Dai Stihó

She waits until her husband is gone; he wouldn't want her doing this. She knows he's right, too; one day, she'll get the strength to stop.

But not today. She peeks out the lace curtains, watching as his car pulls away, and then checks all the doors meticulously — front, back, side, garage — to make sure they're locked. She sets the alarm to active, even though she's staying in the house, and then retreats to the bedroom.

For a moment, she sits on the bed, wondering if it's right, until she realizes that it doesn't matter, really. She goes to the drawer, moving her clothes aside, taking out the small flat, nondescript wooden box, and opens it. She ignores the diamond earrings and necklace, lifting up the jewelry section and seeing the true prize underneath:

Five vials, each one differently labeled.

Her long, thin fingers caress the glass and she thumbs over the labels, reading each in her mind over and over, until she chooses one: today, the second one from the right. She nods to herself, setting the jewelry back over her most prized possessions, and then sits back down on the bed.

She uncorks; she inhales.

She hears the pitter-patter of feet on the tile of the bathroom today. Sometimes it comes from under the desk that they have in the bedroom, sometimes from the walk-in closet. But today, she turns to face the bathroom, and there her baby boy is, five years old and exuberant and just done with going potty by himself and his face seems to say isn't she just so proud of him?

And she is, her heart filled with bursting, and she tries so hard not to cry, because if she does she won't see him as clearly, and instead she opens her arms and folds her darling dearest cherub into her arms.

This week has been hard, harder than normal, and she can't help but rock and sob and feel his little arms around her neck and listen as he asks, "Why are you sad, mommy? Can I kiss it better?" which only drives her to more tears.

Ten minutes pass, and eventually she is only holding herself, still sobbing, her face a wreck, when she hears the garage door open. This spurs her to action, and the empty vial is hidden under the pillow, the box replaced, the bedroom door unlocked, and she retreats to the bathroom to hide the tears and wash away the snot, and in fact does pretty well, she thinks.

She pulls herself together, even gives her husband a smile when he comes back. "Forget something?" she asks, and he nods. "Just some papers. And—"

And he hugs her tight.

They've been married long enough that he knows, knows why she's a bit unsteady this morning, knows her secret. But he doesn't tell her it's unhealthy, doesn't repeat what the doctor said, because he can't bring himself to do so.

What she doesn't know is that he has a stash of vials as well. What she doesn't know is how many days of the week he doesn't go to work until he stops at the playground first, for ten minutes.

What she doesn't know is that some days, it's too much for him, too, and he comes back home instead of going to work because he needs to see her and be with her.

But today, he decides, there should be no more secrets between them, and he takes the empty vial out of his pocket, showing it to her.

"The first time at the playground," he says, simply.

She turns away for a moment, reaching under the pillow, and pulls her empty vial out, rolling it between her fingers and showing it to him.

"Potty training," she replies.

 

I always knew that you liked the stage a lot. You dragged me to shows - brand new ones and revivals, the classics and avant garde productions that I could not make heads or tails out of - at least twice a month for over six years. And I also know that you knew that I mostly went for you, at least at first, but I warmed up to it, eventually. The first time I went without you, I almost broke down, but I swear that I could feel your hand squeeze mine during those scenes (Gavroche, every time). I still feel you lip sync to the songs - never sing, that would be terribly rude, of course - and it makes me feel close to you, even now.

Still, I didn’t realize why you liked the smaller productions, why you dragged me to community shows or even children’s theatre with six graders with just as much fervor as the Broadway Tony winners. I always thought it was about supporting the arts and especially the youth, about making sure that the actors and crew always had someone to cheer for them, someone to appreciate their hard work and dedication.

I see it now, and I think that it’s what you saw as well, though I can’t be sure. The actors, the stage, the orchestra when it’s a musical - all of it is so bright. It’s an aura around each of them, a blanket of light. A weave, a spell, a manifestation of good luck, of a good performance, of good.

-

“You know that saying… the one about the moral arc of the universe?” You asked, one night, from the hospital bed, and I looked up from doing completely useless research on stage IV cancer. 

“What?” I asked. I wasn’t feeling that there was a lot of justice in the world at that moment. 

“You don’t win every battle,” you said.

“Are we talking about…” I didn’t want to finish the sentence. 

“You’ll put in the time, and the effort, and sometimes, you still won’t win the battle. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth doing.”

I cocked an eyebrow at you, and when you reached out a hand, I got up and sat down on your bed so you could push it down, and we both laughed.

-

I understand what you did now before the shows. It was almost every small show, but sometimes also the big ones. After watching you approach everyone from lighting techs to play directors - and that one time you somehow managed to talk to absolute Broadway Royalty, I thought it was just the charisma you had plus game recognizing game from those that live and breathe theatre. 

But now I see the aura of the performance, and more importantly than that, I see that just a little bit more to one of the actors, an extra word, an extra piece of encouragement, may make the difference between a blanket that unravels and one that comes together to protect the performance.

