The Dragon and the Bog

SEPTEMBER 2025, SHORT STORY, 4800 WORDS

The bog speaks to me in burps.

I stand on its edge and hold out my palm.

A plum—blood red and dewy—falls into my hand from the sky.

Certainty strikes me. If I hurl the plum into the bog, the sludge will clear. The silt will settle like sighs. I will see layers after layers of bones, interlocking into secret symbols; cascades of bodies, suspended in a dance. Among them, will I find those who have sunk? Will I find…

I sink my nails into the plum. The juice drips. The pulp protrudes.

A dolorous squelch.

No. I shake my head. I won’t succumb to your taunts. I refuse to make meaning, even in my dreams.

Monday

The first thing I see are ashen paw prints on my pillow.

“Still here, I see,” I croak, bleary eyed. Tavi has wormed her way into my bed. Tavi’s a dragon. I keep her in my ashtray. On rainy days, she breathes fire through her nostrils; turns mounds of Marlboro butts into cinder crisps.

Two weeks ago, she’d swooped in through my window. An omelet had been burning in my kitchen. Jaehee had left me, and eggs had been simply too much.

“Fire,” was the first word that Tavi had hissed.

“Indeed,” I’d replied amidst the blaring alarms. I threw the omelet out the window, frying pan and all. Footsteps echoed through the corridor—people filing out. I crawled under the sink. Through the crack, I watched Tavi lock her gaze into mine. Her beady eyes danced with pale flames.

“Guest,” she whispered. One of her many self-introductions to come.

This morning, she seems even more manic than usual. As she shreds through my duvet, I wipe sleep out of my eyes and roll through my usual questions.

“Why are you here?”

“Quest.”

“What quest?”

“Quest.”

“Ready to help me die?”

“No.”

The whole thing has become a catechism of late; useless, useless. I sit up, latching onto a passing idea.

“Are you responsible for the bog dreams?”

Tavi cocks her head, blinks her molten lava eyes.

I sigh, saunter towards the window, and yank open the curtain. I live on the top floor of a tenement house. From my window, I can see concrete skeletons of the building across—lattices of metal rods, barren and exposed. If I squint hard enough and fix my gaze across the crisscrossing beams, I can catch a glimpse of the glossy pool of cement.

People say that it’s a cursed bog; that it refuses to dry; that it’s impossible to scoop out or cover up. I’m not sure if Bog’s the reason, but the construction for the building across has been on hold for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, the powers that be now have their eyes set on our building. Our tenement will be demolished by the end of this month.

I shift my gaze to the wall calendar and cross out today’s date in red pen.

Five days until eviction. Five days until I die. Accidentally—on purpose.

“Breakfast,” Tavi hisses.

I toss her a bag of sugar. She turns it into shimmering spun clouds in the air and inhales them like oxygen. After she’s done, she nudges me with her wing.

“You.”

To appease her, I head to the kitchen and open the freezer. I still have bags of expired potstickers from the day I first met Jaehee.

To be clear, they were already expired the day I got them, melting in a rubbish crate set outside Mr. Lee’s bodega.

When I picked them up, a voice intoned,

“I wouldn’t do that. Mr. Lee’s throwing them away.”

It was Jaehee. She emerged with a slant smile, her face bisected by the shadow from the awning.

“I know. It’s perfect. I’m seeking to die,” I said.

“Using potstickers?”

“Grease, smoke, and mold. It’s a multi-pronged approach.”

“Why do you want to kill yourself?”

“Oh, I don’t. I’m simply seeking to stumble into a demise.”

“Is this a bit?”

“May I have the potstickers?”

“What are you, twelve?”

“Twenty-one. A flip side.”

“No.”

“No what?”

Jaehee leaned against the fruit stand and crossed her arms. She observed me without judgement or concern, as though I were a courgette. I held her gaze, ears tingling.

“You’re not someone who wants to die,” she said eventually.

