Category: issue 9

Another one of my brothers was killed today, which really spoiled my Friday afternoon. And I saw it, too, which made it even worse. He was sitting in the street, and of course they’re always waddling around in the street so it’s not like that was anything new. Usually my boys would fly out of the way in time, but this guy was beginning to lose his hearing. Too long spent around city traffic, I think. Taxi turned the corner and the rest of his brothers fled. He couldn’t hear.

My sister sent a messenger urchin to wait for me in the journeyman dormitories where I lived. The kid was almost asleep on the doorstep when I finally finished. Autumn was our busy season. But Milla wouldn’t have sent for me for no reason, so I gave the kid a copper and postponed my dinner to see what she wanted.

“It’s hideous,” I say, because I’m too sleep-deprived to be polite. The stuffed cat is just the sort of gift a carefree, childless sister would buy for a newborn. It regards us now from its place on the changing table with huge, glassy eyes. Its sparse black fur covers an anatomically unlikely body that emits a tinny meow when squeezed, and its tag confirms my suspicions: made from 100% unnatural substances, probably carcinogenic. My sister must have purchased it as an afterthought from some overpriced airport store as she jetted out to see her new nephew.

When night leaks into the sunset, you flip the gate latches. They aren’t so much there to keep the cloud sheep in, more to signal that it’s time for them to roam the hayflower fields below the Sister Crescent Mountains—twin peaks standing side by side, sharing winding roads and sloping valleys. Each sheep unfurls their wings, bristles their hide, and rubs their horns against one another or a nearby tree trunk—the vibrations wake their siblings and relatives perched on the branches as thick as their bodies, hidden, partially, by head-sized leaves.