Sometimes, I reassure them, I encourage them, I wish them luck, I tell them to break a leg, and they still falter. Each time, I wonder if I could’ve done better, if there were more words, or a stronger ritual, a better way of protecting them. But each time, the performance goes on, and at the end, they take their bows, the audience applauds, and it feels… right, somehow. Like maybe it would’ve been worse, without my intervention.

I feel your lips on my cheek.

-

You were so calm the night that we got married - it was closing time and the venue needed us out and gone and our limo had broken down and we ended with boxes and a mess outside and there was no room in the car for us and and and… and you just looked up from your phone, stood up, twirled a bit, and said that we needed to leave right now to catch the last train. 

It was two transfers and an hour longer than it should’ve been, and somehow, we caught each transfer, each last train, across three boroughs. And before boarding each car, you would mutter something under your breath, close your eyes, for a moment, and press your palm to the door.

I remember asking - somewhere around 70th street, one transfer down, one to go, just the two of us in our finery on a mostly empty train at 1am - what you were doing.

“A ritual,” you said. “I’m putting my intent in the world. This one is for security.”

You said it seriously, and I had learned by then - after all, we were married - that you meant it seriously. 

I raised an eyebrow, my patented ‘excuse me, wife, what do you mean’ expression.

You smirked, and pushed it back down.

“Rituals mean something,” you continued. “You instill a bit of what you want into the world, and with enough intent, you might be able to nudge things in the direction that you want. My parents taught me that, and their parents before them, and all the way back to our ancestors.”

That was the first time that you told me what it meant to you. Of course, I thought you meant it figuratively then, but I’m sure you knew that, just as you knew that I would eventually learn. 

-

I see it outside of the stage, of course. Glowing lines that exist, briefly, when someone crosses themselves, when someone calls on their ancestors, when someone does any number of things where they put a wish into the world. Most dissipate after a bit, but every once in a while, there’s enough of a desire, an intent, that it stays. 

I see it in the day to day of a million New Yorkers going about their days, each wishing for a bit of good luck, a bit of serendipity, a bit of happiness. And sometimes, every so often, it feels like I feel like the universe responds. An aspiring actor friend wishes for a bit of good luck in her love life, and she meets someone at the coffee shop she works at. A family friend calls on the ancestors to help for a promotion, and is given a chance to prove themselves.

You know what I wish I could’ve shown you, though? We never went to the Empire State while we were dating - we were both locals, so it didn’t make any sense to pay so much money for something that we lived in every single day. 

And yet, if only you could’ve seen - from up here, each light stand, each wishline, each whatever you call it - there are so many rituals that extend beyond just wishes for themselves. They are wishes for their neighbors, their partners, their friends, all the strangers that inhabit this city together. The aura permeates every nook and cranny of the city. 

It doesn’t mean that only good things happen, of course. You taught me that, in more ways than one. But every time I look at the news, every time I’m depressed, I come up here, and I look at it, and I see what it means. 

The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Towards happiness. Towards joy.

-

You were sitting there, in the library, studying for an upcoming test that we had in biochemistry. I saw you before you saw me, and honestly, I would’ve kept going, but you did this thing with your hands - a ritual, I know now. I never asked about it, at first because I didn’t think it was appropriate, and later, because I didn’t need to.

I saw you make that sign a few more times, in the time we had together, and each time, the universe responded.

You asked for joy, and joy is what we found.

And now, it's on me to carry on the work, to pass that joy on to others.

"Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot." -Jacqueline Kennedy, about JFK's presidency.

My parents came here after Tiananmen Square, seeking a better life after the brutality of the Chinese government. America, to them - and to me - has for thirty years been that shining city on a hill, the place where immigrants across decades have come to seek a better life. The streets aren't paved with gold, but they have always held promise. Opportunity.

It is not perfect and it has never been perfect, not from the first moment where land was stolen from those who it rightfully belonged to, and not for a second throughout its bloody history, from the civil war to every movement to fight for rights: the suffragettes, the civil rights movement, stonewall and the gay rights movement, today’s trans-rights fights. And yet, it has stood, since the fall of the USSR, since the fall of the Nazis, as that place that has always accepted the "huddled masses, yearning to breathe free", as Lady Liberty has greeted so many that have passed through Ellis Island.

Ecco, America.

---

I went to law school because I believed in the law and I believed in the courts and I could trace a rich tradition from Marbury v. Madison to Brown v. Board of Education to NY Times v. Sullivan to Roe v. Wade to Lawrence v. Texas. I went to law school because I believed in a country where the courts stood for what was right, and where the legislature passed laws protecting people, not attacking them. Where the executive defended those who were downtrodden and who were refugees and who were victims.

I've come to DC more times than I remember. And since I was sixteen, with every trip, I would sit on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at night. I would sit there and I would think about a man who bent the moral arc of America towards justice. People fought and bled and died for justice. Sons didn't come back to their mothers and fathers because they fell and they died and they were buried defending the ideals of the Union. They fought and bled and died for truth, and justice, and the American way.

I've spent a lot of nights past midnight looking towards the obelisk of the Washington Monument and thinking about the glory of America, as imperfect as she is, a place where there are courts and there are laws and where society uplifts instead of represses, where people can come together to do better than before.

