Book Two
2.1
The thicket is glass and iron, flowers opening into toothless gums that suck at and adhere to her scales. Flat against the soil that gives them life, Xiaoqing does not breathe. The push of her heart oozes slow; the pull of her blood dulls still. It is the right season: snow crystallizes in her mouth and in the crook of her neck, covering her vertebrae with flesh-memories of hibernation.
Her thoughts congeal and clot.
The monk comes, and perhaps for a time he pauses, casting for a sense of reptiles. She rears. Her hand enters and exits him, a drenching of arterial paste like molten lead, a crackling of stomach and kidneys like live coals. He reels with the force of her, onto the iron leaves which unfurl blades sharp as mortality. He bares red-rimmed teeth as the leaves serr
