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“Maybe someone passing through...”

“Passing through?” Sono hurled his glower at him. “Here? What passes through here but despair?”

“Easy now…”

“She didn’t have anything with her. It looked like she was just out, you know…taking a walk. Out for a dusty hop.”

Edgar came up beside him, looking out across the rubble with his bottom lip in his mouth and his chin sticking out.

“Did you see her in a dream?”

“No, I didn’t see her in a fucking dream, I saw her just now, right here. I talked to her. What kind of a question is that? Do I look asleep?”

“You could’ve had a different dream.”

Sono turned his head away in frustration and sighed.

“She was out here jumping across the concrete like two minutes ago. Right here, in front of me.” He looked at his grandpa. “Then she just hopped off again.”

Edgar gently poked Sono in his right biceps with his index finger, withdrew it to his chest, almost in fear, and then tilted his head back to look at the dense heavens, his hand remaining plastered to his chest, his fingers all hanging limply.

“Hmm. I’m not sure.”

Sono looked up as well, at the thick blanket of pollution. It felt like looking up at a clogged storm drain from the inside, protected only by a thin transparent film about to burst any moment. Only around his grandpa’s home did the blanket materialize this clearly; everywhere else, a dense mist-like pollution ruled. His grandpa had once described to him the phenomenon of natural mist, or tried anyway, since he had never experienced it either. But evidently it tasted a lot better.

After dropping his head back down, Sono peered at his grandpa’s pipe, cradled in his right palm, its smoke seeping upwards serenely. It was a regular cylindrical glass jar, filled to about two thirds with water, its metal cap perforated twice, like a coat button; one hole for the plastic tube which went in his mouth, and the other hole for some sort of metal container to hold the substance he would light up and eventually inhale. It was the reason both he and his home, in actuality the entire area around his home often stank with a smell he had never before encountered. There was nothing chemical about it, but rather something detestably human.

With dejection he turned to the concrete pieces before them, spreading his gaze flat across it all, diluting his focus.

“Maybe it’s…I’ve just spent too much time around you and your furious baby. A hallucination, and nothing else…”

“Yours or mine?” his grandpa asked and raised his pipe, about to take a puff.

“I saw her, so I guess it’s mine. Or did you see her too?”

“I see a lot of stuff. Like your wrinkly face. Why so serious? You’re too young to frown like that.”

Edgar took two puffs from his pipe and smiled enthusiastically. His evident good spirits took Sono by surprise.

“How high are you right now?”

“How low are
you
right now?”

“Have you been smoking that pipe all day? It’s not good for you, and you know it Grandpa. You’re getting skinnier and skinnier.”

Edgar glanced askance at him. “Have you been thinking about me smoking this pipe?”

The words
thinking about
conjured her before him, adrift in a nebulous sea of intermingling colors. One hop, two hops, and her disproportionately large feet disappeared, leaving a whirlpool of colors dissipating into thin air, as if pulling the stopper from a neighboring universe. “You’re exhausting…”

Edgar grinned mischievously at Sono, his cheekbones salient, exposing the numerous gaps between his teeth. “You said she didn’t have any hair…”

“No, she did have hair, but short.”

“Hmm…” Edgar put his entire hand around his chin in strenuous contemplation, while his two electrocuted caterpillars for eyebrows dropped down slightly.

“Hmm what? Indigestion?”

“No.”

“Then what? You’re leaving me hanging every chance you get. You’re a sadist…does the short hair mean anything?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t? Then why’d you ask?”

“I was curious. Maybe I should cut my hair too. Do I look unapproachable like this?”

Sono peered doubtfully at his grandpa’s hair, a stiff, dried out mop that seemed to not once have encountered either a comb or soap.

“Your hair is the least of your concerns...”

“How so?”

“Do you want me to make a list?”

Edgar narrowed his eyes, but the sentiment behind it didn’t make it to Sono in one piece.

“Or maybe a long beard?”

“A beard? Oh yeah, go for it, that’ll make you look less like a deranged cannibal. How old do you think she is?”

Edgar stroked the cropped whiskers on his chin tenderly. “Why does her age matter?”

Sono shrugged his shoulders, surrendering his inquisitiveness openhandedly, partly because of the creeping shame he felt for not willingly answering his grandpa’s question. After all, her age was impossible for Edgar to know, unless he knew her, which, unfortunately, didn’t seem to be the case.

“The shadow must ripen before its fruit can cast a shadow.”

Sono glanced surreptitiously to his left and right, before glancing up as well. He even looked over his shoulder, very carefully. “What? Who are you talking to?”

“You.”

“Me? I didn’t ask you anything. Not about, uh...whatever weird shit you just said. Shadows and fruit.”

“It wasn’t an answer.”

Alarm tried to pierce his flesh, but apathy had already blanketed it. “What…what are you doing? What are you talking about Grandpa?” He turned his upper body toward his grandpa.

“A way, possibly.”

“Really? I didn’t know that…” Sono, stiff with bewilderment, watched him closely. “You’re fucking delirious. Have you been toying with the circuitry up here?”

Being about a head taller than his grandpa, Sono tapped the top of his head with his knuckles. He didn’t even flinch, persisting to peek out probingly from under his loose-fitting eyelids.

“No. That would be brainless,” his grandpa said and stuffed his puffy smile chockfull of delight.

“Very funny, Grandpa. Maybe you should rinse it at least…gotta be pretty stinky in there.”

“It doesn’t change what she is.”

Though she had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, not until now did he seriously entertain, however gingerly, the possibility of her being something else than human.

“Yeah? And what exactly is she?”

“You should ask her.”