“Oh? What am I then?” I asked, tugging at the ends of my sleeves.

She picked up an avocado, peeled something from its skin, and stuck it on my forehead. She turned around without another word and closed the bodega door behind her.

I didn’t check the mirror until I arrived back home. A small round sticker, neon orange, announced: ‘ORGANIC’.

I pour out the potstickers onto a ceramic dish and squirt dubious, sudsy oil all over them.

“Tavi, can you?”

Tavi breathes fire and turns the potstickers into charred blobs.

I thank her and munch my way through suffering. They taste like death. After I’m done, I drop the dish into the sink and start chain-smoking, tantalizing my half-broken smoke detector, yet again.

When I smoke a cigarette, I like to imagine that the cigarette’s smoking me. I visualize it; imagine a giant cylinder, breathing tar into my lungs. Briefly, the lungs turn into truffles. But soon enough, they revert to pristine, white sponge. It’s like fighting a losing battle. My body is infuriatingly recuperative.

But the haze curdles my memory, and for a fraction of a second, I can no longer recall how it all started– Jaehee and me. Mr. Giannelli, my next-door neighbor, used to say that I’m an accidental lady charmer. I’d tell him that it’s only because nothing matters to me; that a genuine lack of care can sometimes approximate a charm. But who am I kidding? I did care. When it came to Jaehee, I always cared.

Jaehee cared about many things, a lot of them too far gone. Me, for instance. Ditto, the mangy alley cat. This neighborhood. Even the desiccated elm trees outside Mr. Lee’s bodega.

Smoke conjures up broken snapshots of her—Jaehee sinking her nails into her own thigh to steady her other hand, the hand dressing a gash in Mrs. Lee’s temple (earlier—a protest, a crackdown). Jaehee watering barren sticks of former trees. Jaehee holding a pink megaphone and blaring, “Sticky rice!!!! Buckwheat jelly!!!!” in her bedroom, invoking the lilt of my half-forgotten hometown; then, megaphone down, whispering in my ears, “Wake up, lazy bum. You’re not dying on me today.”

Through the clearing mist, Tavi throws a hissy fit.

“Quest!” she blurts, shooting sparks.

“Just a minute,” I mutter. I spit out the cigarette, wipe greased cinder from my lips, and slide into my sneakers. Tavi’s already clawing at the front door.

Ever since the little dragon arrived, I’ve had to crawl out of my apartment once a day. It’s like walking a pet, though my psyche can only manage short excursions at a time. When outside, Tavi latches onto my back under my shirt, like a hump or an extraneous spine. She still sees everything; offers hot takes on people we pass by.

“Greedy.”

“Valiant.”

“No.”

We’ve been to just about everywhere within a one-mile radius: the laundromat (most of my pants are singed at the edge now), the stationary store, the dim sum parlor, and so on. At the end of each trip, I always gravitate towards the abandoned construction site. Whenever I walk across its decaying threshold, Tavi sinks her claws into my back and throws a fit. I plod on, regardless, and stop in front of the cement pool. It greets me with bubbling gurgles. I try to match it against the bog from my dreams; imagine myself plunging into its depth. I ask myself, Will I make the final step when the day arrives?

I ask Tavi, “Is the quest complete?”

The answer is always an emphatic, “No.”

After our walk—how many of them do we have left?—I stumble back into my bed. I notice my succulents, drooping by the windowsill. I saunter over and stack them inside a paper bag.

The surface of the Bog undulates. It pops in small fizzes. The center hollows out, revealing a dark cavity. It’s the shape and size of my body.

I refuse to interpret what I see.

Tuesday

Another day. Another red cross. This morning, a smattering of my neighbors is holding a demonstration outside our building. The attendance is sparse—almost everyone has moved out by now. Yet I hold my breath, fearing—and hoping—to see a pink megaphone. I don’t see it. Or her.