Today, though, the government that millions of people count on to be there for them is… gone, as far as I can tell. USAID is gone, an agency that helped millions not die because we could help those who live on pennies a day get vaccinated against diseases. Park rangers are gone. People that help the elderly with social security are gone.

FEMA used to have an individual who worked in the Texas area who was a long-serving meteorologist in charge of warning coordination. That person would have coordinated emergency weather alerts with local authorities, to make sure that evacuations happened in dangerous situations. That person is gone, and was not replaced.

Ecco, America.

---

The Pax Americana was for a long time a peace that was enforced with nukes. But then came the fall of the USSR, and it became a peace enforced less by weaponry (though America's hands are, of course, quite bloody) and more by economic power. by trade. by the exporting of values.

Values of freedom, of self-determination, of justice.

We don't export justice anymore.

We sell people to another country to jail them. We allow for the deportation of individuals to war-torn countries that they have no connection to. We abandon alliances and we abandon principles that we have held - or at least purported to hold - since the beginning.

The thing that I grieve for - and it is grief, and it is profound - is that America has never been perfect but it tried harder than many nations do to be the more perfect union. It has a bloody history of slavery and colonialism, but many countries don't even acknowledge that they have problems. Asia is incredibly racist. Europe is better in some ways and yet worse in others. I have had multiple European colleagues who state things like 'why is America so concerned about racism? Here in Europe, we just judge people based on what they can achieve' - which is incredible to me.

It has so far to go in civil rights for minorities, and yet it is also a place where those rights could be fought for, where people had sit ins and marches and riots and changed the world and forced people to accept them. America has been the leading edge of technology and of society, of change. Because it is a young nation it is more unfettered by tradition than many of the old countries. Because it leads it seeks to continue to lead.

And now - even if things change in four years, in the next election, it will never be what it was before. Because America has shown to the world that it, too, is just another power-hungry state that will do whatever it wants because it has the power to do so. There can be no argument that we're better than China, or than Russia, or anyone. If I were a promising young scholar, why would I come here? What could I find here that I could not find elsewhere?

A young muslim woman - a scholar, who is getting her Ph.D., who has a masters from Columbia, who was a Fulbright scholar - is walking down the street. She is stopped by a man in a hoodie, who doesn’t have any identification on him. Others surround her, rapidly, taking away her cell phone, her backpack, and handcuffing her, escorting her, in handcuffs, to an unmarked car. Over the next couple of days, she is transported from Massachusetts to Louisiana, despite a court order prohibiting that movement. She is denied proper medical care. She is treated like a criminal, despite not being charged with anything, despite having broken no laws.

Her visa is revoked - but she is not told. When questioned why, the Secretary of State says that it is because she supports terrorism, a charge that is not backed up by any documents - and, indeed, the state department has documents showing the opposite.

This was a nation that was founded on the principle of free speech, and yet, this is a country now that detains people and imprisons those who exercise that freedom. It imprisons not based on laws, but on the whims of the powerful. She is free today - for now - because the system is not completely broken. Because a judge released her, and those in power listened - for now.

But a nation where she was detained at all is not a nation that I recognize.

Ecco. America.

 I went to college with Patrick, but I didn't really know him until he moved to San Francisco around 2013 - my housemate, David, asked if I was cool with someone crashing in our living room (which was extremely empty because we mostly just lived out of our rooms). He was coming to SF to do a coding boot camp because he was bored of being an actuary.

I watch the blade fall.

Though I try to follow its movements, it is like lightning. I will my hands to raise my own sword to block. I will my body to move, but I am as fast as mud, and the wooden sword strikes me in the shoulder, knocking me to the ground.

"Had it been real," the shifu says, "You would be cut in half. Again. Faster."

I grit my teeth and slowly make to climb back to my feet, knowing that tomorrow, my shoulders will be sore and purple. It's been three months of training, and this is the first day I am allowed to even hold a sword, though I am not given a chance to do anything but block. I look between my tormentor's legs, and see the other children, practicing flowing movements with each other, practicing with staves and halberds and-

"Again," the shifu says, his voice cold, as he lands a stinging blow with the flat of the sword against my head to hurry me along.

I am set apart from the other children, and they do not see me as a friend or as an equal, but instead an oddity or an outcast. Or worse-

I set my stance, and ready, and stare at the sword, waiting. It moves like a cobra, left to right, and then darts in, and I attempt to block right and jump left, and instead I do neither.

The sword hits me in the neck and I am sent to the ground again.

I hear laughter in the background, and I blink away the hot tears, lunging to my feet before the shifu starts to speak.

I think to myself of my parents. Of that fiery night and those red eyes, and of the cold nights on the streets after. I think of these ninety days of gruel and hard bread, of a shifu who never smiles or gives a kind word.

"You may leave," the shifu says, looking right through me.

I narrow my eyes at him, scowling, and ready my guard again. I will learn to defend myself.

