by Chris Peit
“Who dragged leaves into the house?” Tanner’s father shouts from the kitchen like he always does sometime after breakfast.
Tanner knew it was his sister, Julia. It was always Julia.
Even though Tanner’s father usually keeps to the same routine, today is no ordinary day because on an ordinary day, Julia would be wearing sweats, and her hair would be uncombed. But today, every strand is in a neatly packed braid above a white wedding dress. Tanner supposed ordinary day or not, he would be the one to clean the leaves. The only difference was how much more annoying Julia would be about it.
Why won’t you just talk to me?
Tanner looks up from his Cap.P.er Com where his unanswered message to Sansana is displayed, only to spot the severed tight rope tangling in the leaves in his front yard. He’s not sure what hurts more, her unanswered texts, or the visual proof of their falling out.
“Earth to Tanner!”
Tanner glances away from the window.
“Well, what do you think?” Julia asks, gesturing to herself and posing with one leg sticking out of the slit in her dress. “Do you think Kato will like it?”
Tanner stares blankly at her. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
Julia’s smile falters.
From inside the bathroom, his mother yells, “Tell your sister she looks beautiful.”
“Why? That’s Kato’s job,” Tanner replies loud enough for his mother to hear before lowering his voice. “If you want my opinion, you should’ve just left your bird nest of a hairdo. Somehow, Kato seems to like it, so you really shouldn’t change it up on the big day.” Before Tanner finishes the sentence, he jumps out of the recliner and takes cover behind it, just as Julia snatches the remote from the coffee table. He narrowly dodges the projectile that hits the wall inches from his head.
“If that’s how you talk to your girlfriend, no wonder she’s ghosting you.”
Julia scurries behind the couch as Tanner throws back the thoroughly banged-up remote.
“Mom, did you see how hard he threw that at me?!” Julia shouts just as their mother walks out of the bathroom with a makeup-stained bag.
“Tanner . . .” his mother warns.
“Sansana’s not my girlfriend,” Tanner insists. “I told Julia to stop saying that.”
Julia scoffs. “Well, I’m sorry that I wanted my baby brother to have a happy relationship like the one I have with my fiancé.”
Sansana’s words echo in Tanner’s head, I know I can make you happy if you’d just let me.
“I did my part,” Julia continues, “But you had to go and mess things up with her. For us, too! We all like Sansana.”
Before Tanner can throw something else at Julia, Tanner’s father calls from the kitchen, “Who is going to clean up these leaves?”
Tanner knows what’s coming before his mother asks, “Tanner, will you please take care of that? Kato will be here any minute.”
With a huff, Tanner walks out of the living room and into the kitchen, where his father is waiting with a broom and duster in hand. Without another word, Tanner begins to sweep.
Tanner was once fascinated with leaves. He used to trace the veins with his fingers, finding a leaf of every color, searching for the most shriveled or flattest one. He loved that every leaf he found was special in its own way. After a while, they all became the same to him—a pain in his ass.
After brushing up the leaves, Tanner traps them in the duster as he opens the back door. He walks out to what used to be his patio, which, if he remembers correctly, once had reddish paint on its planks and was big enough to hold a few pieces of outdoor furniture. Now, there is just enough space for him to stand. Tanner empties the duster onto the pile of leaves, which isn’t really a pile at all, but a vast sea. Looking out, every strand of grass has been replaced by the leaves that reach the height of his garage. There was a basketball hoop just poking out over the top of the leaves being swallowed by millions, billions, perhaps trillions of leaves.
When he was younger, Tanner wanted to play basketball professionally. The way his friends always passed him the ball, knowing he would score, made him believe he could. That was a long time ago. Now, as Tanner looks around his neighborhood, he sees every other house drowning in leaves just like his own. If he could see further down the road, he’d spot the high school, main street, and even the amphitheater abandoned and crowded with leaves. After the first Fall, the leaves changed and fell, but they didn’t go away. After eleven Falls, they still haven’t. He wished, more than anything, more than the leaves to finally decay into the ground, that his conversation with Sansana three days ago would lift into the air, only to descend back down to him slowly so he could catch it gently in his palms instead of letting it disappear into the pile with all the others.
It started like the rest. Tanner had told her, “Your arms are shaking.”