But I spot her handwriting. ‘STOP THE DEMOLITION,’ a picket says in red paint. Her old sign. Probably recycled.

People seem resigned. Desultory. It’s like they’re sleepwalking. The chants scatter in the wind. I close my curtains.

“Quest!” Tavi shrieks, tugging at my PJ with her claws. This girl.

“Queeeeeeest!”

“Sure, sure,” I say, grabbing my jacket. Soon, calamity strikes us. An unfamiliar buzz. I realize that it’s my phone—miraculously alive despite several days’ lack of charging.

I fish it out from under my bed. It’s a text from an unknown number.

Did you plant your succulents outside Hades?

Hades. It’s what we used to call the construction site across, Jaehee and I.

My heart swells like a bagpipe. I stumble onto the ground, feeling blood in my ears. Did Jaehee see them? Is she still nearby?

Tavi peers into the screen.

“Combat,” she hisses.

“No, no.”

“Romance.”

“I wish.”

“Princess.”

“Maybe.”

“Quest!!”

What does she seek, this little dragon? Perhaps she’s lost herself in a wrong world; a wrong story. Perhaps she’s a bit like Mr. Giannelli, my neighbor.

Mr. Giannelli, who’d always greet me thus:

“Caro Jimin! What am I doing with my life?”

Mr. Giannelli, who’d always drop by with something in his hand: Stamps. Books. Artisanal papers. A jar of pickled artichoke hearts.

Sometimes he’d buy two lottery tickets and slip one under my door.

You got this! Get the hell out of here! A sticky note would say. A few years ago, when I found a gold bar by accident, I’d gifted it to him. He would find ways to sneak it back into my apartment. I would retaliate by sneaking it back into his. You need it. No, you need it. Once, I accidentally bit into it, tucked inside a burrito. I nearly broke my teeth.

Mr. Giannelli was a war veteran. Which war? I’m not sure. He liked puzzles. I would tell him certain facts about my parents’ death; my uncle’s disappearance. Can you connect the dots? I’d ask. Weave a story out of all of this?

He’d smile and shake his head.

Mr. Giannelli fell off the roof of our building three weeks ago. If he’d been aiming for the Bog across, he failed. Midway through his descent, he was pierced by a metal rod protruding from one of the lattices.

No family had come forth, so I cleaned up his place. When I entered, plump roaches were chewing on the paper cranes, strewn about on the floor. I pocketed one crane with tattered wings; nudged the roaches out with a broom. As they dispersed, they briefly spelled out the letter G. I decided that it wasn’t a message. It never is.

My fingers hover over the keypad. My throat dries up. Pain throbbing in my heart, I decide not to text back.

Another buzz. I take a sharp inhale.

They’ll need someone to water them in the winter.

After hours of stupor, punctuated by Tavi’s shrieks, I toss my phone in the trash bin, and manage to step outside the apartment. The sun is setting, gilding the Hades and the rundown buildings in metallic gold.

We take our usual route.

When I’m about to turn right at the crossroad, Tavi claws at my back. She wants me to turn left.

We never turn left. To the left is the bodega. And the ice cream parlor.

The Bog ululates, threatening a semblance of words. I peer into the swirl. A wind could sweep me off my feet, throw me into its eye. It would be an accident. Two disparate events. The wind and the plunge.

I feel the tug. But as I inch closer, my toes curl up.

Wednesday

The fug is strong this morning. Tavi’s frustration, perhaps.

Dragons pine. And when they do, wisps of periwinkle smoke curl around them, like tendrils of twilight. The smoke smells like sulfur. And vanilla.

Tavi’s suffocating exhalations are the only reason I tumble out of bed. It is 2PM. I no longer bother to cross out the date from the calendar. Only three days left, and I still haven’t decided on how to accelerate my demise.

Stealthily, I pack a few boxes of my things to hand over to Goodwill. Tavi squints, a look of suspicion glinting through her ember eyes.

“No,” she says, pulling out clothes from the box.