---

I watch the blade fall, and I block it with what I judge to be a careful, calculated movement. The tip of the razor sharp blade brushes past me, but its point has been directed a centimeter away from my sleeve, and passes harmlessly into the air.

"No," my shifu says. "A waste of motion."

I stare at him, though I keep the scowl from my face. This is the hundredth strike that I have deflected, the thousandth since one has nicked my robe, the ten-thousandth stroke that I have studied. I am his best student and-

"No," my shifu says again. "You took energy to parry move that blade when you simply could have stepped aside."

Before I can protest, his sword is back up.

"A stronger opponent will wear you down," he says, and repeats his attack. I make to block again, but this time, I feel like I am pushing against the mountains themselves, and the tip of the blade finds my chest, where it slices a piece off my robe, but does not touch my skin.

"A faster opponent will not have been caught by your movement," he repeats. I make to block, already moving fast, and yet, his blade is already on my other side, and another piece of fabric flutters to the ground.

"A smarter opponent will feint," he finishes, and even seeing it coming - even knowing his action, I am completely powerless, my blade deflected carelessly and casually to the outside as he scores, yet again.

I bow, chastised, humbled. I am only glad that there is no one else here to see my embarrassment, that all the other students have gone on, having nothing more to learn. I still had so much more to learn.

"And yet," he says, after a pause. "It was better than before."

I blink at him, and then let the faintest smile pass my lips before I ready my guard again. I will become better, still.

---

I watch the blade fall, and I have already stepped aside. I thrust forward, and my sword passes cleanly through the demon's neck, where it has no armor. I anticipate the next one's inward sweep, and parry that as well, instinctually. I side-step, letting my blade circle, waiting for the perfect moment, and as I see the muscles in its forearm tense as it commits to the attack, I thrust as I roll, sending a blade into its abdomen.

The battle is a dance, and I hone my skills with each beat. Their army is larger than ours, but they did not train for this; each swordmaster we have is equal to a hundred of their men, armor or no. The ten of us from the school are enough to turn the tide of the battle, and the peasants and soldiers that stand behind us watch us as if we were gods, descended from on high.

In battle after battle, our school makes a difference. In some cases, it is through individual combat, but as time goes on, I start to see our sigil - a gold dragon - on the banners of the men we serve beside. We are more than swordmasters; to them, we are a shield against the enemy, an infallible force. We are hope.

I fight for my country, of course, and my brothers and sisters. But I fight so that others have the courage to stand and fight as well.

---

I watch the blade fall.

It is a curved blade, obsidian black, and I know it well. It took my shifu's life a fortnight ago, and I watched then as it struck him, carving him open from neck to navel, and we lost the battle and by all accounts, almost the war. Before that, it took many of the school. It is wielded by a monster from across the seas, and it comes for me now.

But I have studied for this moment for all my life, and I have waited for ten thousand sword strokes to step aside this one, to parry the next one, to thrust past the last one.

I do not escape unscathed, but I honor my shifu and I win the duel. It is my opponent that does not rise from the field of battle this time, my opponent whose armor does not protect him and whose technology is overcome.

---

I watch the blade fall.

I sigh at the clumsy attempt to block it, at the student's desire to block and jump at the same time.

"Had it been real," I say to my student, "You would be cut in half. Again. Faster."

Theo met her in a dark street, after a long night of alcohol that tasted even cheaper than it cost. He had taken a wrong turn a street or six back, but he was doggedly going forward, sure he would eventually find the right path when he saw her, just about to round the corner. She wore a long, dark dress with a high belt, holding something round in one hand and something long in the longer. He squinted and for a second thought he saw a dagger in her hand, but then she turned and it must have been a trick of the light; all she had was a round handbag with a face on it in one hand and nothing at all in the other.

His unsteady steps echoing down the alley drew her attention, and she paused and turned.

"Lost?" she called out. He took a few more steps to her, trying his damnednest not to stagger like the drunkard he was, knowing that he must always make a good impression. Even in his state, though, his mind demanded that he answer her with wit, and started working on something. A few steps later, and he thought he had it.

"We all drift upon the rivers of destiny, miss, and we all end up where we ought to be." Pretty good, he thought, for who-knows-when-in-the-morning and eight-to-sixteen drinks in. His philosophy professor would be proud. Probably.

Her gaze sharpened, and for a brief instant he thought he saw the dagger again, and there was a moment where he thought this was absolutely the wrong way to be stumbling- er, walking. But his feet didn't get the signal, and then she smiled, and he forgot all about it.

"A writer, are we?" She asked him, with a deep, rich voice that sounded somehow both celebratory and somber, at the same time.

This time, his mouth answered on autopilot, having said the line far too often for a young man in his twenties.

"One to rival the greats," he boasted. "Er- I've yet to find a publisher, but know you this, miss, the world shall know my name." He nodded to punctuate his words, winking at her and expecting her to laugh and be charmed.

Instead, she simply looked him over, and he felt ever so small, so insignificant, in a way that he would ever struggle to describe. The silence built, and built, until he couldn't stand it anymore, and searched for anything at all to say.

