Vedika was tired and angry, but mostly tired. Anger was exhausting. Her husband’s father was infuriating even in the best of times – he belonged firmly to a generation that seemed stubbornly incapable of thinking of women as equals and seemed to regard her dedication to her career as a character flaw. The deafening silence of his judgement for the fact that the apartment she shared with his son was not spotless made it difficult to hear anything else. The old man wasn’t overtly rude of course, but it was clear he believed his son would have been better to marry a nice girl from back home than this half-breed woman with an Indian name and green eyes. She did not want him in her home and she especially did not want him passing on his ideas about a woman’s place in the world to her son, Arvind.

For his part, the old man kept his counsel to himself. He hardly spoke to his son and even less to his daughter in law. Ajay, her husband, sat on the couch with a mound of papers fanned out on the coffee table in front of him. Medical records from India and America both, alongside a pile of insurance papers and another pile of brochures for assisted living facilities.

Pita, I know you value your independence and I don’t want to take that away from you, but after your fall last week we need to make sure you are someplace safe.

Pita had fallen on the steps up to his apartment and lain there for several hours until a young couple coming down had found him and helped him to his apartment. Vedika and Ajay had tried to get him a cell phone several times but he complained that the numbers were too small and refused to carry it or keep it charged. When his landlord had called to tell them about the fall, Ajay had panicked.

The old man was, well, getting old. He had worked hard his whole life and, while he had never managed to amass much money, had paid Ajay’s way through college without a lot of student debt. It had not been a gift – it was a contract, an obligation. Ajay had dreamed of being an artist and drawn constantly as a young man but when he had expressed interest in art college the old man had gone into a rage and burned his sketch books. He had not travelled to this strange land and worked and saved for so long so his son could be a starving artist! Ajay would be an engineer and that was the end of the discussion. There had been tears and words of rage but in the end the old man got his way. The two had hardly spoken since, it was only her husband’s sense of duty that made him insist on the old man moving in. Ajay and Vedika had fought bitterly, she did not want Pita in her home! But they could not afford to put him in one of those assisted care homes. In the end, tears or no, it was as simple as that: Pita could not live alone any longer and there was nowhere else for him to go.

The old man didn’t like it any more than she did, it was obvious. He had always been independent and didn’t see any reason why something as mundane as old age should keep him down. She almost admired him, in spite of herself. Meanwhile, the conversation was getting heated and both men were starting to get louder. She hushed them, it would not do to have the neighbors talking and Arvind was asleep in the next room for his after-school nap.

Pita gave her a look of disdain but lowered his voice and turned to his son: “Ajay, I raised you to be responsible and respect your elders – not bully them!”

I am not bullying anyone, but it is not safe to leave you alone at your age. You took care of me alone for years after mom died. Let me do my duty as a son and take care of you now.

Pita was silent, struggling with the fact that he knew his son was right but could not bear the thought of life as an invalid. The thought of giving up his independence to be a guest in someone else’s house, even his son’s, was unbearable; but there was no way out. He was trapped. His shoulders slumped.

All right son, you win. I will give notice on my apartment this month.

It’s not what I want, I’m not winning anything dad. I’m just trying to be a good son and take care of you.

Fine! What do you want from me? Do you want me to be grateful?

Ajay noted with shock that the old man’s eyes were filling with tears. He tried to embrace him but was rebuffed.

I will be alright, I am not some invalid that needs to be coddled. Just give me time.

The flower was huge, pink, and spiny – like something from the surface of an alien world.  Jenna was enthralled.  Around her, the farmers market buzzed with people and activity, but she was long gone.   She pictured herself as the exiled queen of an ancient empire, cast adrift in space, her last loyal retainers around her as she worked to raise an army and reclaim her lost home world. The chief among them, Zarrow the mighty with his muscles ripling under his green skin in the red light of a dying sun, would carry it back from their last raid against the enemy to present to her, his queen, as a token of their forbidden love.

Jenna blushed to herself, a secret smile playing on the edge of her lips.

Suddenly, she was knocked aside, dreams scattered like sand in the surf, as her little brother Aaron barreled into her, hooting with delight.  He was playing tag and too busy running as fast as possible to bother looking where he was going.  Their mother, two stalls away, was trying her best to disavow all knowledge of the unruly herd and focus on picking out tomatoes from the big box.  As the mother of five she knew that the endless tribal warfare would never stop and had stopped trying years ago  As far as she was concerned, the kids were an autonomous nation of their own and as long as nobody needed to go to the emergency room, she just plain didn’t care.