“Yes,” I say, putting them back in. Is she onto me? Where will she go, after I leave? Would she be able to find her way into the right kind of story?

“Nooooooo,” she whines.

I give up. Maybe it’s best to leave some things behind. Empty room might suggest premeditation.

We go out. Once again, I refuse to cross the street at our usual corner. Once again, I refuse to turn left.

My mind wanders; It’s not as easy to tether as my feet: Avocados. Wilting bouquets. Limp newspapers. Jaehee’s fingers, pink from sorting through popsicles.

Visions swirl. Sweat trickles down my back.

Bourbon. Toffee. Vanilla. Heart bleeding like Sour Cherry.

What else had disintegrated–that night at the ice cream parlor?

A sharp pain. Tavi claws me back to the present. In the end, I decide on a whim to go inside a DVD rental store I’ve always ignored. Whiffs of moldy cardboard boxes greet us. I pull out a DVD at random from one of the half-empty shelves. It’s an obscure film based on a real-life story of a Korean labor rights activist. The picture of flames on the cover draws me in. I check it out. Only when I’m about to unlock my door back home do I realize, I’d need to return the DVD before I leave.

The DVD whirs inside my laptop. Tavi curls up next to me and we watch the film from the bed.

Women who work in a sewing factory drop like flies from pneumonia. Better labor right laws, the activist pleads–on the streets, outside the Blue House, in front of locked churches.

Nothing changes.

The activist pours gasoline on himself. He asks a friend to strike a match; turns himself into a flame. He shrieks in pain; runs through Pyeonghwa Shijang: the Peace Market, an ironic name, given what transpires. His mother rushes to the hospital. She doesn’t have $20, the cost needed to give him an injection. The doctors watch him die in bed. Slowly. Painfully.

When the ending credit rolls, I find my cheeks streaked with tears. I feel a sense of dissociation, as though the tears aren’t mine.

“Self-immolation,” Tavi croons.

“Did you just speak in two words?” I ask.

Tavi blushes through her effulgent scales.

“No,” she hisses.

I nudge my chin towards the screen.

“Why are you here?”

Why aren’t you there? is what I mean.

I imagine a blaze of fire, raining down on the factory owners. I imagine an iridescent, winged beast, shielding the activist from the pain; carrying him through the fire.

An epic miracle. A different kind of story. Like fluffy clouds catching Mr. Giannelli, instead of a metal rod. Like a lavender bubble protecting our tenement building from the blows of destruction.

There’s only one question that Tavi answers differently, every time I ask. “Who are you?”

“Tavi.”

“Dragon.”

“Goddess.”

“Pneuma.”

And, on the second night of her arrival, when I hurled much of what was inside me into the toilet bowl,

“Miracle.”

Wiping my lips with the back of my hand, I thought of chasing her out my window. Like the time I’d refused to accept Jaehee’s offer: a different kind of miracle.

A couple of months after Jaehee came into my life, we went to see a marsh that she liked. It had been a cool summer night. Jaehee sat on the boggy ground, lit up expired fireworks that Mr. Lee had thrown out. They burst into showers of light, threading through moonlit leaves of poplar trees.

“How’s dying?” she asked.

“Awesome,” I replied. Hours earlier, she’d gathered my cigarettes into a bunch and snapped them in half.

“Why?” she asked. “Why not this? A miracle?” she added, pointing at the fireworks. In the sky, the fireworks traced the profile of someone or something with wings.

“It’s just chemicals,” I said.

I didn’t tell her that accepting a miracle would feel like a betrayal. Instead, in the same way I’d told Mr. Giannelli, I went through a list of irrevocable facts about the people I’d be betraying.

My parents, who were two of the five hundred people buried alive when a department store collapsed.

My uncle, who had been beaten senseless in a back alley; and disappeared from the hospital a few days after.

That one woman, who’d clutched at my arm after spotting her sister’s name under ‘Casualties.’