"I just... need one break. One is all. The world will know me. I would bet anything on it. Er, anyway, what's... what's... your name?" Slick. So slick.

"You can call me Mel." she said. "That's close enough to the one that the world knows me as." She sized him up again, before he could think about her words, and then reached out to touch him.

"Just one break, Theo?"

The moment her hand reached his cheek, he knew that he would always remember the dark pools of her eyes. The curve of her lips, holding back a tremor. And the lightest of touches, a touch that he never was sure if it happened at all, or if he simply wanted it to enough that he imagined the sensation.

The cops found him the next morning still laying in that alleyway, sound asleep. Not the best part of town, but fools are often lucky, they remarked.

---

He never told anyone that story, though he recounted it to himself in quiet mornings and solitary evenings and through the halls of dream most of all. Night after night, week after week, month after month; it didn't happen every day it but it never left him. He recalled it differently each time - this time, she was wearing a nun's habit, instead of a dress. The next, her handbag a severed head, still dripping with gore, though neither of them commented on it. The meeting after that, she wears a crown and holds a scepter, and is clearly the queen regent. She wears a laurel wreath, and buskins. She wears a pantsuit, and cowboy boots.

Each time, they repeat the same lines to each other, and he feels like he is a lake, being filled steadily with ideas and images and purpose. She fills him until he is full, and then he writes. A month later, Theodore Alison's book takes the world by storm: Of Danae, a story about a princess and a god, raging against destiny, horrific events, and what befalls man when they disregard the gods. His publisher signs him to a ten-book decade-long deal on the strength of his freshman novel, and overnight, he becomes the star of the publishing world.

He wins the yearly award, and his name is known most of the world over. He sells the movie rights, and there are still a few languages that Of Danae has yet to be translated into, but he feels very, very good.

Except for one thing: overnight, she's gone from his thoughts and his dreams. Try as he might, he can't remember what she looked like, or what they said to each other. All he remembers was that he was very drunk on the streets, that he met someone, that he wrote a story for her, and now, that there is a particular hole where she used to be.

---

His next book comes out a year later, and it's called Eithne, and it's about a young man who finds a young woman, falls in love with her, loses her, and spends the rest of his life trying to find her again. Although he goes through the tour and the publicity, he knows - before anyone else even reads it - that it's not as good as his first. The critics mostly pull their punches. His first book was so transcendent, after all, and of course everyone goes through a sophomore slump, and yes, it's a bit derivative, and no, the ending isn't quite as good, and, yes, it does kind of feel like it's reaching, and well- he stops reading the reviews.

His editor calls him and tells him to take it easy, that there's no rush on the next one, to let the ideas marinate. Publisher speak for 'could you maybe re-do the first book and not this one' At the signings, his fans give a token effort to ask about his second book before returning to his first. He understands the unspoken question but doesn't know what to tell him, and so tells them nothing at all.

Instead, he spends three years wandering cities, earning nothing more than bruises, hangovers, and muggings for his increasingly desperate time. After three years, he has no ideas that he hasn't had before, and the publisher starts making noises about breach of contract, and so he writes a book. His publisher doesn't quite drop him after that, but there are no more celebratory parties or long readings; the book comes out to no fanfare and no advance and, as he expects, the critics consider it open season on him now, and he very, very much avoids the reviews.

His publisher does drop him after the next book, which, honestly, is a relief for him.

---

He spends the next two decades living, doing odd-jobs to get by, and resolutely being someone else from who he used to be. He thinks about the fame and fortune that he once had, and he thinks of how lucky - and unlucky - it is to be struck by lightning. He's lived a little more, and done a bit more research, and thinks he knows what happened, once upon a time - but also knows what happens when you call the attention of the gods to you, and he thinks he's gotten away rather light, considering.

Instead, he writes, here and there - character sketches and short stories, novellas and scenes, love found and lost, gods spurned and angry - but only for himself, and not for anyone else. He doesn't introduce himself as a writer to anyone, and is thankful that the world forgets quickly and has a very short memory.

As he searches through two decades of throwaways and drabbles, he sees a piece that might connect to another piece - a young girl who has a terrible secret; a wise old woman who weathers any storm. And then he sees a few more connections, and a few more, and something in his mind stirs as he pieces together one more story; one last story.

It takes him a week to find all the pieces, to put them all together, and to string each one to the next. Before he finishes, he thinks about what this means. Once upon a time, he was a young man, brave and bold, but all too cocky; now he is an old man, measured and thoughtful, and he wonders what he wants out of his next meeting.

He finishes his book and titles it: Melpomene.

And then he hears an expected knock on the door, and he rises to meet his visitor.

Once more, my friends. Once more.

*taps mic*

A little girl stands on a beach, safely away from the water, and watches a star fall from the sky: a great, green comet that burns and burns as it drops into the ocean, somewhere beyond the horizon. She stands there for a moment, blinking slowly to clear her eyes from the afterimages, and wonders if there is more, or if the show is over.

