature is flattened near the windshield wiper.From this alone, he knows that the cruiser’s grill, if not the entirety of the bumper, is coated in carnage. He sighs, weighed with the knowledge that he will need to wash the car.In the distance, he sees a beacon of hope: a convenience store. It is a small, local shop with a bent awning. The fabric is red and yellow. Beneath the awning is a corrugated plastic sign with faded letters.The colors of the words have bled out with time.There is a small stack of boxes on the right and a variety of refrigerated see-through shelves stationed on the left. A few potted plants sit upon small crates. Tadashi can see their bright blooms.Within the confines of the building, through the wide, floor-to-ceiling windows, Tadashi can see a scant few people—The cashier and a customer or two.He parks at a charging station and plugs the cruiser in. The charging station’s model is a now-defunct one. He opens the charge port of the cruiser and inserts the cord.He scans his fingerprint to pay.He walks over to the hose box, scans his fingerprint again, and takes a scraper. The scraper is stained on the edges and smells strongly of industrial strength cleaner. Tadashi makes a face.Maybe he can write this all off by saying it was a work expense.Tadashi cleans his car with all the rage of a minimum wage worker being forced to do overtime. He hoses and soaps the vehicle down like he needs to waterboard it. Like he needs to beat information from its steel form.Despite everything, there are still stains on the front fender and hood. In theory, if he spent another 30 minutes cleaning, he could remove some of the discolorations. But he won’t.Alas.With the emotional and physical labor of cleaning dead bodies off the cruiser past him, he goes into the store. He leans down to go through the door. The bell rings as the door moves, and his antlers scrape the ceiling. Tadashi is reminded of the fact it is almost winter, and he will lose them soon.At least he won’t have to duck as much when they’re gone.The shop has no air conditioning. In its place are two rotating ceiling fans and two oscillating pedestal fans.It’s a bit loud, but it works.The old woman at the counter seems startled by his appearance. Or maybe his horns against the ceiling. He doesn’t blame her, of course. How often do you see the police loiter in your parking lot?Alternatively, it could be because he’s seven feet tall. He’s not quite sure.Without giving the clerk much mind, he goes to the open refrigerator. The amount of options leaves much to be desired. There aren’t many items with no animal products. He grabs a salad bag, three rice balls, two bottles of cold tea, and a sandwich.The wrapping isn’t quite perfect, and the rice balls are a bit lumpy, but they have heart, if nothing else. They’re also larger than what you would get in a larger chain store.He appreciates it.He glances over at the egg sandwiches and grimaces, reminded of agony. God-filled agony. Raw eggs and boiled egg shells mixed into one wet, yellowed concoction.Tadashi can still see God’s bright, proud smile when he closes his eyes.There was a time when he would have been pleased at the sight of eggs, but no more. Never again.He sits down on a small stool at a small table. His knees are crunched upwards and his back is bent. He eats the sandwich, a tofu katsu sandwich. It’s not salty enough.He opens a packet of soy sauce and puts it under the top slice of bread, making a point to spread the sauce across the entirety of the slice.His ear twitches as he hears the bell rings again.CLICK TO GO BACK

Panopticon

CLICK TO GO BACKThe day is as any other: the rain mottles the paved road gray, and the asphalt remains equally in disrepair. Tadashi is doing a routine check through rural roads between Saitama and Tokyo. Both to see if there were any unwanted individuals—illegals—and to ensure that lost citizens are directed safely home.It is 09:45 and a Saturday. He is in a patrol car, on Nariki-Kaido Avenue, passing by the Nariki river. The road is on Highway 53, which goes to Saitama. The low hum of the engine is his sole companion.The trees and shrubbery have become a motionless blur of green. Blank colors splotched across the dull glare of morning.The world is dark. Rain drums against itself and the wind beats against the car’s sides.Tadashi does not find any particular pleasure in road patrol. Between the monotony of travel and the inevitable violence of finding sapioforms, he finds that his empathy has dulled.It’s become rather hard to care about the fate of the illegals he faces. When he contains a sapioform, he looks it in the eye and demands to know what it would do to live.By all means, he of all people should take pity. Does Tadashi’s heart not beat in ways it hasn’t before? Does