Your knowledge of mudang comes from a book you checked out from the college library and a shaky video of a shamanic ritual called a kut in a language you barely speak. Are you ashamed? Your employers don’t care, and your clients are too busy grieving to notice.
Things I haven't told the person I love: There are aliens at the International Space Station, in low Earth orbit. They've been there for over four months, while we try and work out what they want. We know what they say they want. But we don't know if these two things are the same.
Screw you, she almost said. Screw your blossoms and your wheat and your green growing crap, it’s Charlie I want. Charlie with his missing front tooth and his way of whistling through it, Charlie in the passenger seat whooping as she drove down narrow roads, Charlie with his clever hands in the back seat, Charlie laughing as they sped away from the cops.
The storm raged, and all night Suuana stalked the corners of her candle-bright cottage. With bare feet, she stamped shaking into the earth; each time she lifted a foot she pulled the grains of soil with her, loosening them.
At night, what she sees are feathers—grey, blue, white. Soft coo of a kit of pigeons huddled together in a dovecote. They aren't dreams; she opens her eyes (her outer eyes) and finds herself in her neighbor's coop, the pigeons sleepy but startled by her presence.