Sansana had let out a staggering gust of air as she repositioned her arms. “You try doing a handstand for ten minutes straight and see if your arms don’t shake.”
“Hey, you know how this works. You’re the star, and I’m the guy behind the camera,” Tanner replied, gesturing to the Com in his hand. Tanner glanced away from Sansana to focus on the screen with hearts and words obstructing the small reflection of her upside-down frame. “And, anyway, I don’t think your fans want to see me do a handstand.”
“I think they would love to see you attempt a handstand. People could use a good laugh nowadays.” And just like that, her words ignited faceless names requesting for him to do the handstand challenge too. Tanner couldn’t help but be pleased that people knew his name, even though it was Sansana’s Connect followers.
“You think you’re really funny, huh?” Tanner grabbed one of his pillows and threw it at her.
“Tanner!” she cried, losing her balance.
She laughed as she sat up and then lunged at him. “Give me that,” she said, grabbing the Com out of his hand and shoving him playfully before sitting next to him on the bed, her shoulder pressed to his. He tried not to lean away when she pointed the camera in his face and did her rehearsed sign-off to her Connectors.
When her phone dropped to her lap, she sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“So, how’s the application going?” she asked. Tanner’s throat tightened. Just as he was about to answer her, his father shouted, “Who dragged the leaves into the house?”
Tanner and Sansana glanced at each other and said at the same time, “Julia.”
Tanner stood up from his bed, glancing out his window to the view he’d known all his life, the front of Sansana’s home and her bedroom window. A street used to divide their houses, but like everything else, was now buried under leaves, reaching the cusp of both their second-floor shingles. Above all the leaves, a tightrope ten meters across connected their two homes.
“It feels like it was just yesterday I asked you to connect the tightrope to your window.” Sansana said, now beside him looking out at their two worlds they brought together.
“You mean how you tricked me.”
“I did not!”
“You said it was an electrical line.”
“I said it would be like an electrical line.”
“Whatever you said to convince me, it was worth seeing both my parents faces when they poked their heads out the window when I started drilling a hole in the side of their house.”
Sansana laughed, her eyes alight looking over at her front yard with the tree that still had a purple ariel silk dancing among the rustling leaves. Tanner couldn’t help but feel like the silk was waving at him, saying goodbye. Before the Fall, all of Sansana’s life had been in that house and at her gymnastic gym. After a few Falls, her life became just her house that she transformed into a gymnastic gym. Tanner watched her practice acrobatics for a long time from afar while his basketball continued to deflate in his inaccessible garage. She continued to add platforms to heighten her balance beam above the leaves and tied silk to the branches to catch her from falling in.
“You really wanted that tightrope too,” Tanner said. “It took you at least a half-hour to carve your number in the leaves so you could text me your plan.”
“And good thing I did because then I became best friends with you.”
She turned her body so she was facing him.
“And now the two of us are leaving. Can’t you already see the lives we’re going to make at Cap.P.er headquarters? Me working hard on their social media campaign and you crushing it at DroneOperator training. And then, in the evenings, we’ll get to hang out and eat dinner and just walk around because there are no leaves in Nevada. But I’m getting ahead of myself, you still need to submit your application and get accepted. I mean, you’re obviously going to get accepted because you’re you and they’d be idiots not to see how amazing you are.”
Tanner moved away from Sansana so she wouldn’t see the redness in his cheeks. He decided this morning he’d be telling her the truth about his application at the last possible moment. Even though he knew Sansana was leaving tonight, it still wasn’t registering in his head that she wouldn’t be climbing into his bedroom window tomorrow morning—that she’d be thousands of miles away at Cap.P.er headquarters instead.
The following Sansana gained on Cap.P.er Connect, making videos of her acrobatics made her viral; so viral that the Cap.P.er marketing division reached out to her and several other popular Connectors for a social media campaign where she’d be staying at headquarters for a year and if it went well, the foreseeable future. It was a big deal getting a job at Cap.P.er. The company had been around even before the first Fall. Tanner couldn’t place when, exactly, it became every thread in people’s new fabric of life. Maybe it was around the time Tanner was in the fourth grade when his school shut down because cars and buses couldn’t get through on the roads anymore. Maybe it was after people were told not to burn the leaves because the smoke made them very sick. Maybe it was when people were afraid to step even a few feet away from their own front steps because of all the people that were never seen again after entering the leaves. Either way, by the time Tanner reached high school, the only thing outside, other than the leaves (and Sansana), were the Drones. Cap.P.er Drone Delivery System made life easy for everyone and gave them the opportunity to live life fully from home, and yet they offered the exact opposite to Sansana.