his empathy have only borders?He used to be kinder.But he has no desire to be so now; he is not a friend. He is the arbiter of the most important ultimatum of their pitiful lives: they will either die themselves or kill the creature they currently are to live.Not so long ago, he was better—he used to care.He supposes it’s his own fault. An animal is an animal; even if you beat it half to death, it will never understand the reason. Repeating an action and expecting a different result is insanity.It’s just as the other officers of Hanno Station say. You can’t take the man out of the swine, only the pig shit and the guts.Tadashi is en route to the intersection of a rural village and a highway. It is currently 10:20. He has scanned exactly six different locations for sapioforms. He has found two and dealt with them accordingly.In spite of this, he wouldn’t say car checks are entirely devoid of enjoyment. They’re peaceful, if not a bit boring.A crimson truck blares through the adjacent lane, fast by far too much. It takes the entirety of the lane and more, firmly sitting as a road hazard. A wave of water smacks into the street and the side of the road, assaulting the already oversoaked groundcover.The vehicle is massive and, in all honesty, gaudy. The cut of the vehicle is sleek and streamlined. The lithe body of a predator set in steel.Tadashi can see a smear of red and black in the door frame’s tinted window—the driver of the offending automobile. In the split-second their paths line parallel, he can discern no features.Somewhat unusual but entirely in the norm.He sighs. He can feel an ear twitch with his annoyance, brushing against the peaked cap.With the flick of a switch, he turns on the mounted lightbar. Red and blue light washes over the motor patrol’s hood. After a seconds-long stretch of his back, he dogs the heels of the still-moving traffic violation.What he means is this: he falls back into routine—horrible in all its ordinariness—and becomes a script.He does not expect great advent, much less to see anything of note.The streets lie empty. The only proof anyone else was on this route is the bleeding splotch in the distance. Steel shows its unmerciful end, a sunset low on the horizon.Tadashi will need to follow suit and speed up.What a bother.He turns his wheel to the right, hand over hand. The cruiser turns around and into the other lane. He speeds up as he straightens the wheel.He doesn’t see why people run from the inevitable. If you choose to delay your consequence, there will be no difference between the past and the ground.Surely, you will hit them running.Surely, it will be painful.Soon, he is directly behind the affronting automobile, lightbar still a painful beacon of color.When the van shows no signs of slowing despite pursuit, he frowns.Tadashi, perhaps unkindly, jabs the howler button.The siren blares with its sine-wave frequency, rattling the car frame and vibrating through the road. The violence of it is as everything else: ordinary.The vehicle comes to a harsh halt, the frame jerking almost angrily.The shadow of the truck completely envelops his car.Tadashi remains steadfast, directly behind. He parks and snaps on a medical mask, feeding his ears through the string.Rain spatters upon the muddy wells of the road.He exits the patrol car and approaches the window of the offending truck, shoulders broad and back straight.The truck towers over him.Humidity smacks into Tadashi like wet cement. Ozone stings the air, ocean-thick and clean—the salt of monsoons yet to come. His fur soaks in the wet heat of summer.Water sloshes beneath his hooves, his steps rippling through the street's muddy pools. His tail flicks with irritation.The window rolls down.Tadashi recoils. Flinches back.God glares down at him, rapture bright in his dark eyes. He looks down on Tadashi with divine retribution blading on his wings. His face feathers are flared, and Tadashi is reminded of Shibuya burning. Of bodies being burned.God’s anger forces itself into Tadashi, burning his capillaries. In the hard set of God’s mouth is a city of no center—the promised land, broken-lit and grand.In the radiation of his wrath, God invents a new thing to die for. Dual knuckles crush into the wide wheel of the car, whitening.Silver studs his deadly fingers, in bands on his wrists. The riches of the earth throne his neck in chains. Everything God touches turns molten and mercurial.But he is not generous.God begins with a mouth made of exploded transformer lines. He speaks with a Russian accent, teeth sharpening against broad intonation and bold stressings. A baptism of bombs about to burn. “Do you—”His words come out as testament, heavy and thick. His voice riots through Tadashi; the drop of a cliff face.God pauses, the yellow of his iris devoured by his