A slow morning takes an ominous turn for a widow The moment her foot touched the pavement, she stopped. She turned around, uncertain about what she was doing, the action having completely vanished from her mind. Nothing jumped out at her or returned the memory. She sighed. It had happened yet again. Shaking her head, she walked, defeated, back to her house, which squatted on the top of the street, firm and resolute despite its size. The early morning sky of pale yolk hung behind it, creating an imposing silhouette. The last owner told her it had stood there for a century, and she reckoned it would stand there for many more centuries to come. The door swung open with its usual welcome creak, ushering her into the kitchen. She half expected Mell to be there, sitting in his usual spot as he sipped coffee and calmly read the paper, which lay open on his crisply creased pants. It was one of his many constants, a sort of reassuring activity he always completed even if a hurricane raged outside. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. It had been months, and there were many more stretching out before her before she joined him. She had stopped the daily newspaper delivery a few weeks ago when her pain had become unbearable, but now a new pain ached every time she glanced at the empty place the newspaper had once held on the kitchen table. Wondering whether she should start up the newspaper delivery again, she heated up the frying pan and gloomily cracked the eggs into the pan, moving through the movements she knew by heart. They sizzled for a moment then settled down, and she turned back to the table, frowning as if there were something she had been thinking about moments before. Unsurprisingly, she couldn’t remember for the life of her. Shrugging, she returned to her eggs, certain that what she had been thinking wasn’t important. Once they were done, she shook the eggs out of the pan and onto her plate, setting it down in her usual spot and slumping into the chair. As she ate, her eyes traveled over the cracked ceiling, the cabinets whose paint was fading, the rotting floorboards dotted with holes, and the windows long ago sealed over by thick layers of dust. Eventually, she knew she would either have to sell the house and move on or spend thousands of dollars helplessly trying to save it from plunging even deeper into the thick moat of disrepair. It broke her heart. She could still remember the shrill, laughing voices scampering between rooms, the feisty anger of a denied child, and the blustering tears over a scraped knee; later, the quiet hours spent poring over one page of a textbook, the anxious look as they awaited their exam results, and the pure excitement and joy reminiscent of childhood flitting gleefully across their faces before vanishing within moments as they quickly regained the teenage mask of gloom and doom. The halls had been empty for a long time now, the rooms shells of their former selves and hidden behind doors that had been closed for so long she’d forgotten if they were locked or not. Another thing lost, another thing forgotten. It was becoming the mantra of her life. Her eyes turned back to her plate. Subconsciously, her hand traveled around its rim, rubbing the well-worn porcelain with her fingers, finding the nooks and crannies of long-ago cracks created by years of disregard, carelessness, and neglect that had turned into an ocean of tiny fractures. The plate wasn’t how it was meant to be—it was supposed to be perfect, uncracked, in mint condition despite its old age—yet somehow, it gave her a sense of belonging. She was supposed to be in good health too; she was still in her sixties, a good few decades away from death, despite her husband’s passing. But her memory was failing her, and it was no fault of her age but rather of a specific kind of disease that had the misfortune of choosing her to fall upon. The name . . . it was on the tip of her tongue. She knew it. She knew it. She knew it, she knew it, she knew it. But it wasn’t there. It felt just out of reach, like a dream you know you remember when you wake up and swear that you do, and yet you can’t recall any details. She dumped the remains of her eggs into the trash and was walking towards the dishwasher when she stopped, staring at the plate in front of her and squinting at the cracks, unsure if she had ever been thinking about them. Shrugging, she slipped it into the dishwasher, the thought already fleeing out the window. Once again, she slid into her seat, this time with a mug of coffee in her right hand, the pale white of the milk mixing into the richer colors of chocolate brown and velvet black. Inhaling, she sat back with the coffee-cinnamon aroma melting around her. She’d taken to adding a dash of cinnamon to her coffee each morning. It was something Mell had done she had always scorned him for, and now it was too late to admit to him how amazing it was. A few cars creaked and groaned by, but other than that, the road was peaceful, another lazy day with many more to come. Of course, she still had so much to do. But, to no surprise, she was putting that off. Yet to what end? It was a question she couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t, answer. A dog and his owner jogged by, the dog wagging his tail happily in the sunlight, the man’s labored breathing causing her to flinch and look away from the window, studying her mug instead. The milk had faded into the jaws of the dark colors, and she leaned forward to take a sip— Glass Half Full