She hears her mother calling her, but at her age, this falling star is much more interesting than anyone calling her for any reason. So she stands there, and a minute passes, and then two. And just as she thinks that there's nothing left to see, she hears a dull, building roar, and she suddenly remembers something that a sickly elder once told her, lying on a bed that he would never get up from:

"If you ever see them fall from the sky, run. Run from the cloud, Deesa. Run away and keep running."

She runs.

But it catches her anyway.


When that little girl comes of age and becomes a young woman, she is stronger, taller, healthier than all of the other women — and most of the other men. And she's forgotten, mostly, that one day on the beach, when she was caught by the cloud.

She remembers running, and falling, and the worry on her mother's face when she awoke in her arms. She remembers babbling about a cloud of green, about falling before she reached the grass.

She doesn't remember the whispers of blood sickness that circulated for weeks in the village, whispers of the long winter and the long death. The whispers gradually died as she grew up, not sickly at all.

But as the years went on, different whispers start. Whispers of blood magick, of rituals and rites that her mother must have done to save the child, of life leeched from others and tragedies caused by borrowing life. Dante's mother Iyala is the first to accuse her mother, after her son withers away, coughing up more and more blood every day for a month. But the community defends her; after all, only half of all children make it to their Age Day, and everyone has someone they lost.

It is the grief speaking, the elders say to Deesa and her mother, and tell them that it will all be fine. No one really believes that there is blood magic involved.
No one does, that is, until the tide starts coming in.

Not the regular tide, greyish green, that all children are taught never to touch. Instead, it is a green, shifting mass, one that advances just past the water itself, spreading itself across the beach, shifting, turning... waiting. Every night, it comes in as the sun sets, and every morning, it disappears, receding beneath back beneath the waves.

At first, there is no cause for alarm. There was already a firm admonition not to go to the water, and so the elders simply reinforce it. There are other things to worry about — family issues, community issues, the stocks of food for the upcoming winter, and so much more. The elders treat it practically, and turn their attention to other matters.

But then the tide starts growing, inching its way up the beach, until all of the sand is covered. At night, if you were standing in the grasslands, you could look to the beach and see this green, roiling mass, one that almost breathes.

The real alarm happens when the tide spills over to the grasslands, within sight of the village.

The real panic happens when the village discovers that the tide is killing much of the grass and shrubbery that it touches — and some of the smaller animals, too.

A meeting is called.
A young woman leans on the edge of a wooden tower, looking out past hastily constructed village walls, and watches as the tide comes in. The green carpet. The poisoned sea. The plague cloud. The names for it amongst the villagers are many, but everyone knows what they're talking about. And everyone knows that it's been advancing, and that tonight, there is a meeting to discuss it.

And Deesa knows a bit more than that. She's been reminded, more than once in the past fortnight, of an event that happened years and years ago, and she suspects that the village elders will have no choice but to do what the village wants. It's not just Dante's mother, this time, but many others, who know two things: that there is a green tide that is killing the land, and that it had likely once touched Deesa herself.

And to be honest, she can't blame them, because she knows those two things too, and in the absence of any other information, who is to say that the whispers aren't right — that the tide is seeking her, and will kill anything it touches to get her back?

"Deesa." A voice from the darkness, a voice that she knows well.

"Macce," she responds, a half smile coming to her face as she turns to face him. "Are you the bearer of bad news?"

He steps forward until he's next to her, smiles, and takes her hand in his before speaking.

"The green cloud has been tracking you," he says, and watches her eyes widen. "That's something that no one knew until today. Where you've been hunting - the paths that you've taken - the cloud has covered that ground faster. It — it prefers that area. It may cover the hunting grounds in a few days."

She turns back to look over the wall, and he waits, knowing her just almost as well as she knows herself.

"I must—"

"—do what’s right," he finishes, and they share a smile, though he takes a moment to cover his face, coughing. "Anyway, the village asked if I would tell you. I think they expected that you would know, but wanted a friendly face to do it, anyway."

"And you are the friendliest face I know,” she says softly, and then snorts. “It's hard not to know, when the entire village is at something that you are not invited to."

He chuckles, and they both fall silent for a bit.

"Deesa—" he starts, but she just shakes her head.

“Don’t make it harder, please. I’ll set out in the morning – can you let them know?”

He eyes her for just a second, and then nods, and leaves, after a brief hug.
She wakes later that night, and lies in bed for a few minutes before dressing herself. There’s a brief moment of hesitation at her mothers’ bedroom door, but, after the tears threaten to come, she knows that if she goes through that door, she won’t be able to leave. A few minutes later, she slips through the gates, gently letting them click shut behind her, and turns to look at the cloud, lighting up the darkness, as green as the poisoned frogs in the remaining forests. It’s closer to the village than it was earlier that night, and she feels a twinge of fear.

Maybe, she thinks, it’d just be better if she simply walked towards it, and let it swallow her up. But what if it stays around? What if it decides that I’m not enough?

She remembers what Macce says about it following her, and takes a few tentative steps out towards the roiling mass. It doesn’t seem to respond, and she takes a few more, and a few more, until she’s barely ten steps away. From here, it almost seems to make a sound. A slow, steady buzz, one that comes and goes. She looks at it, one more time, and then turns to her right, and starts walking. If it’s going to follow her, she’s going to give it something to follow, away from the village.

