All at once I was pushed from her shop with an umbrella in hand, the door sliding shut behind me. Her wind chimes were dancing furiously in the headlong gale, colliding with one another in frantic clangs. As I reached for the door, the lights clapped off and the room inside went cold, devoid of life.

For an old woman she sure can move when she wants to.

I opened the umbrella and put my shoulder to the wind, parting the torrent as best I could. It sounded like a room full of faucets, meandering down some rube goldberg machine to pour specifically on me.

Through puddles deep my feet squelched. Every so often, a glowing car would whir by and I’d scurry to the far end of the sidewalk to hide from a spray of mud. I was drenched, but perhaps I could make it back somewhat clean.

Overhead, the city loomed. Perhaps it was my primal man, for this grid of metal and concrete was about as homely as a cavern to a bird. A small, thoughtful voice in me couldn’t begin to parse why or how we had left the trees. Moreover, why we chopped them all down and covered their roots with fake slabs of rock. No one smiled here, and if they did, it was a tired smile or a polite one, in spite of themselves. Maybe it was something about the air or the water, that food that came in a can from thousands of miles away or that there was never a moment without light or sound from some engine. The constant hum in the air, a perverted recording of bees for when they all died out and took us with them. Even the rain, that was splattered onto my face, was filled with vile secrets that would burn my flesh if I let it be for too long. How long ago had it been that the world was cut open, sterilized, expanded, fenced in, diluted, inoculated, medicated, liberated, automated, sponsored, sold to the highest bidder? Who owned the world, and when had it been put up for auction? Why was this what they wanted it to be?

My feet stopped splattering, pavement underfoot once more. Before me was a single path, straight and heavy with gloom. I turned off the main road and walked it alone, an orange door standing before me. The door knob was slick and cold, making it even more of a chore to open. As quietly as I could, I crept inside and immediately slipped up the stairs. At the halfway point, I peered over the landing down into the murky first floor. There, on the sofa, a halo of bottles gleaming around him in the low light, was my father. He wasn’t moving - maybe he’d died. I could hope, anyways.

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Now behind my door, my pulse leveled out as I slid several latches and chains across its surface. Safe. I wandered through the miasma of bawled up paper and seltzer cans that clung to the cold floor of my room, shedding my soaked clothing as I did so. Immediately I crawled under the heavy cotton blankets of my bed, tucking and swaddling myself until I could no longer feel my own weight. With but a crack of light showing through, a pleasant breeze floated past my bare skin and I immediately fell into a daze.

Time passed around me. It was hard to tell what was real and what was leaking out from my head, thoughts bubbling free and taking shape. Faces swam on the ceiling, those I knew and those I did not. One came into focus and my heart tightened, compassionate eyes finding me even sequestered beneath my blankets. While monsters could not harm me under the covers, ghosts still could.

Peeling free, I grasped at the darkness beside me until I found my lamp, turning a brass switch. It flicked on with some struggle, the filament old and ready to fizzle out at any moment. Not ready to molt my warm plumage, I took them on my migration, hasting from the nest.

The ground had cooled, the meager warmth that had been draining down into the cement bedrock. By the sputtering bulb I found the silhouette of my bag, hinted in contrasting shades of dark. I shouldered it and wandered back to the receding glow, flicking on an electric kettle that squatted atop my dresser. In a jagged motion, I unclasped the bag and let it hurtle a short space from me to the bed. It landed disappointingly quiet and my face puckered.

Steam gurgled forth, floating down in a heavy current. The bag Maui had pressed into my hands was crisp and oily somehow, as though a mound of fresh leaves had been asked politely to make a convenient shape. A thick wax stamp bound the whole, somewhat star shaped mass together. I could just make out its mark: A crescent moon with a simple eye overlooked two, four pointed stars, these celestial shapes encompassed within a circle. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt as though the moon was watching over the two stars.