“Moon Rain” by Robin Chen
Moon Rain
Though Sophie has spent hours refining it, she can still hear the Holo Engine on her bike. It’s not a big deal — certainly not important to any of her investors — but it still bothers her. As Sophie speeds out of the city and into the surrounding desert, her failure manifests as a faint hum, a light buzzing. It’s what she imagines bees once sounded like.
Sophie pushes her speed, curls herself closer to the bike’s center of mass. She doesn’t have much time before she has to return for another client meeting.
Sophie stalls her bike under the decrepit sign for Golden Days, vintage to the core. The stone building is falling apart, but this place is perfect for its stance against Holo Tech. It’s the antithesis of everything Sophie has built. When she digs down into the dirt, her boots kick up plumes of dust. It will leave a mark on her suit, the only thing that stains the slick synthetic roads back home. Her tires, at least, are self-cleaning. Like a trained dog, her bike keeps itself, shifting to a lavender glow that indicates rest.
The familiarity of walking into Golden Days grounds her. Sophie always visits when the facility has decided to lazily celebrate a long-dead holiday, trying to revive nostalgia with pink paper hearts and coiled streamers. The velvet curtains are still ugly, and Robert is still balding and fat, unchanged through the better half of a century.
He sits in front of a computer monitor — a real one, the kind with a physical screen — and briefly glances up as Sophie treks in.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Yu.” Robert taps at his mechanical keyboard, and Sophie is enthralled by the noise. “It’s good to see you again. You’re like clockwork.”
Sophie nods. The strap of her pack is digging deep into her shoulder, she is not that strong.
“She’s the same as always,” Robert says. “We would’ve pinged you if anything changed.”
Sophie is already walking away. Yu Long has always been on the top floor, away from the other residents. She had been here first.
The door to Yu Long’s room, like the rest of Golden Days, is frozen in time. Sophie reaches up and gently traces the sigils marked over the doorway, the ones papered against the walls. Fu — Luck — is written upside down, so that it’ll shower anyone fortunate enough to walk through. Sophie’s in the process of remembering the day she put them up, when:
“Bao Yu, is that you?”
Guilt draws the weighted pit of Sophie’s stomach like a magnet. The offerings that she’s hefted onto her shoulder feel heavier. A faint film over her dry tongue, too sweet: “Yes, Ma.”
“Oh, Bao Yu. You never come to see me.”
When Sophie finally walks in, she winces. Yu Long is sitting at the window, her bright head twisted back in greeting.
It’s not Yu Long’s shell that pains Sophie — it’s the empty look in her mother’s eyes. By the nature of who she is, Yu Long is still plastered with youth. She appears decades younger than the woman she birthed; her hair is still as glossy and dark as obsidian. More than anything else, she looks like lost child.
Despite the nature of what she is, Yu Long looks so delicate. Sophie can’t burst her soap-bubble delusion.
“You’re late, Bao Yu. The festival started yesterday.”
“Mmm.” Sophie walks closer, sets her pack down on the nearest table. She tries not to look at the thick stack of red envelopes already resting there: most are sun-bleached, but one remains a crisp crimson. All of them are symbols of reciprocity that Sophie never takes.
The room is simple, harmless: just the way Sophie likes it. At first, Robert had protested the removal of all digital screens — the move was too outdated, even for him — but Sophie had insisted. The new technology would have been too harsh of a shock. Her mother would not know what to do with herself.
“Everyone was waiting outside,” Yu Long says dreamily. She traces her finger along the windowsill, drawing clouds in the dust. “They had burnt so much incense. So many orange peels. They wanted my rain so badly.”
“Okay, Ma.” Sophie hesitantly walks closer. Despite the nature of what she is, Yu Long looks so delicate. Sophie can’t burst her soap-bubble delusion. “Look at what I brought you.”
Sophie doesn’t look up as she unpacks. At this point, she knows her mother’s favorites by heart. Meat dumplings, handmade and carefully pressed. Sticky rice molded over red bean paste, which she had to scour every oldie website for. Oranges, synthetically grown, but as vibrant and pure as her mother’s true form.
“Oranges!” Her mother scrambles up from her seat, quick as lightning. She digs her nails into one of them, leaking juice and sweetness. “This is a good crop. Oh, extra blessings to the farmer who grew these.”
Yu Long holds the orange up to her nose, inhales deeply, and smiles like she’s dreaming. Her fingers work of their own accord, nimble, freeing the fruit of its peel.