widening pupils. His gaze scatters like the sea, crashing into every plane of Tadashi’s face. His eyes affix to Tadashi’s right ear.Some horrible insight dawns upon him.God reaches out to him, descends with all the slow charity of an IV drip. God’s hand is wide as it comes to harvest him, extended like an offer of salvation: the careful way one feeds a doe still lame on its legs.Double-knuckled fingers fall upon Tadashi; a trick of the light, merciful in its impact. His touch dents whatever mettle Tadashi has left.God traces figures of flame into the fabric of Tadashi’s medical mask. A talon curls around the thin band keeping him steady.The metal of his resolve melts. Gold curves. Gold scars.God strips Tadashi of his mask. He cuts the string off the left ear with a claw. He parts the elastic with the flick of a finger.The medical mask falls away, dangling off his right.God’s gaze is a heelprint upon him, an iron coin on Tadashi’s tongue. His talon hovers at the precipice of Tadashi’s cheekbones.The hot wound of God’s fury silences itself; His aura shatters.God’s violence snuffs in the same way his mouth does. All Tadashi is left with is the char pulled from the flames. Pensive consideration sits judge in the quiet smoke.The absence of foreign anger tauts the sinew in Tadashi’s legs. His heart is an aching wound, puckered where memories were left behind.He barely keeps himself from bolting. His ears are flat to his skull. An ancestral and inherited fear is screaming in his blood—a flightiness written into his flesh and bone.He is prey. He is made to fight his way into fleeing; survival by all means.It’s the core of his design.Tadashi stands stiff in the storm and awaits his sentence. His uniform sticks to his skin.God cups his jaw. Large, long fingers brush over Tadashi’s skin. His touch is gentle but firm: the press of a meatmonger.Rain drips off Tadashi’s hat and ears.Metal digs into Tadashi's cheeks, indenting with uncomfortable warmth. There is a fire in his fingers—a funeral pyre of feverish poppies.God determines the worth of his flesh with a thin smile and dim insistence. Pale yellow irises pick through him, sliding weightless across his form. Tadashi is suddenly aware of what it means to be a body.God thumbs a bead of rain from the corner of Tadashi’s jaw. His palm rests upon Tadashi’s cheek—a boulder sat expectant. “Don’t you know, you’re quite eye-catching.”Tadashi has been spared. He is unharmed but not safe. The tension is a stone stuffed in his mouth, an unpleasant but now bearable weight.The pit of him piths. It forms flesh and folds of skin as he reorients. He processes God’s words properly.CLICK TO GO BACK

Godless Thaumaturgy

CLICK TO GO BACKIt’s never safe enough.Coleman doesn’t think it’ll ever be.The dawn is a bleak fissure on the horizon; clouds and smog have smothered the day. Time chokes on itself and vomits up a ticking absence. It’s six in the morning, and the sun bleeds through the abscess of stratocumulus.He’s so used to drought that he’s almost astonished at the sky for the haze of wetness that falls from it. It’s drizzling, and he hasn’t bothered with an umbrella. The water creates a thick murk to wade through, barely different from a fog.Maybe it’s not so bad.The streets of New York are grimy. The sidewalks are narrow and slick, oiled by the waste of restaurants and whatever residue leaks out of the potholes. Threat, imaginary and not, winches itself out of the mouth of every interaction.Rain could give this city a second chance.It’s only technically morning; not even the birds believe it. It’s early enough that the streetlights are still flickering, the sun nowhere near brimming over the grey edges of the skyline.Trees chart between the lamps, rooting shadows into the already paltry light.Garbage crowns from dumpsters and bins, migrating from the confines of their containers to the street. An unending flow of waste. Green litters the points between trash, trees, and tenant. Planter boxes and shrubs are studded onto the roadside.Beauty in squalor, or something along the lines of it.Coleman towers above every passerby, few as they are. His shadow casts too long and too wide, and his shoulders are too broad. His antlers occupy space he never wanted to take.Coleman worries the inside of his cheek with the flat of his molars.He keeps his head low and his eyes lower; his shoulders stay pulled up and in. His ears angle down, twitching as someone pulls ahead of him. His hooves hit the sidewalk in the same way a bat breaks a skull. There’s no way to soften it. No way to pad out the hard keratin of his hooves.When he walks, women flinch and men posture. Like a desert, he defines himself by what he isn’t: soft, strong, with substance. Although he tries to learn from his lackings, he’s left demoned by