The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [181]
He pushed his way after her, swimming through the crowd with awkward flailing motions that may have slowed more than sped him along. He saw her over the crowd, then through a gap between two white-robed men, then glimpsed her pushed in the direction of the central fountain. He followed up the twelve worn steps, running, half-falling, not sure why he was so terrified at the thought of losing her.
He reached her at the peak of the stairs where she stood beside a balloon vendor. She fell back into his arms laughing, a deep guttural laughter as her body fell apart into thousands of brilliant blue petals, a drift of color that danced on the breeze like a dust devil long enough for him to gasp. The balloon vendor said something intelligible and let go of the strings, letting the red balloons soar upward, faster than birds. The air went still and the petals fell, carpeting the stone in a bright, slippery flood that made him stumble and go to one knee, the vendor clutching at his shoulder for support while the unnoticing crowds continued their dizzy swirl and the balloons fell into the darkening sky.
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All God's Chillun Got Wings | SARAH MONETTE
JIN DOES NOT REMEMBER a time before she was Jin.
She knows that there must have been such a time, for no salp would be wasteful enough to attach itself to a puppy, and salps themselves have a complicated life-cycle, in only one phase of which do they require symbionts. So there was a dog, and there was a salp, and they were not always one.
But now there is Jin.
Barring disease or disaster, a salp's host will live as long as the salp remains in its symbiont phase. What happens after that, Jin doesn't know. She's seen the transformation, the salp fighting its way free of its protective sac, all claws and teeth and wet-glistening membranous wings; she's seen the new creature ― called a salp no longer, but instead a dhajarah ― launch itself, screaming, for the sky, and the dog, which a minute ago had been a friend, a fellow-soldier, collapse to the ground, a lifeless sack of bones and fur.
But no dhajarah has ever returned to talk to a salp. She doesn't know if her friend Mutlat, if her friend Ru, are still themselves as they hurl themselves across the sky or hang in their rookeries in the vaults of the cathedrals, the railway stations, the cavernous, reeking warehouses that bulk along the docks. She doesn't know if she will still be Jin.
Most of the time, she doesn't worry about it.
Goza the Beggar was a good fellow, but people didn't want to talk to him, no matter how many times he swore ― truthfully! ― that he wasn't contagious. So when he left headquarters, it wasn't as Goza the Beggar, but as Azog the Hoodlum.
People talked to Azog, whether they wanted to or not.
He worked his way through the less desirable quarters of the city, following the line of the railroad, cajoling, threatening, bribing, in a couple of instances resorting to violence, more to relieve his steadily growing frustration ― and to stay in character ― than anything else. No one seemed to know anything, although people were definitely nervous. Everyone was willing to tell him the omens their mother's best friend's son-in-law had seen, or the dream their sister's second husband's granddaughter had had. Discord among the gods. Yeshe's name came up a few times, Jaggenuth's over and over again, and that tied right back into that very peculiar pilgrim encountered next to a yogurt cart, a pilgrim in Riarnanth for a festival his people did not celebrate.
Jaggenuth's name, and anger, and barely whispered, the Factors' Dance. Something about the Factors' Dance, but no one knew what.
The third time he threatened to break someone's arm, it wasn't Azog at all. Not Azog the Hoodlum or Goza the Beggar or Enif the Constable or any of the other masks he slid between himself and the world like a shadow-show's