I stuffed pale diamond-shaped crackers into a newspaper cone, the pointy end of which featured the eye of the teacher who had commented that my dress was too tight, ten years ago when I was nine.

The aluminum shutters were open again, revealing a vast, black void dotted with distant stars. Vash sighed and stepped over to the far side of the room, snapping the metal sheets shut so quickly they rattled.

Names are precious things, but you’ve never been dear with yours. Most people keep theirs locked and loaded, but ever since you realized how to unlatch the small canister inside your chest you’ve taken yours out and turned it over uncertainly in your hands.

When her mother dozed with the last doily of Kassia’s dowry half-done on her lap, Kassia ran barefoot to where wild thyme grew, and pine trunks cried resin.

You tend to the trees with stipulated grief. The living are there to weep and you are the keeper, so you guide the angry son; his white knuckled fists around an axe, unable to forgive, unwilling to forget, from the grave of his father where a coconut tree sprouted.