Look, the tender green days are hurrying toward the impoverished homeland
Toward the collapsed old house, the absent childhood?
An abandoned garden sings in the depths of the soul
An abandoned garden sums up the good times
I wake upon a black-bound notebook
Open my eyes on the planet of my ancestral home
Like a bewildered rooster, crow twice
Shake off the feathers of dreams and fragments of language
Wake at the edge of the world, wander
Holding a dim resolve
From zero back to zero, from wound back to wound
From the source back to the source, from silence back to silence
Tiny, trembling life, the earth's last watcher
Daylight dives downward over vast expanses
I think of my kind lying beneath the ground
Blessed are they, who rejected the world so decisively
Striding before me into the depths of silence
(Excerpt from "Passing Years," by the poet Shen Wei)
Jing Jiu stood behind Flower Creek, his fingers pressed against her neck like a handgun.
Flower Creek looked down at Snow Ji in her arms, her face expressionless.
Snow Ji grinned.
All sound seemed to recede, whether the music from those concerts or the murmuring of the crowd.
The next moment, all the sounds returned, rapidly spreading in every direction.
"Monster!"
"Mom!"
"Aaaaaah!"
At first, Snow Ji had kept her face buried in Flower Creek's arms, with only her eyes showing. To anyone, she had looked like an ordinary doll. Now people suddenly saw the blood lines on her face and that eerie smile. Thinking some monster had come to life, they cried out in terror.
More and more people noticed the disturbance. Even those who could not see it grew frightened by the people running everywhere and the cries of alarm. Children wept, adults screamed, and