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“No, you’re full of it. Like if that hole in the ground you call toilet was elbow deep; that’s you. It’s all over the place. You’re full of it.”

Sono waited anxiously for him to retort to what he believed to be a very sound observation.

“It merely takes on a form familiar to me,” his grandpa offered harmlessly. “I wouldn’t pick it up otherwise, in its natural form, its spiritual form. Its lack of what we’d call form. It’s beyond our comprehension. We’re very limited as a species...”

“So if I saw, uh…a dancing shoe, then I’d be a genius? Waltz, waltz, backflip, tadaa!”

“Who’s to say you aren’t already?”

“Eeeh…thanks for that insincere compliment, but you won’t be able to sugarcoat this. I’m on to you for once…you sugarfiend.”

Despite Sono’s ominous slits for eyes, his grandpa freed a cherubic little smile.

“The best thing I can do is to just sit down. Sit down on my bony rump.”

“That’s it?” Sono fired back unhappily.

“The less the better. The more I try to reach it, or get more of it in any way, it becomes something else. It disappears. Sometimes I even close my eyes, and listen to the rustling leaves, the energy running through it…”

The whole thing didn’t sit right will Sono, not at all.

“What you’re saying is that my ant brain can’t comprehend anything else but the image of a girl? You’re the one living in a cave.”

“Did we establish that she was an illusion?” Edgar slid in innocuously.

“What? You’re gonna give me a brain tumor…or something’s definitely gonna implode.”

Sono rubbed his temples, finding it remarkably soothing.

“What’s wrong with what you saw? Isn’t it wonderful? My guess is you have a romantic streak, even though you do your best to hide it.”

Halting his busy fingers immediately, Sono hoisted his eyebrows in blatant skepticism.

“It’s a good thing. A good trait to have. You’re very lucky.”

“Lucky me, I have a romantic streak that I’m hiding,” Sono said with levity, finding his assertion ludicrous. “What other barbaric feelings am I hiding?”

“It’s what makes us human.”

“Romance is what makes us human? What kind of hallucination did you have today? Are you that lonely out here?”

“Passion.
Com
passion. Affection. Wonder. Love. Take your pick. And no, I’m never lonely. None of us ever are.”

Sono nodded drearily, appeasing his own distrust rather than substantiating his interest.

“None of us?”

He peered at his grandpa with claw-like doubt.

“What do you think this is?” Edgar looked out over the jagged gray surroundings. “Death? Sterility?”

Sono did as his grandpa, swiveling his head lithely as he inspected the concrete.

“You left out merciless. And it’s ugly too. Leprosy fields, remember?”

“Do you feel lonely?”

“Here?”

After Edgar’s nod, Sono swept his gaze across the jagged landscape once more.

“Yeah...when you’re not around, of course. Who wouldn’t?”

“Because you’re alone?”

“Uh…what other reason is there?”

“How do you know you’re alone?”

Sono pursed his lips. “Are you trying to scare me? Are you gonna tell me this is actually a burial ground and ghosts roam these leprosy fields day and night? That means I’ve been dancing on someone’s grave…”

“Stop calling it leprosy fields.”

“Fine. Your haunted backyard. Your messy acres. Your dusty kingdom…”

Sono puffed up his chest and assumed a lordly countenance.

“You create the distance in your head. And you create the closeness too. Do you know how much empty space you’re made up of? Tons!”

“Tons of empty space? Grandpa, come on,” Sono tilted his head endearingly. “How can emptiness weigh tons? And how did you manage to weigh empty space in the first place?”

He responded only with a benign smile.

“Is it a shaman secret? Tickle a wall and it whispers?” Sono swept his gaze across the concrete landscape for a third time. “Look at all the destruction your vertical shenanigans caused. They puked their grainy guts out to the point that they couldn’t even stand upright…”

“You expect something from your surroundings, and by doing so, you cut yourself off. Initiate yourself.”

Edgar pointed at him with all five fingers of his hand, which was something Sono had never before seen him do. It was much more disquieting than a simple index finger pointed at him, no matter how close to his cornea.

“Initiate what?”

“A connection.”

“With this?” Sono surveyed the jagged landscape for a fourth time. “That sounds like fun, when it’s all in ruins…can I at least get a swing on my smelly tree? Or just a rope would do...”

“You decide what the tree is, just as much as you decide what I am. What Turn is. What everything is. You have tremendous powers, Sono.”

Sono took a few moments to try and compartmentalize, if not all, then at least some of his grandpa’s assertions.

“You’re saying I’m omniscient and omnipotent? Careful with what you fill my impressionable mind with…I might just become obnoxious.” Sono nodded with affected importance. “What do the other shamans think about you granting these highflying qualities to an infantile dumbass? Uh, I mean strikingly handsome boy god.
Man
god. Especially the wise old women...”

“They taught me this.”

“Really?” Sono erupted in bright surprise. “I was just joking…there are actually other shamans around here?”

Omitting his teeth, Edgar nonetheless made room for an impressively broad smile on his worn face.

“You’re joking too…”

“No I’m not.”

Edgar’s eyes seemed to reflect something much more colorful than the monochrome surroundings.

“The tree is life. So is Turn.”

“
Wow
, what an insight…”

Edgar remained quiet.

“No response? Did I just break your sarcasm gauge? I’ll give you some time to sweep up the pieces. Don’t cut yourself.”

“Life flows through the tree in the same way it flows through you and me; it just looks different to us. We have roots just like the tree, and the tree has veins just like us. They have feelings just like us too, and they can even speak to each other, through fungal networks or by releasing chemicals to the wind. Some of them even reproduce with the help of the wind. There is literally life in every breath Sono.”