The night passes steadily as she walks, always careful to keep it to her left, but after some time, she realizes that the beach is no longer to her left, and that she’s surrounded by the grassland. The cloud is still to her left... but she realizes that she’s been going in an arc, curving back towards the village as she goes. In fact, they’re almost to the hunting grounds now, and she realizes with growing terror that the cloud has taken over all of it. It’s gotten there ahead of her.

Every inch of land where the village hunts and forages is covered by the knee high cloud of poison, and the death it brings cannot be far behind. She strains her eyes, looking for some of the wildlife, the shaggy beasts, and sees a group of them, in the distance, sleeping through it all – and most horrifyingly, she sees them inhaling and exhaling the gas, one breath at a time. As Deesa watches, the grass in front of her starts wilting.

“No- no! Our food! The village!” she cries out, starting to rush towards the beasts, ignorant of her own safety. She hears a noise behind her and turns as she runs, catches a rock, and the cloud catches her once more as she falls.
Deesa wakes for the second time that night, but this time, only sees the stars above her. The stars, the constellations, and a green haze. A green haze that she inhales... and exhales.

“Deesa?” she hears a voice from the darkness, and she tries to figure out where and when she is.

“Macce?” she asks, and she hears a groan. She slowly pulls herself to a sitting position, and looks around, mind still unclear. “The wildbeests – they were breathing it – I fell into the...”

And then she looks down, at the pale face of her friend, who is starting to shiver uncontrollably.

“What’s wrong? What happened? Oh, Macce, why did you follow me-?”

He forces a smile on his face, even as he can’t keep himself from shivering, twitching. “Had to- look out for you. Make sure you knew you weren’t alone.” His teeth chatter, and he pauses for a second, squeezing his eyes shut.

“What’s-“ she starts to ask, and then stops. The cloud surrounds them now, and she would swear that it’s even more active near them than anywhere else on the grass. She looks back at him, the tears starting, furious with him, and herself, and the cloud, and everything. “You should’ve stayed! I could’ve done this myself! Why is it you and not me? I thought I was the one that it wanted!”

His breath starts to come in fits and gasps, but he swallows, hard, and shakes his head, stopping her.

“No, y-see, I have... the blood sickness,” he says, coughing, and she realizes that it’s blood that he’s coughing up. “Didn’t want to tell anyone. Found out a month ago. Still okay, but-“

She tears off a part of his shirt and dabs at the blood. Tears flowing down her cheek.

“Deesa,” he says, taking her hands in his own and squeezing them tight. “You—you’re fine. You’re breathing and you’re fine. It might only—”

He coughs up more blood, and Deesa looks down at him, and then up at the beasts in the distance, realizing what he’s trying to say. “It kills— but not everything. Maybe only the sick. The blood sick. The ones that have drunk the water, or that have eaten the things that make them...”

“Slowly... die,” he finishes for her, as he’s done since they were both children. “I don’t... feel pain. I don’t know what it’s doing but it doesn’t— it doesn’t hurt. I know what happened to my grandpa, and I choose this any day.”

He coughs, again, a continuous, wracking cough as she holds him.

“Bring me back to my family,” he says.

“I will,” she says, and then they say no more.
She takes his body back to the village as day breaks. Some of the earlier wakers see her, and before she reaches the town hall, everyone is there, but no one says a word.

She set his body down, and backs up as his family surrounds him.

“Macce was my best and oldest friend, and he went out with me last night, after you... after I decided to leave. I wanted to lead it away from you, and went north, but the cloud had circled around to the hunting grounds. We saw it take over – we saw that everything there breathed it in, and many things died.”

She pauses.

“Macce – Macce died. But before he did, he told me that he had the blood sickness, too, that he was going to die, and that maybe – maybe the cloud only made it so that those who can’t be saved are given... release. He said – he said it didn’t hurt.”

“I don’t know what the green cloud does. I only know what it has done. I know that I’m standing here today, despite having breathed it in, and I feel healthy. I know that there has been something that has been slowly causing us to all get sick, something that our grandfathers and their grandfathers died from. Maybe – maybe this tide is one that washes away the sickness. I know that I saw the beasts this morning, and while some of them were dead, many of the young ones were not. I saw some of the grass near the beach, and it’s growing back faster than it’s ever done.”

“I think you know what I’m about to say now, what my suggestion is. But I don’t know what to do. I’m just one person, and maybe I just got lucky, and Macce got unlucky. This isn’t my decision to make. It’s yours. Macce wanted me to bring him back. And I think he wanted me to tell this story. The rest... is up to all of us. If you want me to leave again, I will.”

“And if we think that you should be killed?” A voice from the crowd.

She pauses.

“If you think I need to die and that will make it go away, that is a choice as well.”

The villages look at her for a long time.

They look at Macce's body.

And then they vote.