The scent of citrus sparks the air and Sophie is transported back in time: back to another land, another set of humans and tongues. Before that devastating flood, back when the skies were darkened only by mass incense, when the world was thick and rich with red silk and devotion. Back when ritual offering was truly a celebration, Bao Yu curled up in her mother’s lap as the world sang for rain.
For the first time since her arrival, Sophie smiles.
“These come from my followers,” Yu Long says. It’s not a question.
“Yes,” Sophie replies. In a way, it is true.
“I must thank them. They came all this way, they deserve to see it.” Yu Long scrambles to her feet. Her hands are slick with orange juice, but she holds them out to Sophie. “Please, Bao Yu, please. You know I can’t do it myself anymore.”
It’s the first acknowledgement of reality that Sophie has heard all day.
Stop, Sophie wants to say. Enough. There’s never been anyone here except me. You know this, You have to know.
But instead, she says: “Okay.”
Sophie holds her mother’s sticky hands, towering over her. Her mother’s palms are soft, have never been roughened by hard work or electrical scarring, but her grip is still strong.
“Now, Bao Yu.”
Sophie closes her eyes, follows a crimson thread as she chases a different kind of memory. This is less wistful, more primal, more animal. The feeling burns deep; it claws at her wrists and emanates to her chest before it consumes her, before she pushes that warmth out and into her mother.
The transformation must be sudden, because Sophie never notices it until it’s over. Her mother’s hands are too heavy now, thickly scaled and clawed, and the whole room smells faintly of allspice and citrus. When Sophie opens her eyes, she inhales sharply — the sight never stops taking her breath away.
Where a small woman once was, there is now a creature of mythic proportions. She is sinuous and enormous, her crimson body coiling over itself again and again. Her claws tap on the hardwood floor as Yu Long, the Jade Dragon, adjusts herself. Her brilliant, plumed tail rests on the mattress, poking the nightstand, almost knocking over a tiny picture of Bao Yu and her mother.
Even in the desert, stranger to floods and clouds and rain, that urge threatens to burst out of her. It thrums at her fingertips, the desire to be with her mother, to howl at the sky as god and demigod.
“Much better,” Yu Long sighs. “So much better.” When she speaks, her voice is a mighty torrent, deep and sure.
Sophie’s throat closes, choking her with an unidentifiable emotion. Despite herself, she reaches up and strokes her mother’s giant face, her scales as perfect and bright as oranges. Her long whiskers trail her face like smoke from a fire.
“You look beautiful, Ma.”
“I know my followers think the same,” Yu Long preens. She raises her head to gaze in the nearest mirror, careful so that her horns don’t damage the ceiling. In the desert sunlight, she shimmers vibrantly, her body reflecting brilliance on the little room around her.
“Yeah, Ma.” Sophie gathers up her empty pack. As her mother is still distracted, she slowly turns towards the door. Last year, she got all the way out before Yu Long even noticed that she was gone. Sophie’s not worried about leaving her like this — her mother no longer has the strength to keep her true form for more than a few minutes.
“Bao Yu.”
Sophie curses inwardly and retracts her hand from the doorknob. “Yes?”
“Stay with me.”
When Sophie turns around, she’s struck by the look in her mother’s eyes. It’s not bliss, not delusion — for the first time in years, her mother seems lucid.
“Please, Bao Yu, stay with me. You could be just like me. You are just like me.”
In response, something inside Bao Yu’s chest awakens and roars. Even in the desert, stranger to floods and clouds and rain, that urge threatens to burst out of her. It thrums at her fingertips, the desire to be with her mother, to howl at the sky as god and demigod. It is rooted, it is repressed, but it is there.
Sophie opens her mouth to respond, but in the distance, she hears her Holo Engine preemptively start up: a feature in her newest software update. Time’s up. Escape is now.
“I’m sorry, Ma. I have to go back.” To my real life. My real home.
The hope in her mother’s eyes shatters, and it’s Yu Long who turns away, breaking the spell. Sophie can’t remember the last time she’s seen a dragon reduced to tears. They collect quickly in milky, pearlescent puddles.
Sophie doesn’t know how to say goodbye, so she says nothing at all. For the first time all year, the sky outside smells like a storm.
Robin Chen currently teaches high school English and resides with their fiancé in Boston, Massachusetts. After a long break, they are rediscovering their love for creating art.