www.me

A month with Jin.

That morning, she was still thinking about buying a bike.

She slid further down against the black north face backpack she used as a headrest.

The day before, she had nearly purchased one. It had fat tires like a motorcycle, but it was electric.

She even picked out a dark rainbow glitter helmet.

She was thinking about the summer she rode her bike and skateboarded and used cannabis for the pain. A lot.

She was trying to quit, and they gave her something else to take that made her whole body feel like it was on fire when it stopped working every night.

She thought about the time she caught fire, in the tent trying to stay warm. The way her hands looked, degloving, in weather so cold it frostbit the fourth degree burns.

She thought about the way her hips ached, spiraling into her spine with an insistent urgency.

She did not buy the bike. She laid down, curled into a ball, and slept.

+++

She was getting ready to leaven the country but it felt more like preparing for a funeral.

As a child, her foster family would play this game on her: getting ready for the wedding.

She would be though roughly bathed and then there were other parts of the ritual that could not be repeatedly thanks to local laws meant to protect the innocent. To her, it seemed somewhat more like the opposite were true in practice.

Then she would dream, and they would interrogate her about it.

So getting ready for a funeral didn't feel much different, and it was something she had actually done within the confines of the law.

She had been playing a design game that had a series focused on wedding planning. Suddenly, it ended before she could finish and moved on to a series about world travel. It upset her.

She thought of all of the spiritual marriages that had been forced on her and felt seasick.

Just once in this lifetime, she wanted one that felt like it might be the last.

***

The Yugao family kept meticulous recordings of their lineage, tracing this back both geographically and genetically to a region on the continent of Asia that now rested somewhere between Russia and Japan. Wealthy was a mediocre way of describing the power they had partially because of this.

So, in the mid 1900's they were among the few made aware of the archaeological find which would eventually lead to the creation of a woman now known by the name Madelein.

This was because the held claim to the land on which it occurred.

A trusted advisor to the family insisted that the events which followed must be attempted, despite simultaneously predicting outcomes with the accuracy for which she was known.

What had been discovered was the body of a woman who had once been closely connected to their bloodline. Her spirit, it was said, had been roaming the area and needed to be put to rest.

A team of the most talented professionals had uncovered the sarcophagus in which the woman's earthy body had remained in a state of near comatose preservation.

She was called the Siberian Maiden these days, but before that, she was the Ice Princess.

The advisor to the family whose property this technically was declared that inside of her would be the potential for a new life. A living egg, which had survived within the tomb for over ten thousand years.

This was found by a biologist to be true.

Upon careful excision, a solitary living ovum was extracted.

Yi Lin was the name of the advisor to the Yugao family. At their behest she sat before a long table with many sheets of parchment, brushes, ink. The immediate family, no small audience, watched in respectful silence as she recorded what must be done with this egg.

At the time We was very small and mainly remembered the smells of the event: parched rice, bucolic ink, saddlebound hair bound to elaborately carved ivory. The sound of soft dipping and brushing. Almost nothing human, while they all took and released air so softly.

After many hours, what remained seemed like a legend to behold at the time. Technologically, it appeared near impossible. Still, Yi Lin warned, if they did not put forth every effort toward the execution of it, there would be nothing left to show for all they had worked so hard to protect.

Today, it seemed truer than ever. Though the family had held onto much of their wealth close to a century later, it was unravelling rapidly. Some of the new generation, and even We who many times had scoffed at the reverence with which what now appeared to be the preeminence of a curse was rebuffed, were beginning to revisit the document with renewed interest.

Few had access to it, and even fewer could fully understand it. We was one of the few who existed outside of the family tombs. Today, he was visiting the scrolls with gloved hands.

The instructions read less like a manual than a book of poetry. They described the discovery of the egg, the manner by which this was to be cared for and brought to human form. That she would take the form of a purely feminine human being, totally lacking in masculinity. For this reason, so much care would need to be taken toward her life.

According to the legend, the egg had been placed in a tube filled with the blood of Yi Lin and transported to a far away island where the climate replaicated that of the place her mother had gone to rest. There, a plantation was maintained by the family. Primarily exotic plants, fruits and vegetables were cultivated expressly for the family by many slaves.