“But she’s a doctor,” the woman had said, wide-eyed. “She saved so many lives,” she added, as though violence kept a tally.

And so on.

I found myself getting worked up as I talked. An undesirable state for someone who’d purported to have let go of meaning. Mid-sentence, Jaehee wrapped her arms around my head and cradled it. The sky continued to rumble, and my ears felt warm.

“Do you understand?” I asked into her wet jacket.

“No,” she said. Her voice was warm. Soothing.

Back then, it didn’t occur to me to ask about the parts of her that I didn’t understand.

As I shudder in my bed, Tavi remains thoughtful. Silent. I eject the DVD from my laptop. Put it back in its case. I wonder about the ambiguity of death.

Did the activist regret his decision when he experienced blinding pain?

Did Mr. Giannelli slip his feet?

What did my parents feel, at the cusp of their demise?

Is my uncle dead but alive, or alive but dead?

However I die, I hope my death will evade interpretation.

Smoke rises from the Bog and rustles itself into sounds.

I cover my ears, but it’s too late.

Ssssssssssink or disssssspersssssse. Which do you choosssssssse?

My hand is sticky. I open it and find a plum pit, the pulp latching onto the grooves like decaying flesh. Disgusted, I fling it into the Bog.

The water remains murky. I realize how I’ll die.

Thursday

When I wake up, the blinding sunlight nearly burns through my corneas. I watch Tavi, snoozing on the corner of my pillow. Since a few days ago, she has let go of the pretense of sleeping in my ashtray.

Should I explain? Or should I leave her in the dark?

Who will provide the light?

An idea forms. I stroke Tavi’s head, my heart full of compunction. Oddly enough, she’s still asleep for once. I seize the opportunity and slip out of my apartment.

I hasten to run my errands, fearing Tavi’s wrath when she wakes up. I return the DVD. Buy a can of gasoline. On my way back, I stop by a convenience store and buy a packet of pasta. The last supper, I think to myself, then cringe at my own grandiosity.

Back home, Tavi is wreaking havoc. She’s pulverized my duvet and is working through the ends of the tablecloth.

“Traitor,” she hisses.

“I’m sorry. Look, dinner. Dinner, you see?”

I present the packet of pasta with a flourish. Tavi simmers down. I open the cupboard and take out the jar of homemade marinara sauce. Mr. Giannelli’s specialty. The last of its kind.

When the table is set, Tavi sits across from me, inspecting every inch of my face with her piercing gaze. I fumble with my fork; feel its heft. When I’m about to dive into the steaming pasta, a strand of linguini slithers away, a black olive girding its neck—waist—like a life raft. Soon, another strand follows in its suit. Together, they slither across the tabletop, leaving tracks of marinara smear on the paisley linen.

“We do not wish to enter his belly, do we?”

“No, no, we do not. For his is a dead man’s belly, lacking in zest for life.”

When I’m about to complain, targeted fire showers down upon the renegades until they turn into ashen cylinders. It’s Tavi. She hiccups after the deed has been done. For a moment, she turns almost transparent, as though she’s at the cusp of another world.

The dead don’t speak, and now I’m out of dinner.

A passing annoyance is superseded by an epiphany. Pieces of memory lock in with each other: Tavi breathing fire onto squirming worms after a rain; Tavi blasting flames on the pests crawling under my succulent pots. Each time, Tavi almost blinking out of this world.

Tavi flickering back, dreamy-eyed, as though she’d been at the cusp of another world; perhaps one with different rules; one more befitting of a Goddess.

Crawlies trigger flames. Flames send her to a different world. Almost. If I can just make her breathe bigger flames…

I see an end to her quest; perhaps a win-win for everyone.

Tavi hocks what I think is a loogie, but turns out to be some kind of a cube.

“Sustenance,” Tavi whispers. It’s a loaf of bread with sharp corners.

