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for the school insignia, which she has replaced with the characters for the Peach Blossom House, which look similar at a distance. Peach Blossom School. She is one of the last in the house -- the other girls are sick, or aiding their families, or dead. The former cobblestone road that runs in front of the establishment has given way to a four-lane road, two lanes each way, and a set of traffic lights that are near-invincible in their regularity. Every night she looks out the window, and the lights wink in and out, bicycles cheerfully ignoring their warnings, cars honking horns at every opportunity. When an official dignitary is in town to declare yet another state of local emergency or carry out an inspection tour, a policeman is stationed at the light to ensure that everyone follows the traffic laws,  |
but he is a young man and easily bored, and soon he makes vague gestures to oncoming traffic and pedestrians, resigned to their flow. Much of the town has been evacuated. Certain stores and restaurants remain open, their lights like little pockmarks in the night, and with each passing season there comes more bombs, more news of advancements and retreats as houses grow warped and gutted, and still the damned street lights remain as strong as ever. In times of crisis such as this, there is a sort of regression in people's thoughts -- immediately old tomes are dusted off, answers sought in obscure dice-throwing games and the wisdom of ancestors, concoctions that are little more than soiled weeds dumped in boiling water, portents of doom taken from books that were meant to be escapist adventures when they were first  |
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