“You mean there
was
life in every breath? Burrr…I have a weird feeling about all of this…you going over the top to suck up to the tree. Yeah. You do know that bestiality is still frowned on? Because I’m pretty sure it would fall under that. Poor tree...”

“Sexual union is the one thing you took from that?”

“If you call fucking a tree sexual union, then yes. It’s one of the drawbacks of youth; overpowering virility. Don’t blame me.”

“I agree with you that there’s an
unfathomable
taboo surrounding lovemaking, menstruation, and childbirth—how else would we be here?”

Sono frowned in bewilderment. “Hah?”

“But don’t dress your romantic side up merely to put people off. Don’t be so cruel to it. Nurture it.”

“I’m not…I’m not being cruel; it likes it rough.”

The disappointment that veiled Edgar’s face ever so slightly had an even more delicate strain of compassion in its gauzy midst.

“What if you’d seen something entirely different? What if you’d seen yourself?”

“Well…seeing myself would’ve been disturbing. As a girl?”

“Why are you so stuck on girl boy?”

“I didn’t know I was stuck…”

“Why does it matter?”

“Why it matters? You wouldn’t ask that if you were a woman. Ask Aunt Yanda. You’d
know
…”

“Perhaps. Because you see me as a man.”

Sono squinted slightly, and then rolled his eyes around frivolously before freezing them abruptly. “Yeah. I do.” He nodded emphatically with the beginnings of a smile rousing his mouth. “What else?”

“Where do one end and another begin? And I don’t mean simply boy girl. Those two are only the extremes of a grand expanse, arbitrary extremes…myopic extremes.”

With a slight tilt of his head, Sono scrutinized his grandpa.

“Is this some half-assed ploy to try and dazzle me by throwing around as many
extremes
as possible? Preventing any progress by helicoptering your own piss around…”

“No. No, quite the opposite.”

“Well, you’re not doing too well…”

Edgar smiled benevolently. Sono swallowed firmly and averted his eyes.

“If I decide what I see, what if I didn’t see anything?” Sono asked.

“You didn’t?”

“You said I was god, so then I can make away with things…”

“That’s just ignorant.”

“Why? You said I decide.”

“Yes, you decide what you see. But that doesn’t mean all things cease to be if you desire so. Nothing ceases to be, because it can’t step out of the circle. There is nothing
to
step out of the circle. You can only change the way you see things. Your response. At least to some extent…”

Sono stared blankly at his grandpa. “I’m confused…I think I need an emergency lobotomy. Nothing else will help. Get your plastic spoon shaman!”

Edgar patted the top of Sono’s head which he had lowered for him to operate on.

“Objects become fixed when you look at them. Before that, they’re everywhere, and nowhere. They’re everything, and nothing. You create the objects you focus on. Isn’t that amazing?”

Sono flicked his head up abruptly. “That didn’t help at all.”

“Hmm…I’ll try again. Because our sight is not absolute, the objects we observe can’t be absolute either. Nothing is. Not even emptiness is empty.” Edgar shrugged his shoulders. “Empty of what? But that doesn’t necessarily mean that one is wrong and the other is right. No. Who’s to say? It’s all relative.”

Sono pried open his eyes with his fingers and then stared rabidly at his grandpa. “It’s
all
relative? You could go on forever like that; it’s all relative. That’s the most fatalistic answer ever. But it doesn’t work—all right, maybe for you, because you’ve spent your entire life cooped up under that topsy-turvy hair.”

“And you haven’t?”

He removed his fingers keeping his eyes dry. “No, I live over there, in the city.” Sono pointed with a rigid index finger toward the horizon. “Look; society. Civilization. That’s where I wash and comb this impressive crown. You’ve imprisoned yourself, Grandpa...”

Edgar wrinkled his already creased chin further by manhandling his bottom lip.

“Where do you think all of that is? The people, the buildings.”

“Where it is?”

Edgar made a broad sweep with his hand. “All of this. Where is it?”

“Like coordinates? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Where are we now?”

“We’re here. Just outside your home, which I won’t call by its rightful name…” Sono slowly mouthed the words
leprosy fields
.

“It’s all created in your head. It’s all inside; all of it. You create the concrete in your head. But the inside is not really the inside, that’s the kicker.”

Though Sono for once comprehended his ramblings rather lucidly, or at least that the word concrete didn’t allude to the jagged landscape, he still felt drawn toward it. He caught himself staring at the concrete pieces with a taut frown and floating cheeks.

As novel thoughts by the dozen overtook his mind, his uninviting expression loosened with every new blink.

“All right. The bottom line is, I’m the romantic fool, because that’s what you’re saying, right? And you? You’re the genius recluse?”

“It wasn’t meant as an affront. Not at all.” Edgar shook his head emphatically. “Did I in any way plant her inside your head?”

“Well, you’re a lot sneakier than you give yourself credit for grandpa...a lot sneakier. You’re probably working an angle right now.”

“You’re being unwisely paranoid Sono. You know…” A faint twitch scurried across the top of his grandpa’s cheek. “I gotta go.”

“Go where? Inside?” Sono asked listlessly, watching him rise. Very hesitantly, Edgar brought himself to his feet, and then kneaded his unbalanced midsection with both hands. After making a quick peace sign, he started off toward his home.

“Come on, where are you going? You can’t sweep this under the rug…you don’t have one!”

Noticing that his route would not bring him to the arched entryway, Sono realized the peace sign’s actual meaning. His legs were kept unusually tight, stiffening his stride. The peace sign was actually the number two.

“Are you serious? Peace my ass! Great timing...”