his desire. His hoofbeat echoes in his ears.His mouth sours with the spectacle of it all, the sound.His gaze is fixed on a damp paper bag stuck to the curb of the sidewalk, a temporary focal point he anchors to. His hands slip into his jacket pockets as his spine curves in slouch. With a heavy sigh, he frees the flesh between his teeth. His hand riffles through, and he pulls a stick of gum from his pack.He tries and fails to reduce the amount of area he consumes.It’s quiet, or as quiet as New York can be. The thrum of machines, rumble of cars, and distant sirens are an uncomfortable but familiar thing: the signs of the city staying alive.He muddles the muted peace with chewing gum, his jaw working winter mint out of rubber. His teeth grind into the soft body of the gum instead of his cheek. If nothing else, it chips the edges of his appearance into something approaching palatable.He avoids stepping on a plastic straw, watching it roll into the paper-pasted gutter.Ahead of him, a woman stands, mostly stationary. They’re going in the same direction, and she’s paused to open her umbrella. He watches her struggle to open it. Their paths go from in tangent to about to intersect. She’s tall for a woman, but has none of the sharp edges or hawkishness that usually come with height. Her angles are rounded, and her dress is yellow. Her nails are a soft, pastel lavender.The hazy fall of water borders on a drizzle. A step closer to rain.She glances his way, behind her. The sound of his hooves has dragged her attention with their noise.Her hair is in a loose ponytail, and seems to be coming looser as her umbrella fails to open, flapping uselessly as she presses the button on the handle with progressive force. He considers helping her; he feels his hand twitch as her fumbling grows a shade more frantic—he knows he won’t. The fabric flaps loudly, each attempt a flint strike.He watches her fingers quake as he stares. Her spine is as stiff as a cross nailed above a bed.If given the time, Coleman thinks he could pinpoint the hour people started perceiving him a monster instead of meek. Right now, he plots when she concludes that he’s following her. He marks it between when her shoulders stiffened and when her breath broke.The scope of her shaking steepens, and she walks faster. A frantic start into motion. Her pace is erratic, her footsteps arrhythmic.In spite of her speeding up, he’s still behind her.His cheek ends entrenched in his enamel, teeth sinking into the pink coil of viscera and rubber. Blood leaks from the wound he’s worked open. It tastes like hot metal and marinates his gum, dying it red.He understands—really he does. Men like him could so easily be monsters; swirl dead wasps in a jar and tell her it's honey. Does it matter if she’s wrong about him when she could be right about another? He doesn’t resent it. No one wants to be made into a headline.What does she think him more likely, he wonders. A murderer or a rapist?He doesn’t speed up, but he’s right behind her anyway. In the seconds he stands next to her, her mouth wrinkles with something between fear and horror. He sees it in his peripheral. She quivers like a moth, trapped between lamplight and him. When he passes her properly, she schools her face into something softer, sweeter—an overexposed polaroid.He looks away.Within the confines of his clothes, his hands have wrenched into tight fists. His nails dig into the meat of his palm. Her umbrella is still closed, fully extended and folded into itself. Her breathing is still regular and slow, but he saw the strain in her.He focuses on something beyond the bright silence, waiting for the moment to pass. For her to leave. This is nothing more than the ordinary violence of walking to work. He’ll keep moving, and, as always, nothing will happen.Coleman hears her soft exhale a few feet back. It sounds nothing like relief.The woman remains terrified. The haze of water slicks her and her unused umbrella. He takes his crumpled gum wrapper into the pit of his hand and throws it in the trash. The morning cuts its teeth on potential left stationary.Distance is a thick fog she disappears into. He watches her dark outline die in the wet neck of smog and hopes the memory of their meeting will pass her by. That she won’t think back to it at all.He continues to bite a hole into his cheek, almost hoping it’ll burst. What a relief that would be. He can taste the rawness inside his mouth already. The blood builds a neighborhood of mint and saliva in the back of his throat.He doesn’t spit it out.Coleman continues his commute after a good minute of waiting. He walks slower this time, as softly as he can.What he wouldn’t give to be someone else.CLICK TO GO BACK

Lovage