“Isn’t it so exciting how much things are changing?”
“Things haven’t changed yet,” Tanner said, looking at the green leaves on the tree across the street.
Sansana swatted at him. “I’m leaving tonight, you goof, and Julia is literally getting married in three days. Kato is coming to live with you, and—”
“Julia calls Kato so often, I don’t think it’ll be that different.”
Sansana shook her head, a faint smile playing on her lips. “Everything is changing, Tanner. Even you.”
Tanner closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath of fresh air he so rarely gets anymore, trying to forget the memory, but the air is too crisp and missing the earthy smell that should come from the leaves. A mechanical roar peels his eyes open again, just in time to see the leaves at chest level begin to jump in anticipation. Tanner glances up, craning his neck until the Shuttle flies over his head. Like its companions in the sky, the Shuttle was just a larger version of Cap.P.er Drones. They have the same green layered exterior and a large CP label on each side, but the Shuttle was significantly larger to fit cargo and people, and its propellers were as long as the tree in Sansana’s front yard. They’re also incredibly expensive to rent, which is why Tanner soaks up the image of it being so close. When the Shuttle gets out of view, Tanner rushes inside, hoping to glance at it from his front window where it was lowering its ramp for Kato.
Julia intercepts Tanner in the kitchen.
“He’s here!” she cries. “He’s here. He’s actually here.”
“No one’s more surprised than me,” he replies.
Julia shoves him.
“I can’t let him see me! I’m not ready yet, and I’m wearing my dress! You, go and welcome him.” Julia runs up the stairs, his mother coming in a second later, her arms filled with make-up brushes and hair supplies.
“Go save your father,” she tells him as she glides by.
When Tanner enters the living room, Kato and his father stand a few paces away from the door, two carry-on bags at their feet, crushing the leaves that made their way through when the door had been opened.
“There he is,” Kato says, reaching out his hand, which Tanner takes. “You must’ve grown a foot since the last time I saw you!”
Tanner shrugs. “A foot and a half, but close enough.”
Tanner has only met Kato in person once before, when he came by Shuttle to propose to Julia in person after three years of dating through Cap.P.er Social. Tanner liked him well enough, but he is easily reminded how Kato is almost, if not more, talkative than his sister.
“How’s the Cap.P.er application going?” Kato asks. “Julia’s been telling me all about it.”
You’re giving up? Tanner clenches his fists to keep the memory at bay.
“I withdrew my application a few days ago.”
“Really?”
Tanner doesn’t miss the look Kato gives his father.
“Well I guess it’s a good thing if you think about it. Cap.P.er has always seemed shady to me.”
“Shady or not, whatever Tanner decides to do, he’s got our full support,” his father says as he clasps Tanner’s shoulders. “We’ll be happy if he stays, of course. But, if he wants to go, how could I prevent that kind of opportunity?”
“Thanks, Dad,” Tanner says, but as his father’s hands slip from his shoulders, he can’t help but wonder if his parents would’ve preferred if he’d gone through with the application. They don’t seem too distraught at the thought of him leaving, whereas when Tanner thinks about moving away, his stomach tightens so painfully, he can’t stand straight.
“It definitely would’ve been cool for you to be in their headquarters. You could’ve leaked classified documents proving Cap.P.er’s been paying off the government. Sometimes I can’t help but think that’s the only reason no one’s figured out how to counteract the chemical that prevents these damn leaves from decomposing,” said Kato.
“That’s just a conspiracy,” his father says.
“Probably, but I like to think that there really is a solution out there rather than the likelihood that there isn’t,” Kato replies.
“What are you boys doing just standing around?” Tanner’s mother asks, her hands on her hips as she stands in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. “Tanner, you and your father need to go check on the camera to make sure it’s connected for the live stream.” She turns her determined glare on Kato. “And you, my future son-in-law, go get dressed. You all need to be outside in twenty minutes before the family starts tuning in.”
“Yes ma’am,” Kato replies, grabbing his bags and rushing into the bathroom. Tanner has no concern about how well Kato would fit in with his household.