These slaves were know to possess the ability to resurrect and evoke life. In modern terms, they operated what might be considered a totally organic fertility clinic.

The way they did this was not able to be accurately replaicated because one of the ways they were able to do this was using their own DNA. The Yugao family, who owned the plantation, were too respectful of this ability to question it or try to interfere.

In simple terms there was a bacterial strain in nearby waters that only divers with the specific knowledge and ability could harvest. In a mutually agreed upon transaction, the sample would be produced to those residing on the plantation to carry out the procedure.

In a glass vessel, the sample would be combined with others alongside the egg.

Many human beings were created at the plantation in a similar fashion.

The instruction was to develop the embryo inside of a plant chose for it's qualities, which would then be harvested and shipped as a "seed" which could be combined with that of another human being.

As this was being done, plans for the person's entire life would be prepared.

The belief was that by honoring the process and recording the planetary alignments, certain outcomes could be achieved: wealth, peace, prosperity, and everything surrounding those concepts. Because of the detailed records kept, it was believed also that reincarnation could be introduced.

Two young adults with skin so deep it nearly appeared blue combined the samples containing this bacteria and egg which a representative of the Yugao family observed from the respectful distance requested.

At this time the bidding intensified.

Images were produced predicting her appearance, dowries were set, husbands and fathers and brothers proposed.

And her spirit recorded all of this in time.

Yi Lin had made note of the way it would transpire, and looking at these writings as someone who had witnessed first hand, felt chills that seemed connected to a place he was now unsure his soul would ever truly understand.

It was the oldest, most unforgiving tree on the island. And although it's inhabitants knew that their bodies were technically enslaved, in their minds it was not by the Yugao family. It was by this tree.

The fruit it bore was called Silk Floss in English. It had bright pink flowers and thick, waxy green flesh that had sharp spikes throughout.

It was within a blossom of this tree that the contents of the glass jar in which those samples had been mixed were carefully placed to be monitored developmentally.

To the naked eye, nothing could really be seen. Though many humans were grown this way on the island, this tree was not one of those used. The people had agreed to it however, because many were having the same visions as the Yugao. Visions of her, and what she needed, and what would happen to them if she did not receive it.

So one night, when an attendant swallowed her whole, everyone knew nearly at once.

Afete was only in his twenties, and had never felt like he belonged. So when he was chosen to guard the tree in exchange for his release he took the duty with honor. He slept and ate every second alongside it. This was how he knew where the others would be susceptible to his escape.

As if in a trance, he watched himself do it. Knowing that in full consciousness, it would bring his demise. Still, he opened his mouth and swallowed the flower that contained an embryo. He was so hungry it felt like air.

Then he flew to the swamp, and navigated the path only he and his blood relatives knew led to the ocean. In the milk black night, water and sky couldn't be discerned. There was a small seacraft waiting which could only be felt for by the camouflage. He boarded it silently and drifted away.

+++

A distant relative of the Yugao was now called Min Yoongi. He was prone to deep dreaming sessions, and one of the ways he did this was to drink.

His bandmate Jin had early on begun hiding his investments, which sparked Min's curiosity. This was how he found out about the game, the girl, and the winery which later became a distillery.

He monitored the progress of all of these endeavors, watching with interest as Jin tried to correct karmic duties tied to his own related to the matter of national security which they were currently all bound to.

Whenever Madelein saw his face she was overcome with the knowledge they had shared over many lifetimes. So after spending a month consuming gin from apple trees grown on their farms, she understood that these were more than dreams. She tried writing recipes and sharing them on Weverse, but could tell this wasn't enough when Jin's response came in the form of a photo posted of him holding a paper cup.

Later, Min appeared to her in a vivid dream. For the time they knew one another in this life, not much had changed about him. He was firmly rooted in his national identity, insistent on his own desire to maintain this. It was something they struggled to connect by.

So when she read that he had funded a hospital and purchased a baseball team after being publicly reprimanded for these attempts, she was taken by surprise.

She wasn't entirely sure what had changed, but something certainly felt different this time.

Still, it was obviously going to take more time to reveal what it was.