CLICK TO GO BACKLight climbs the length of Toji’s windowsill like a caterpillar climbs milkweed: determined, enthused, and with a bit too much heft.It’s lovely.The glow butters his window and the stone walls surrounding. His home drinks down the brightness—every piece of furniture is a candle, lit by the aging rays.It’s the eighth month of the year, the season of Akan, and the air has crisped finely, like ice over a pond. The warm world has chilled like a pail of milk in cold storage. Red leaves lave across the streets and gather in the wet rise of sidewalks.Toji is pulling his boots on, fastening the lace before he has to scurry out the door. His bag is already on his back. His train to the city departs soon, and he would much prefer to not miss it. He sits on the raised step at the threshold of the front door. His other sets of shoes stand in a neat row, lined by size.Thread thimbles through the top two eyelets of his shoe as he hums a soft song. A tune he heard on the radio. His heart had drummed to the rhythm of the words. A love song, if he recalls correctly.It’s a gentle morning. A fog has faintly fallen into the crevices of the land, and it is as pale and soft as the morning mists.The cottage is a gated fixture situated on a windy knoll. Trailing down the rounded mound is a tail of open earth. Beyond it, sweetgrass rustles in waves; braids of movement, of sleek, reedy spikelets swaying.Geese sound their horns as they fly south; a distant chime skimming the trees.Toji pulls the laces into a knot, cinching his boots tight. The sides of the shoe pull firm, and Toji tugs the tongue to the boot’s collar. He tucks his laces under it.He exits the cottage, opening the doors wide. The outside whistles past him and makes itself comfortable in his home.A brisk, bitter breeze smooths over Toji’s fingers. Autumn teases along his cheeks and ears. The smell of trees and plants decaying through the span of the season spices the air. Fallen rain hammocks onto each leg of wind.It’s marvelously cool today.Puddles have settled onto the road like rabbits in a warren. The sun reflects off those mirroring bodies in toasty orange hues. Holes of damp silt and stray rock have recomposed the loose trail—the remnants of rain, terrific and harsh.Toji pauses and turns, pulling from his musings. The wood’s grain is darkened with water, wettened into something deeper than brown.He locks the door and looks out to the garden. To the things he has grown.In the spirals of his planting, the foliage has filled out in thick bush and berth. The tallgrasses have spread in patterns of their own, winding through a spotting of woody shrub and briar. Bird’s-foot flowers in sweet purple clusters through the pastureland; mountain-mint burdeons in the ankle-length bedding of green.It smells of wet moss and old sedge, an aroma with all the sticking strength of bramble. It’s as if he ran through a meadow; he’s inundated with the sweet, floral thick of split grass and the loamy wet of a bog.Toji winds through a curving clearing, a loosely carved path to the gate—a picket fence studded in a stone wall. In the near distance, he hears his ducks putter about in their run.The sun sits at the precipice between night and day, melted over the horizon—a letter opener hashing the lush fields into yellow.Is it arrogant to find pride in a work that you were merely the steward of?As he leaves, Toji grabs his recyclables from their bin, small containers next to a heap of compost. A pile of files and scrap, bricked together within simple marked bags—one among eight.It’s Medden, paper-recycling day. The recycling center closes two hours earlier today. Though, that doesn’t quite matter with an early morning trip.There’s less paper this week—less to bring on the train. Maybe he can bring his glass recyclables, as well, and save the trouble of bringing them along tomorrow.After a moment’s hesitation, he gingerly takes his glass recyclables in hand. The handles bunch together, and the bottles clink against the paper.He locks the gate, fastening the latches.Past his home, the light refines itself. It rests and refracts in the working water.He looks down at the trench, the road connecting him and his neighbors. His letterbox is screwed onto a sprucewood post, slanted from the storm. The displaced soil has bled murky water, gently threading to pool into the road. He thinks he can see a soggy letter through the slats of the compartment. More critically, he laments, the stake needs to be replotted.He’ll do it when he gets home.The communal road is bogged with heavy sheets of rain. The stones are entirely submerged, and the silt dragged by the current leaves the forming flow murky.Detritus in the form of underbrush and uprooted grass congregate on the submerged road; bark, branches, and leaves have been brought by the surge. The branches catch on themselves and