“Thank you,” I say, and cut it into thin square slices. As I munch through a slice, Tavi drops a postcard onto my plate.

“Dessert,” she hisses.

My heart drops. It’s a black and white photograph of fireworks. I flip it back and find it empty, until my eyes lock onto a single dot. I feel the magnitude of what’s been compressed inside. I realize it’s Jaehee’s final goodbye.

A real one this time. Not like the one we had when we broke up. When Jaehee found me at the ice cream parlor.

That’s where I used to work. That night, right before the closing hour, a police officer entered the parlor. She took me aside. Broke the news of Mr. Giannelli’s death. Asked me if I could answer some questions. After a brief interview, I gave her a scoop of ice cream, served on two layers of waffle cones.

“For protection,” I said, pointing at the cones.

When she left, I locked the door. Instead of clocking out, I stood planted in front of the freezer.

There are moments when every thought devolves into a ‘What if?’

What if I pushed that glass of water on the countertop? Watch it shatter against the floor? What if I plucked the whiskers off that man in the subway? What if I stopped breathing?

I observed myself with detachment as my hand picked up the scoop and scooped out all the ice cream from the bins. The vanilla swirls; the strawberry fudge; the pistachio cream; the limoncello sorbet. Thunk, plonk, they went. Displacement, I thought, as I dropped each scoop onto the tiled floor. I crouched down on the floor and watched the ice cream melt. Colors swirled; rivulets eddied in the cracks between the tiles. Neon lights reflected off the glossy puddles. I lay down on top of the melting goo. Sweat and sludge fused, soaking into my uniform.

Jaehee found me—still on the ground—covered in melted ice cream and streaked with fudge.

“Fudge, Jaehee! I’ll die from fudge!” I croaked, smiling deliriously.

Jaehee’s eyes glazed over.

“You said you’d come,” she said, her voice trembling, cracking.

“What?”

Blinking through melted chocolate, I noticed her hands, mottled with grease and blood.

The protest.

She crouched down next to me. Fixed her gaze on mine.

“Jimin. You’re killing me.”

I saw fissures in her eyes. Heard it in her voice, too: the sound of things splintering, somewhere beyond the dancing flames.

By then, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about Mr. Gianelli. It felt like cheating. I knew she’d stay, extend her hand; but I wasn’t sure if that would pull me out of the sludge or suck her in.

I cover the dot with my index finger. I observe myself shuddering with sobs. Too late, I think, feeling the tug of a heavy anchor inside me.

A pair of wings covers my eyes like a warm shroud.

The Bog rises into flurries of flamelike waves.

You think you can rise up? No, you’re still going down.

Weakling.

You’re no martyr. Remember that.

The waves lick the grey sky. Shrieks break out from their depths.

Friday

Time refuses to stop. It’s a day.

“Quest?” Tavi croaks from the other side of the pillow. I sense an unfamiliar tremor in her voice.

“Quest,” I croak. I get up, brush my teeth, and change into my second-best suit. I open the door. Once again, and for the last time, Tavi and I brace the world together.

I stop by a pet shop. I buy a packet of live worms, a crunchy snack for hedgehogs and such. Tavi stays tranquil, nestling against my back.

And afterwards?

Why am I still walking towards the Bog in Hades?

Maybe, I want to prove it wrong. Maybe I want to tell someone—myself—that there’s change within stasis. That death, too, can evolve.

I stand on the edge of the familiar sludge.

Plop, plop, it murmurs.

I take a few steps back and place a flyer on the ground. I weigh it down with a broken rubble.

‘NO DEMOLITION,’ it says. An apparent act of bravery, only I know, deep down in my heart… But what do I really know? I shake my head. Too much thinking. Better act now. I walk back towards the Bog.

Tavi slides out from underneath my blazer.

“Quest!” she shrieks in agitation.

“Yes, quest.”

I take a deep breath. Squirt gasoline all over my body as Tavi hisses and claws at me.