----------------

A/N: It's been a long time! The first part of a 30 in 30 challenge that I'm doing with some friends (so, uh, if you don't like fiction, you might want to defriend me, because you'll see a lot of it this month). With thanks to kickthehobbit for the prompt. A touch of nanotechnology, a dash of a post-apocalyptic world, and a nod to 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'.

I hear the steps before I see them and smile, adjusting myself, waiting for them to enter the room. Two slow, steady pacers and one much quicker one, occasionally skipping, or possibly trying to climb up the hospital walls, which his mother would not be happy with.

"Robert!" her voice calls out, on cue, and my smile widens.

They come in, and we get the usual greetings out of the way, the questions work and school and it drags on enough that I start to get tired, even though I've been saving energy for this.

Daniel — my son — sees it in my face, and his face betrays his concern, though he tries to hide it.

"Robert, it looks like grandpa's tired, so maybe we'll—"

"No," I say, shaking my head, mustering up my energy. "You came this far to see me on his birthday — I must give him the gift."

Dan's eyes widen, but he nods slowly — we've talked about it, once, a long time ago, a time that he remembers like it was yesterday. Jamie, on the other hand, doesn't have that talk to rely on, but as she looks between the two of us, a thoughtful look grows in her eyes, and I give her a smile that she returns.

I always knew my son married up.

"Robert—" I say, looking up and down at the eight year old in front of me.

"Yes, gran'pa?" he responds, standing by the hospital bed, looking vaguely uneasy, as children in hospitals often do.

"What sort of gifts have you gotten for your birthday?"

"Well, daddy got me a train and mommy got me a Batman lego set and one of my friends got me a videogame, and, and, there was a party, and a cake, and—" he falls silent at my knowing nod, a surprisingly mature act for a boy.

"Would you like to know a secret?" I ask, and of course, he nods, not knowing the dangers of secrets yet, only seeing the allure.

I take a deep breath, squeeze both of my hands together, and then reach out for his.

"Take my hand," I say, and he does, and the world melts away like caramel, leaving only the two of us.

The hard part isn't convincing an eight year old that the impossible is possible — the hard part is convincing them that they shouldn't immediately do every single thing that comes to mind.

"What is this place?" he asks, and I explain. As best I can, at least.

"The past," I say. "Or maybe the future."

He looks at me, curious. I have made it a habit of not lying to him and treating him as an adult for all his life, and I now lean on that trust, watching as he thinks about what I'm saying instead of discarding it, or turning to fear.

"Watch," I tell him, and the world melts back into place, exactly where we were. His parents are there, and I start talking to them, though I keep my eyes on Robert. After a few moments, I reach out and knock my IV over, ripping it out of my arm.

It's surprisingly painful, and I instantly wish I would've done something else as a demonstration instead. But as Dan and Jamie lean in, as Robert's face contorts in surprise, I pause, and the world disappears again, leaving only Robert and I.

He looks at me, eyes wider than I've ever seen them, and I know he's trying to figure out what's happening.

"Robert, I can do something that very few other people can. Your grandmother had it, and you'll have it as well. What you can do isn't quite rewinding time, but that's the easiest way to describe it. Whenever you want, you'll be able to relive your life. And in fact, you can live lifetimes that you've never done yet — it goes both ways."

Some of the words register with him, though, not all of it, but he has, starting now, an almost unlimited time to understand.

"Can I keep doing it?" he asks, a question that I'm prepared for.

"Yes and no. There's a limit, a bit like burning a candle. Eventually, you run out of candle, though it burns slowly enough that it's hard to tell how long you have."

He considers this for a moment. To him, it must sound like it's limitless, and his face lights up as he considers the possibilites.

Now to make him understand what it means.

"Robert, what do you think you'll be able to do with this?" I ask, and his answer is immediate.

"Anything!"

"Anything, like..."

"Become a firefighter! Become an astronaut! Win at America's Got Talent!"

And now I know what TV he watches.

"Actually—" I say, and his face already falls. He's young, but he already knows that there are often rules stopping young boys from doing what they want.

"There are rules," I say, watching him nod in resignation. "You can't do something that would..." and I pause, trying to find the words. "...change the way the world works," I finish, seeing if it holds.

It seems to, which is surprising, given that I remember challenging that assumption, both during the explanation and afterwards.

"But I can..." he starts, waiting for me to finish, but I don't.

He pauses.

"...Make it so that Rufus doesn't die?" he starts, and I blink in surprise. I'm not quite ready for him to get to reversing death so quickly, but I've gotten at least some experience at rolling with the punches.

"You can, Robert," I say, slowly, waiting.

"Could I make it so that... no one dies?" He asks, thinking. And then, just as quickly, "No, because that would disrupt things. But could I make it so that no one dies before they should? No accidents like what happened to Taylor's mom on Easter weekend?"

The look on his face reminds me of a line from an old musical — 'to love another person is to see the face of God'. I've never been religious, especially not after the gift... but watching this boy think of all the ways that he could save people — it was pure happiness. Pure altruism. Pure good.

As close to God as I'd ever get, I reflected.

And it was, of course, up to me to tell them, again, that there were rules. But this time... maybe in a more lasting way.