rocks, diverging the stream.The fast-formed creek glows with cool invitation, all crisp sound and sleek consistency. If the stream sustains itself, there will be bloated colonies of eggs by the end of the week. Bugs and amphibians catching the last, weakened legs of warmth as the water rises.Water licks high at his ankles; pebbles fumble behind him, clicking through the runlet. The ground will be carved open when the next rains ply the already overfull soil. The rain has, all in all, been kind to his land.His neighbor, Lena, unfortunately, has not been so lucky.The pathway past her front gate is soil that soddened with the wet of the storm. The path is entirely flooded, and Toji can’t see the ground. Her fencings have been damaged by the water waving through its gapped form. Perhaps it was the slope of her home. Perhaps it was misfortune.Regardless, it’s not exactly unexpected. From what he knows, she’s spent the majority of her life in the woodlands, far from the flooding lowlands and grassland.Toji sees his neighbor’s mailbox in the distance, entirely torn from the earth. The post is swollen with fluid and spackled in clay. Her mailbox is made entirely of wood, and the letterbox, rather charmingly, is shaped like a house, roof and all. The box is half buried in the ground and, seemingly, barely attached to the post.What a shame.A woman with tawny braided hair waves to him, a round-mouthed shovel in hand. She looks up from her planter bed with a slight smile. Her braid is a thick rope, loose and barely held together by its band. Her voice is a soft, vague trill, an untuned instrument sitting in sun-baking soil. “Good tidings, Professor Harada.”From this angle, her face and form are shadowed, cottoned by the blooming light. In these drapings, the minutiae of her body balds. He keeps her curtained and at a distance, past the fence and not behind it.Her hands are ungloved, covered in the grit of the earth, dark and mealy.The sight of her reminds him that he has promised to help her repair her exterior shutters. He looks just to the side of her, speeding up ever so slightly as he waves back.He smiles. “And a good awn to you, Lena.”Her attention returns to her garden. Toji continues down the unpaved path, each step lower than before. The slope of the hill pulls at him, gravity strengthening the push of each stride. Regardless, he maintains a slower pace, toes pushed into the front of his boot.The path is made of mud.It squelches beneath his boot as water wells out of the soil. It climbs his boot’s toe and cakes it like a thin layer of acrylic paint, slowly setting into flecks of crumbling clay.The mottled bark of trees rustles with the crisped edges of dirt. Toji hums as the ground squishes with his shoe prints. Though he’s walked this trail hundreds of times, he still finds something new to marvel at. Look, the sun brims over the edges of the canopy—soft-focused ochre over a canvas of gold. Yellow pours past the blanket of leaves in fractals.Color dances with the breeze. Even now, when the trees begin to bare, light can’t touch every leaf.Sycamore fades into conifer, and then to civilization.Through a thin thicket of pine, he sees the train station's red bricks and charcoal-colored awning. Mortar lines have grimed over with years of use; this building has weathered tens of winters.Though the quality of red has dimmed, these dutiful blocks have stayed steadfast.Some other paths to the station are paved, having come from the main town. Their routes are smooth, stone, and neatly cut into the earth, a geometric pattern of squares.Its interior is no different.Highbrook Moor is an old station; the benches’ wood is worn, and the cement near the train tracks has lost its luster. The clock embedded into the wall runs minutes too late.Its rounded ceilings are tall, and the metal frames that hold it in place are visible. It is as grandiose in architecture as people could produce at the time—a symbol of welcome and a source of civic pride.The station, while occupied, isn’t particularly crowded. Though, it used to be. Before the war, the trains ran through Sei’an’s countryside and into Tothe’s cities.Nowadays, it only goes through Sei’an.Many things have changed with the war. But such contemplation is better left for other times. Toji is three steps away from a sprint, and one from the ticket booth.He’s rather certain he’s about to miss his stop.The station speaker is an overcast of sound Toji isn’t fully listening to; a cloak thrown over the corners of the terminal. He’s a few paces away from the ticket booth, and—He bumps into the shoulder of a passerby. The man stumbles with the force of their collision, but thankfully, doesn’t fall. Toji quickly apologizes, head slightly bowed. He doesn’t see the man’s reaction. “Ah- I’m sorry. Excuse me.”