Just like Sansana had.
Tanner’s door flew open, making him realize how close his and Sansana’s noses were to each other.
“Aren’t you two the cutest?” Julia said. Tanner pressed himself against the wall while Sansana quickly jumped onto his bed, bringing her knees to her chin. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
The hope in Julia’s voice made Tanner roll his eyes.
“Why don’t you ever knock?” he asked incredulously.
“Why should I have to knock? It’s not like you guys are making out in here. Or are you . . . ?”
Tanner rolled his eyes a second time. “That’s obviously not what’s happening. That would be gross. Right, Sansana?”
Sansana coughed awkwardly into her hand. “Yeah. Really gross.”
Julia sighed, jumped onto Tanner’s bed, and wrapped her arms around Sansana.
“Please don’t leave me. Please, pretty please. I can’t deal with him by myself.”
“He’ll be leaving soon enough. It’s my wedding present to you,” Sansana replied. Tanner felt her gaze on him, but he made himself busy scrolling through his Com.
“I don’t think I could ever leave this place,” Julia proclaimed. “Kato is spending a lot of money to relocate, but he just can’t stay where he is anymore. He’s on the sixth floor of his apartment building and can’t even open his window.”
“That’s terrifying,” Sansana whispered.
“Tell me about it. And look at this.” The familiar ring that Cap.P.er Connect is loading filled Tanner’s room. “Look at his sister. She married someone in Glandon Heights.”
“Wow, it’s beautiful.”
“Can I see?” Tanner asked, and Julia flipped her phone towards him.
On the screen is a girl who looks just like Kato but with longer brown hair and a big smile. She sat in a luxury car on a road with no leaves. Julia took the phone away from Tanner, turned it off, and shoved it towards the foot of his bed.
“If you start posting pictures of luxury cars on streets without leaves while you’re at Cap.P.er, I’ll probably strangle you the next time we see each other.”
“No, please do,” Sansana said. “If I start posting like that on Connect, you’ll do me the small mercy. Glandon Heights should have just as many leaves as us, but they pile it on those with less money than themselves. I hope I’ll never be associated with people like that.”
All three of them sat silently for a moment before Julia stood from the bed, her hands at her hips. “Look at you two, getting out of here together. Beating the odds, beating the leaves.” Then she turned her gaze to Tanner. “Speaking of leaves, Dad told me to tell you to clean them up downstairs.”
“Julia!” Tanner shouts from the bottom of the stairs. “We’re all waiting for you outside. You need to move it!”
“I’m coming. You can’t rush beauty.”
“I’m not rushing beauty. I’m rushing you.”
A string of curses follows Tanner as he makes his way through his house and towards his front door. So many leaves have streamed into the mudroom that they must be at least an inch high. Tanner’s feet crunch the leaves as he steps outside and onto the cardboard ramp, stomping on it to make sure it’s stable.
There was a period before the leaves got too deep where people would place cardboard and rugs on the leaves so they could travel without continually tripping, falling, and sinking. That’s what he did for years to get to his friends a few blocks away, but the fad died out after one too many reports came in about people drowning in the leaves after the flimsy material gave out.
Now Tanner was putting a spin on the use of cardboard, repurposing the material to make an aisle so they could have Julia’s wedding in their front yard. He’d spent weeks taping three layers of flattened Cap.P.er boxes together so it was extra sturdy and spent hours on the Cap.P.er box stacked archway at the end of the crafted aisle. Tanner walks down his creation, parallel to the fallen tightrope he refuses to acknowledge just a foot away.
“This thing you’ve built is really impressive, Tanner,” Kato tells him as he approaches. Kato stomps on the cardboard and makes a show of how the whole thing doesn’t sink into the leaves under them. Tanner’s parents nod in agreement as they try to hide from the sun under the archway.
“Thanks. It was nothing,” Tanner says. It really had been no trouble. He actually relished the distraction now that high school was over.
“No, it’s something. It means a lot to your sister and a lot to me,” Kato insists.
“Speaking of your sister, where is she?” her mom asks.
“Tanner! Over here.” Tanner turns away from his family and Kato. He spots Sansana’s parents waving at him from the top of their roof, a glass of wine in each of their hands. The Weisses weren’t the only neighbors to be part of the audience; almost every house had people hanging out of their windows or sitting on their roofs. A few houses down, someone made a sign that said, “CONGRATULATIONS TO THE BRIDE AND GROOM.”
