It’s raining outside. She should sweep A-Po and Gong-gong’s graves again, when the sun returns.

The pattering of rain, slick and wet even in noise, brought back memories. Yilin lit the incense, and saw – in a daze – A-Po’s fingers guiding her, veins bulging from a wiry hand, the rough chafing of wrinkles imprinting on her smooth skin memories of a childhood spent imagining herself as a shapeshifter, morphing from the banker to the doctor to the lawyer, her mother’s stern expectations and her earnest dreams bleeding into one, from the moment she discovered cosmetics, discovered the possibility of becoming both whom they wanted and whom she wanted, finally.

She’d created a ritual for herself, modeled after A-Po’s: her grandmother used to worship forgotten deities she could not recall the names of, kneeling, praying before an altar that now held pictures of her grandparents. They are her gods now. They would look after her.

Incense burned, and for the first time in years, years since her grandparents passed, her eyes burned too.