Which was nice for her and all, but as the older sister Jenna felt the need to establish some order in the universe and so did her best to fill the void. In this case though, her chance had passed – Aaron had taken advantage of her temporary confusion to flee the scene of his crime and she didn’t feel like chasing him.  At 14 years old she was practically a woman and it was beneath her dignity.  More importantly, he was far enough away that she couldn’t easily catch him.  At least for now.

She turned back to the stall, looking for her flower and was surprised to see Adam (from her 4th period math class) at the till, buying flowers.  To her delight, she saw he’d picked out one of the big pink spiny ones and hoped for a moment he’d give it to her, dropping to one knee and proffering it with both hands and proclaiming his eternal devotion.  Instead, he stuck it in his bag, got on his bike and rode away; a gift for some other girl.  She tried not to feel disappointed, Adam wasn’t her type anyway.  He was nice to look at but not a lot going on upstairs.

She sighed and her shoulders slumped a bit before picking herself back up and saying under her breath “well Jenna, sometimes a girl has to buy her own flowers.  Might as well do it.”

She brought it home and put it in a vase by her bed, smelling its exotic perfume.   She dreamed.

The riots had been going on for days and, while Mo disliked the new government as much as the next guy, he was getting tired of living in a war zone.  Every wave of protests brought a wave of repression and new deaths, spurring another wave of protests.  The air was crisp and sharp – electric with the sense that a resolution is coming and it will involve blood on the cobblestones.  Either the government would fall or the police would crush the movement once and for all.  Mo didn’t know which way things would shake out, only that he was running low on food and with most of the grocery stores either locked up tight or looted things were looking bleak.

He picked his way through the streets carefully, doing his best to avoid both the protest encampments and the police who had taken to savagely beating anyone they caught alone who might be even remotely connected to the movement.  The protests and reprisals had mostly been focused in the city core so he figured his best bet was off in the suburbs.  As a student, Mo was nowhere near being able to afford a car and the cobblestones all along here had been ripped up to form barricades anyway – which of course meant no buses.   Fortunately, this early in the morning the sun was barely in the sky and the streets were mostly empty.

A steady walking pace took him out of the city core and into the neighboring town, 5 kilometers in about an hour.  The farmers coming in from the country to sell their produce were as unable to make the trip in as most of the people in the city were of making the trip out and they had set up an impromptu market in an abandoned lot.  Either the local police had been paid off to leave them alone or someone higher up was smart enough to realize police need to eat too and had given permission –  no one was talking about that part of things and Mo didn’t ask.   One stand in particular caught his attention – piled high with fresh peaches from a farm just outside the city, the fruit which had been destined for urban markets was  starting to go soft and over-ripe.

The farmer was desperate to sell and practically giving the crop away.  It was ironic – in past protests the farmers had been key in setting up roadblocks and supporting the movement but this time around the urban unions has declared the strike in response to the murder of union activists without stopping to consider the impact that the timing would have on their rural comrades.  Coming at the peak of the harvest it could hardly be worse!  Mo would have expected the man to be more upset but he seemed resigned to it

“Revolutions aren’t about convenience my young friend.  Sometimes you can choose when to fight and sometimes the fight chooses you.”

Maybe so.  But for now, Mo was more interested in choosing the best ripe peaches.  He picked 6 and handed over the money – both men laughing because there was no way to know if the paper would even be worth anything in a month.

He walked through the market and ate his breakfast (sticky peach juice inevitably running down his chin and into his beard) and almost tripped over a group of ragged children playing tag among the stands.  Many of the merchants had food they knew they couldn’t sell and that was going bad and had turned a blind eye to the little hands that were helping themselves.   A few days of such feasting had put the kids in a fine mood – years of worry and hunger erased from young faces, at least temporarily.  For kids who usually got by on scraps, a crate of fresh peaches was a treasure more precious than anything to be found in the presidents palace.

Watching them play, Mo wondered what future held. Maybe the President’s forces would drown the movement in blood.  And maybe the revolutionaries would win and end up being just as bad once in power.  The world is uncertain and people almost never get what they deserve for good or ill.  But watching the kids laugh, oblivious to all of it, Mo felt something hard in the pit of his stomach start to melt. The cynicism he wore like armor starting to crack.  He smiled.