It had been a big week for his block. Two Shuttle appearances and a wedding. He wondered if they felt as overwhelmed as he did, although he didn’t think the constant activity was really to blame for him not being able to eat or get a good night’s sleep the past few days. It had to do with the window below the Weiss’ feet that was dark and empty.
“Everything looks wonderful, and you look so handsome,” Sansana’s mom compliments, her voice grabbing his attention away from Sansana’s window. Tanner pulls at the polo he found at the bottom of his drawer subconsciously. “You made everything look so good. We only wish Sansana didn’t have to go before the ceremony.”
I want more. And so do you, her voice echoes in his head.
“She was very upset about it,” Tanner shouts back.
“Yes, well she’ll be attending the live stream, won’t she?” Mr. Weiss asks. “She told us she would the day before she left, but we haven’t talked to her about it since.”
“In fact—” Mrs. Weiss cuts in. “—we haven’t heard from her since she left to give you your present. We’d been patient about her not calling because I’m sure she’s so busy but really it’s been three days. She only brought one bag. It shouldn’t take that long to unpack.”
“You haven’t heard from Sansana either?” Tanner stammers, but before he can hear their reply, he feels his shirt being pulled by his father. He turns to see Julia at the end of the aisle ready to walk down, the half-submerged house of leaves as her background, and the Drones flying in the sky as wedding bells.
Tanner watches the ceremony unfold, but he only registers a few of the words his newly ordained mother spoke as Julia and Kato hold hands. As the seconds tick by, the back of his neck becomes coated with sweat and his stomach tightens painfully as he replays what the Weiss’ said. Sansana ignoring him was one thing, but her parents? And her parents mentioned a present—Sansana never came back after their fight to give him a present unless the severed tightrope counted. He didn’t want to open his Com and start blasting her messages again because if Julia saw him texting during her wedding, he’d probably lose a finger, but all he wanted was to talk to Sansana. Whether that was by constantly texting her, calling Cap.P.er Industries, or creating a random Connect account so she wouldn’t know it was him, he was going to get in contact with her.
Of that, he is certain.
As Kato and Julia say their vows, Tanner can’t help but think why he wasn’t certain three days ago.
When Tanner returned from sweeping up the leaves, Julia was gone, and so was Sansana’s smile. She was gazing down at his Com and without looking up, she said, “You’re giving up?”
She turned the screen towards him, forcing him to stare at the word he’d read that morning after he clicked a button on his Drone Operator application.
Withdrawn.
“Sansana . . .”
“So it’s not a mistake. You withdrew your application? Were you going to tell me before or after I left tonight?”
“I . . . I probably would’ve told you tonight, but . . . maybe not. You seemed so excited for me to apply to be a Drone Operator and—”
“Because I was excited!” she interrupted. “If you got in the program, you’d be with me at Cap.P.er headquarters. I thought you’d be excited about that, too.”
He didn’t know how to explain to her even though she was ready for everything to change, he was not, so he made excuses instead.
“Julia is getting married in a few days and that is already a huge change for my parents, especially with Kato moving in.”
Sansana pursed her lips.“What are you talking about? Your parents want you to go. They were so excited when I told them about the application. Julia is, too.”
“That’s because she wants my room for a nursery, another big responsibility for my parents.”
“Is it because of the money?” she asked, as her nails dug into her forearms. “Because trust me, this is an investment that will benefit you in the long run. You’ll get the job. I know you will. You’re good at everything you do, and they’d be stupid not to see that.”
“I mean, money is definitely an issue,” Tanner replied, hating himself for leaning into the lie. “I don’t have three thousand dollars lying around to buy a Drone, and if I were to get into the program, I would need one for training.”
“I told you, Greg on Jay Street can get you one for a good deal.”
Tanner stepped forward and gripped the bed frame. She has an answer for everything and might even have one for what he swore he’d never admit aloud. “Let it go, Sansana.”
She inched closer to him until they are as close as they were before Julia walked in on them, maybe even closer. Sansana’s voice is soft when she said, “I can buy it for you. You know that’s not an issue for me, and I owe you.”
Tanner looked away from her. He knows how successful Sansana is on Cap.P.er Connect, but he has never asked her for a penny. He hates that she would even think that she owes him anything because her success was her own making entirely.