“How am I supposed to do that? I can’t just call her and she appears. Or should I just start mumbling nonsense to myself and hope she’s intrigued?”

Edgar didn’t in the least mirror Sono’s concern.

“There are other ways.”

“There are? Like…”

His grandpa remained silent.

“No, no, I’m not letting you do any of your shaman shit on me. I’m too old to start wetting my bed.”

“I had no intention of doing anything of the sort you’re suggesting.”

“And I’m not smoking your pipe either…”

“I don’t want you to ever smoke this pipe, you hear?” Edgar fired back immediately and glared at him. “Never! Sono, listen; this pipe could cause you tremendous harm…iiiii.” Edgar appeared to be chasing away unspeakable horrors scurrying across the insides of his shut eyelids. With urgency he popped them open again and leaned forward, staring rabidly at Sono. “Haven’t I told you this?”

Sono shook his head nonchalantly. His grandpa might’ve mentioned it once or twice in the past, but nothing that had really made a lasting impression.

“These ingredients are mixed especially for me. No one else, not even my grandson. It took years to perfect the blend. Imagine what it could do to you!”

Sono couldn’t grasp the consequences his grandpa fretted about, simply because he made no such attempt.

“The smoke carries my breath. It’s a bridge, and a translator of sorts.”

Sono glanced up with skepticism at the sky. “For what? Truckloads of nonsense?”

“Possibly, yes.”

His guileless demeanor deflated Sono without much effort at all, and subdued the likelihood of a caustic follow-up. He locked his teeth and lips together somberly.

“You never know who or what responds. I’ve been taken aback myself a few times. It’s not always fun. For it to go through you without proper training…I don’t know what could happen. I…I don’t know.”

His grandpa’s eyes remained widened as he stared into the ground. Whatever unfolded within the confines of his skull was kept there, duly sequestered, far from Sono’s reach.

“What I’m trying to say is that smoking it could harm you. Do you understand, Sono, it could harm you?”

“Yes, I do understand; it could harm me, big time. But what about the fumes? They don’t?”

“No.”

Sono threw his hands apart in wonder. “Why not?”

“It can’t.”

Sono clenched his teeth and pouted in dissatisfaction. “All right, professor, if you prefer me blind…hand me a stick. And sharpen the point.”

“There are powers involved that…it’s too risky when you’re not initiated. But please, trust me, the smoke won’t harm you. I wouldn’t let it. The smoke that oozes out of the blend is too weak, and the smoke I exhale is changed. It’s pretty much harmless. But don’t ever smoke it pure, out of the pipe. Never suck it in like I do. That’s when it gets dangerous, when it hits the liquid and fuses with your spirit. Understand?”

Sono nodded loosely. “Don’t worry; the way that shit smells, you’d have to force me.”

“Good.”

Standing perfectly still, Sono stole a quick glance of the glass jar in his grandpa’s hand, before lifting his gaze to his face and, finally, he looked the other away, taking a deep breath as he enlivened his bodily stillness.

“You could go look for her…” Edgar suggested casually, abandoning the somber tones prevalent just moments ago.

“Around here? I don’t have time for that.”

“Why not?”

“I work.”

“Stealing is not work.”

“Yeah, and being a shaman is?”

“I’m appreciated in the community. People come to me with all kinds of ailments, physical as well as spiritual.”

“Your closest neighbor is like five hours away, so I wouldn’t call it a community…but hey, I’m appreciated in my community too.”

“That’s a very dubious appreciation…”

“Dubious? I’ll tell you what’s dubious, Grandpa,”

With fingers spread wide, Sono lifted his left arm, displaying the sentence he received from the Core at age eleven, not only carved into his radial bone, presumably with some kind of laser, but the flesh wound then filled with bright green fluorescent ink. The scar tattoo glowed so strongly in the dark that few garments could mask it, the two rows of text like melted plutonium rods on his skin. Even in the muted daylight it read clearly:

Maliciously Subverting the Financial Harmony of the Glorious Capital

9 (NINE) Years Deducted from Lawbreaker: SONO CORAL ISANN

“That’s fucking dubious.”

Edgar grunted some ambivalent syllables.

“Nine years for putting a few bugs in my mouth. Nine years. Hoo-ray to that humane cesspool. I’m glad that you’re out here, Grandpa, away from it all. And I don’t mind the time it takes me to get here. Who knows that they’d do to you in the city…you’d be locked up way before me, that’s for sure. A funny old man is the last thing they’d call you.”

“Why would it be awful if they took me?”

“Why?” A muffled laugh escaped Sono’s twisted lips. “Are you fishing for compliments? Because, if so, it’s kind of a slimy way…”

“No.”

Sono peered suspiciously at him.

“Well…you probably wouldn’t make it out alive. That’s why. They’re not exactly tuned into our frequencies. Definitely not yours anyway…”

“It’s the same with the insects we eat. Do you miss them? Show them respect for sacrificing their lives?”

“What? How is that the same?”

“Think.”

Sono did, for about five seconds, but only managed to furrow his brows since nothing substantial materialized but simmering animosity. “We don’t imprison them.”

“We do, and then we eat them. What’s worse?”

Sono tried to assess his assertion quickly. “So? Should we starve instead? They’re not human and especially not related to me like you are. Even though you might share a lot more traits with them than the average human…”

“If they could formulate their feelings in a way we understood, do you think we’d be eating them? The caterpillar or cricket will have other caterpillars and crickets that’ll miss them.”

“Are you equating me to a cricket?”

“Depends whether you take it as a compliment or an affront.”

“Definitely not a compliment.”

“Because you consider yourself more worthy than a cricket?”

“Uh…yes.”