Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone

There was a griffin and a woman who once crossed paths.

“But you’ve no wings,” the woman said, as the griffin left.

“But you’ve no heart,” the griffin said, as the woman came.

The story of the griffin was this: it had been born without its wings. But the ground was where it hunted, so there it had stayed.

“Do you regret it?” the woman asked.

“It kept him safe,” the griffin replied, and the woman understood.

The story of the woman was this: she’d met herself and she’d killed herself. She’d set the trap, and fallen into it. She had burned her heart out, but the shape a burned heart left was still a heart.

I could never kill him, her heart had known. And so she couldn’t, either.

The griffin went to find its wings. The woman had no such recourse.

FromKingdom Between the Hills and Other True Tales