A magician helps a poor peasant bring the moon to Earth Once there was a poor peasant who lived on the outskirts of the village. Every day, from dawn to dusk, he labored in the fields—plowing, sowing, and reaping crops. His only payment was a cup of rice, which he took home for his dinner and ate in his common rice bowl. Usually, after he ate, the peasant went straight to sleep so that he would be ready for the next long day of work. But one night, he decided to go outside for a few minutes to look at the stars. As he sat on the steps, gazing up at the glimmering pinpricks of light, something caught his eye. He turned and beheld the quarter moon above him. The glowing half-circle seemed to call to his soul. The peasant had only ever seen the moon on full-moon festivals, when it was at its roundest, and as he gazed open-mouthed at the shining shape, he thought, It is very like my rice bowl. In fact, so bowl-like was its shape that he decided it must be a bowl. “And surely,” he said to himself, “such a shining bowl must be filled with the riches of the sky.” Riches! In a bowl in the sky! “I must bring it down to Earth!” he exclaimed. “And then I shall never need to work in the fields again, for I will possess the silver of the heavens.” So he reached up a hand to pull the bowl from the sky. But no matter how hard he pulled, all he grasped was empty air. Well, he thought, undiscouraged, surely it will take magic to pull a bowl from the sky. Then he remembered the magician who lived far away at the edge of the mountain. “I’ll go find him,” the peasant declared. “He will know how one might pull a bowl from the sky.” So he left his house and walked across the plain towards the mountain. The journey took him seven days and nights. He crossed fields and rivers, found his way through thick forests, and climbed steep hills. Sometimes the road he followed was wide, and sometimes it was nothing but a thin, trampled trail through the brush. Yet at last he stood at the door of the magician’s hut. Strong from working in the fields, he pulled and pulled with all his might until at last he saw the bowl begin to move towards him. He knocked on the door, and almost immediately it was opened by the magician. He was very tall and wore a cloak of stars, and though the peasant looked right at him, never afterward could he recall the magician’s face. “Yes?” crackled the magician, his eyes sparkling with wisdom and seeming to see into the peasant’s soul. “Seven nights ago, there was a bowl in the sky!” cried the peasant. “I am sure that it is filled with riches. How do I pull it to Earth?” The magician was silent for a while. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out three thick vines. “Braid these into a rope and create a lasso,” he advised. “Then use it to capture your moon bowl.” The peasant stared at the vines wonderingly and thought, Each vine is only a foot long. How can they possibly reach into the sky and pull down the bowl? But he did not question the magician. He walked a short distance away and sat down under a gnarled tree, through whose branches the full moon shone. He began to braid . . . and braid . . . and braid. It did not take him a few minutes as he had expected. Instead, he braided for a hundred days and a hundred nights while the moon bowl came and went, came and went. Yet his braiding never seemed to reach an end. Until one night, finally—it did. Then the peasant noticed that spread all around him was a long rope, ready to capture the bowl. He knotted it into a lasso and went out under the sky, the cool night air swirling around him. And there was the bowl, sinking slowly towards the distant hills in the west. The peasant gazed at it and smiled, thinking about all the riches it must hold, and with that he threw his lasso . . . and missed. Six times he threw the lasso, and six times it thudded to the earth—empty. But each time, it was a little farther away. And then he pictured his home and how it would look filled with the silver of the sky, and he threw the lasso once more. He looked up to see it sailing through the air, higher and higher until he couldn’t see its end, so far stretched the rope. Suddenly he felt it grip something, and it tugged so strongly it almost yanked him off his feet. But he braced himself and pulled as hard as he could. Strong from working in the fields, he pulled and pulled with all his might until at last he saw the bowl begin to move towards him. Closer and closer it came until finally it lay before him—his bowl, much larger than it had looked in the sky. Eagerly he ran forward to look inside. Evening But to his dismay, the bowl was gone! There was only a large round rock—and not even a bit of it was glowing. The peasant was shocked. “I saw my bowl; it was caught in the lasso!” he exclaimed. “Where did it go?” He heard a rustle behind him and turned to see the magician approaching, his eyes the same color as the purple twilight sky above. “Where has it gone?” the peasant asked, crestfallen. “The moon bowl does not belong on Earth,” murmured the magician. “If it comes here, the bowl’s light vanishes, and it turns dark. Its true place is in the heavens.” The peasant looked up at