When he didn’t answer, she continued, “This is new and overwhelming, but we’ll be together, and that’s all that matters. You’re my best friend, Tanner.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
Tanner turns his hands into fists to keep them from flying to cover his mouth. The words he buried so deep were finally out.
“Why are you staying?” she asked.
Tanner looked up at her.
“Because I like it here. I like what we’ve got here. Do we really need more?”
Sansana took in a deep, shaky breath.
“Yes. I want more. Don’t you?
Tanner swallowed hard before slowly shaking his head.
“I like how this is and how we are. I don’t want things to change.”
Her eyes widened, and she slipped off his bed. She lowered her head, her hair obstructing her face, before she hastily made her way to his window. She forced the window frame open and hoisted herself up on the ledge, reaching out for the tightrope before turning back around, her eyes glassy. “I want to make you happy. I know I can make you happy if you’d just let me.”
Tanner didn’t stop her from walking the tightrope, the wire wobbling precariously as she made her way across to her home. Deep down, he knew he’d crushed her heart, but she was crushing his too. That night he fell asleep to the roar of the Shuttle and woke up to the sight of the cut tightrope still hanging onto his house.
Tanner stares at the limp tightrope lying parallel to the cardboard aisle, hearing but not comprehending Julia’s vows when he feels his father nudge his side. Discreetly, he points at his Com.
“People are messaging me that some leaves are covering the camera. You need to get up on the roof and clear it up.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“But Julia—”
“Julia will understand. Go.”
Tanner backs away slowly before walking down the cardboard aisle, feeling Julia’s heated gaze burning holes in the back of his head. He quickly slips up the stairs, steps into his room and climbs out his window and onto the roof. He hadn’t been on the roof since Sansana left, and it already feels like a graveyard holding every moment he’s ever had with the person he cares for most in the world.
He clears the leaves away from the camera lens and decides to watch the rest of the ceremony from the higher vantage point. He quickly finds himself staring off towards Sansana’s dark window instead. It isn’t even that far, but it feels unreachable, which he supposed it is, even if the tightrope was still attached. He can’t walk a tightrope like Sansana, and no one, not even she, could just walk through the leaves. Tanner reaches for the tightrope, letting the wire brush his fingers as he begins to pull it towards his chest.
Tanner’s mother asks Kato if he’ll take his sister as his wife. Tanner holds his breath until Kato says, “I do.” It seems the whole block releases a collective sigh into the air, and Tanner continues to pull at the tightrope. His mother asks Julia if she’ll take Kato as her husband.
Julia beams at Kato. “I do—ahhh!”
The cardboard under Julia’s feet caves in. She loses her balance and falls right into the leaves.
“Julia!” Kato cries. Tanner stands, clenching the tightrope in his hands. His parents rush over towards the edge to get Julia out of the leaves, her head just visible.
Julia screams, “Mom! Dad! Kato! Get me out of here—ouch—something is digging into my back. Ouch!”
Tanner hears their neighbors asking if she’s okay just as Kato lifts her by her elbows.
“Wait, hold on,” Julia says, reaching down.
“Julia!” Tanner shouts, not understanding why she would want to be in the leaves any longer when they could swallow her whole.
“Hold on, I think it’s a package. It’s a drone! What’s it doing here?”
Tanner suddenly feels the weight of the tightrope. He looks down, and there swinging just above the roof tiles is not a severed end of the tightrope or the unclasped hook he was expecting, but a screw. Tanner’s eyes widen, trying to figure out a possible way Sansana could’ve disconnected the wire by pulling at the screw jammed into her house and why she would’ve gone through all the trouble when she could’ve just cut or unhooked the cable. It doesn’t make any sense until it does. The package, the loose screw, her sudden silence. He remains in denial for a moment too long, perhaps unable to believe that the leaves have finally stopped her, just as they have stopped everything else in his life. If Sansana had realized this sooner, she would’ve known not to buy him the drone and walk with it along the tightrope. Then it never would’ve snapped under her, Tanner never would’ve had to jump into the pile of leaves three days later, frantically pushing them out of his way until he saw Sansana, leaves spilling out of her mouth, skin the same texture as the leaves that buried her.
© 2025 Chris Peit All rights reserved.
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