The man’s hair is light brown and messy, like a loose bale of hay. The sort Toji’s father bound up behind the house for the sheep. He’s an older man, and his face is familiar—dark skin, dark eyes, and a bright mouth. His teeth are crooked, and his cheeks are pockmarked.Toji has seen these features before, seen them often, but he doesn’t know who this man is. He should, but he doesn’t.He smiles at Toji with all the forgiving grace of a sparrow; the earlier traces of upset feathered away. His clavicle aches dully. To err is animal. To forgive is human.The man says, “It’s fine,” as he continues walking, no stumble to his step.Toji smiles back, but doesn’t meet the man’s eyes. In this moment, he is the confessor of the fat hen on the red altar of its throat—his tongue curls, all alone in the dark of his jaw.Maybe it is a bit crowded.With more speed in his step, Toji makes his way to the ticket booth. There’s no line and no other ticket clerks.Through the booth window, the booking clerk, Millar, eyes him with amusement. Millar’s hair is the same rich shade as the mud beyond the station, and only visible in the slivers slipping out from his hat. He’s a bit like the trains of the station: reliable, someone to return to. “You’re pushing the time aren’t you?”He smiles with a slow and almost sharp kind of humor, his amusement a bag slung over his shoulder. His pen taps as he clips out a ticket stub. Millar doesn’t brush away the paraphernalia on his desk, and the ticket ever so subtly creases.Toji laughs, a bit embarrassed. Millar’s wry gaze remains on him for seconds longer than he’d like. “Ah-haha, yeah.”Millar writes down the location, date, and time on the stub. His handwriting is neat, although his scrawl slashes it. The ends of his letters drag and curl.“You going to Luton?”Toji can see he’s already written Luton down. He’d be a bit offended, if it wasn’t the only stop he ever boarded for.“Yes.”Millar hands Toji his ticket, a round trip from Meder Creek to Luton.“Number’s on the back.”Toji bows his head, hair falling past his ears.“Thank you.”He looks over the ticket and takes it. He then puts the first coin he can grab on the booth’s desk.Toji walks briskly to the bench, defaulting to a slump. Lines inscribe themselves on his forehead as he frowns. Tomorrow, he thinks, he’ll help Lena with her exterior shutters. And then he’ll help his other neighbor, Kurt, with his fence.The train arrives before he even sits down, silent and speedy.Oh, man. He really was pushing it, wasn’t he?The sleek and streamlined train has a sloping head that narrows into a balled point. White, with a red stripe down its middle. The locomotive is uniform, with a bright body, looking almost unsegmented.It’s a marvel—the culmination of Tothe’s industrious and unrelenting development. Its glossy finish refracts in the morning light, reflecting off his glasses and rendering him blind.Unfortunate, but a daily struggle nonetheless.The train stands out amongst the architecture of this station. It has all the same effect as an automaton among stone statues. It had replaced the prior model that rode through these tracks, a gift of sorts from Tothe in the name of promoting prosperity and union.He enters the train, handing the conductor his ticket. The conductor punches a hole into the paper and hands it back to Toji. He gets to keep it because he needs it on the way back.He tucks the ticket into a pocket.Toji is instructed to sit in the first cabin because he has a sizable package. He sets it next to him instead of on his lap. The seat is navy blue and sleek, glossy faux leather that crunches as he sits on it. Its surface is cold and somewhat stiff, even and with a texture akin to plastic.The speaker system goes through the rote of stop and destination. The voice is plain, mechanical, and female. The stress in Toji’s spine spools out. The door closes, and soundlessly, the train begins its departure.The train’s movement is smooth, the rumble a sound rather than a sensation. The trees and field blend in the tinted glass like dirt dancing in a stream. It smells like a storm. Like lightning struck the heating metal and left the air supercharged.Ozone warms the back of his throat. Toji leans back into the seat, sinking into its stiff cushioning. He watches the world warp around him, a near-immediate effect as the train shifts into motion. Outside, the green and gold of nature, fields, forest, and riverbed dilute into dense structures. Into mortar, brick, and building.Outside, everything is a blur.CLICK TO GO BACK