The clothes hang heavy; cling to my body like mutinous skin. My feet squelch. I take a deep breath; brace myself for the blinding pain. I imagine the crushing weight that killed my parents. The rod that pierced Mr. Gianelli. The flames that seared the activist.

I dig out the packet of squirming worms from my pocket. I rip it open and catch a glimpse of instinct flashing past Tavi’s eyes. I mean to hold up the packet over my head; shower myself with worms.

I make the mistake of looking into the packet. The writhing movements of the worms shake loose unexpected, primal fear within me; me who had made peace—at least in abstraction—with the pain of being burnt alive.

I shriek and throw the packet into the Bog. Tavi’s flaming eyes lock into the target. She breathes fire.

The Bog’s surface laps up the flames, hungry for heat.

A conflagration.

The flames rise up; detach themselves from the ground and the Bog. Way up in the ether, they break apart into smithereens. Fire motes dance in the sky like Fireworks. I look down at the Bog, deserted by the flames. It has taken on a glossy sheen. I step into it, expecting to sink. But my feet stand on solid ground. I realize the fire has glazed over into a hard crust. With mounting disbelief, I stomp on it, feeling the brittle ground break into shards. At the center, I find a piece of porcelain—a clump of silt, baked into a shape. It looks like a paper crane.

I pick it up and fall to my knees. Memories rush back; enflame my heart. Mr. Gianelli with a sad smile, folding a paper crane into my hand. “Caro Jimin. Maybe some dots are hidden. Maybe one day, we’ll get to see them, connect them into something vaster than we ever knew.” Jaehee with wet lashes, holding a needle. “I don’t know, Jimin. Not a lot makes sense. But this is my sword, and I’ll die being a weaver.” Tears stream down my cheeks. I surrender.

“Tavi?” I croak.

Tavi has stumbled onto my left shoulder. She’s translucent now, her eyes half closed.

Soon, sirens of firetrucks surround us. I run out of Hades and dash towards the crossroads. Cold, crisp air flows into my lungs. The air is so fresh that my chest feels like it’s burning. The light changes to green, as though on cue. I turn left.

As I break into another run, I find my mind leaping past the bounds of today. I will get evicted; won’t find another job for a long while. Beautiful things will be destroyed, again and again. And Jaehee may never forgive me. But there will be fireworks somewhere. And…

I turn my head and see only faint glimmers of my friend.

An image leaps into my mind. Tavi, settling into my ashtray, poring over a book the size of a matchbox. What was its title again? Goddess of a Thousand Tears?

Maybe she really was a Goddess, all along. Maybe Goddesses watch over us. Frustrated. Powerless. Maybe it’s the powerlessness that fuels their compassion. The compassion that I didn’t deserve.

Tavi claws gently at my shoulder. My heart sinks.

“Epic,” she croaks, as she disappears into the ether.

“Epic,” I whisper back, already longing for her heft.

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Behind the Scenes with Sunwoo Jeong

-What was the initial inspiration for this story, and were there significant changes from

that inspiration through edits and revisions?

S.J. One day, a small dragon living in an ashtray wormed her way into my thoughts. I wanted to write a story about her. Quite separately, I’d also been thinking about a burping Bog. I decided to weave the two stories together. Once I knew the two stories belonged together, I think the core arc remained more or less the same throughout its different iterations.

-How does this story fit into your body of work – is it similar in ways to what you usually

write or is it very different?

S.J. I do write about creatures a lot. And I like exploring spaces where the mundane and the uncanny intersect. Jimin is quite different from the types of protagonists I usually write, though. More infuriating (but also hopefully more endearing).

-How would you describe the heart of this story?

S.J. Friendship between unknowable beings; what it means to have an epic quest in a story that doesn’t seem to allow for one; weaving meaning out of sound and fury—that sort of thing.

-Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about you, your work, or this piece?

Be kind to Tavi if one day she appears on your doorstep (or more likely, your windowsill)!