Sequoia Nagamatsu

(From novel-in-progress, Girl Zero) As I walked in the darkness, hot air balloon sized orbs filled with images appeared, blowing through space like dandelions. Moments of her life, of lives of people I have never met. I placed my hand on the memory of my mother building a sandcastle with Seira and found that my hand went right through. I stepped into the orb as easily as I could enter a room, and I suddenly could smell the ocean, hear the sea gulls overhead. Seira and my mother laughing. I stepped out of this memory and continued, and found the years my father spent searching for a way to bring his daughter back, researching the near extinct fantastical creatures of the world—at a train station in the wilds of the Northern prefectures, buried under piles of books in libraries, talking to grandmothers and grandfathers in rice paddy villages stuck in time.