There is no clear medicine in this story’s honey.

I had a plan. I would chance upon a mountain spring. Glacial. Immaculate.

Where can a girl go, but to a husband’s home? Somewhere in cities, impractical idiots dream of a revolution—our own land, our own country—but here in the village, there are only mountains and marriage.

“I can’t believe you would write about something like that,” my sister said. She had called our house, it was pure luck that my mother happened to be out.

I had to get used to this, the hunger, or it would eat me from inside out.

Blue in action was a matter of life or death, and you avoided it at all costs, not jump into it like Chikara unless you wanted to die.