Cafetière

CLICK TO GO BACKIt is 8:30 A.M., and the sun lies loftily above the cloud bank netting the horizon, soft and wispy on the pale blue. A beautiful morning, but no different from any other. The shoji doors are open. The mountainside is green and bright, pollen dusting the air and flowers dotting the glossy brush.The sleek cold of dawn curls around his hooves.Imamura is making coffee in a French press, a rounded rectangle placed on the flat plains of the counter, taken from the cupboard. He meters out coffee beans, shaking them from their plastic binding and into the coffee grinder. The machine grinds them down and spits them into the container beneath.At this hour of morning, everything was louder than it needed to be. The beans rattle like gunfire. The grinder screams like the engine of a vintage truck. The kettle sings an aria, a mixture of screeching and boiling.It disturbs the tender silence of sunrise, gives him a headache, and worse—He can feel that his lord is awake.Imamura is careful with the coffee. He soaks the grounds for exactly four minutes. He preheats the mug and the carafe, measuring everything by kitchen scale and leveling off with the blade of a knife. His care made him precise; he takes pride in the exactness of his affections.The coffee grounds hiss when Imamura pours an unbroken thread of hot water into the carafe. An aromatic waft of steam hits his face, pleasant and calming. It’s almost enough to forget the indignity of every object being squarish.He presses down on the plunger, stirring up not a single flake of silt or sediment. The ritual of it all curls the corners of his mouth.Imamura pours the coffee into Sokol’s mug. The cup sits uncomfortably in his hand, all of its edges making it press strangely into his palm. He takes an experimental sip, tipping the cubic cylinder back. Smooth and wooden, bitter as morning in mid-November. Rich in its own right, and rife with the power to rattle the tongue like a saber. It’s pleasant, and to Imamura’s tastes, but not his lord’s.He adds two cubes of sugar, a splash of non-dairy creamer, and no milk. That was a lesson he learned the hard way via Sokol’s pet bird-thing.He sets the cup down, for a moment, and stretches, spine cracking softly as he turns. He takes a second to luxuriate in the simple beauty of tatami and cypress. The boards and frames that compose the spacious structure are a warm brown. The sudare are rolled up, still. The doors are a mixture of glass and shoji panels. Imamura marvels, still, at his lord’s home. It’s novel, being in such a traditional place. It feels a bit like going back in time.He exhales and lets some of the tension leach from his spine. The air is crisp and nipping at his ears. He takes the mug in hand once more and returns to the bedroom.Sokol is sitting on the edge of his futon, legs crossed. He’s facing the open shoji door, letting the breeze inside. The wind rustles his hair and feathers gently, and the light lingers on his form. His lord’s body is dressed in colors even the dim light cannot wane. Fading crimson on his hair, white lace threaded through his feathers, grey skin, and dark everywhere else.In this moment, he is unbothered by the vices of the world: above it. He sits with the birthing sunlight falling soft on his features,God’s garb is striped, tan with richer streaks of brown running through. His hair is unstyled and unbrushed, loose and long, draping over the back of his neck. He reminds Imamura of an altar, an idol—an object of worship.What is God to receive, if not praise?His posture is loose, his spine curves in. Imamura can see the vast expanse of his thighs, fabric splayed over the well-feathered muscle. His kimono is loose, and his wings are limp, lying on the ground. He’s perfect. The eternal bend of the right limb changes nothing, nor the carnage of his feathers: Imamura is in love with incompletion.He’s beautiful.Imamura’s eyes lock onto Sokol’s bare shoulder and the silk covering it. He can see the thinned, discolored scar tissue patched between the feathering of his neck, how it stretches across his flesh. The color is notable, especially with the grey tint of Sokol’s skin.Regardless, the contours of his shoulders are strong, elegant. For a moment, he considers worrying a wine-colored stain on the milk of that neck.Imamura’s mouth dries a bit.His lord’s longest face feathers rouse slightly, and he pulls his kimono up, covering his shoulders. Sokol’s head turns, his arm going to his knee. “Ah, good morning, my dear.”CLICK TO GO BACK