[HERODOTUS SCRAWL — NOT YET WRITTEN]#

Editorial note to self: These two accounts are placed together because the mechanism is the same. The system spoke to both of them in the language of water. One answered in the language of the Mandate of Heaven; the other in the language of Article 4 and the Zocalo. I combined them because the refusal was identical and the grief was not.

[This connecting scrawl needs to be written. It should be brief — a paragraph or two from Herodotus explaining why he paired Liang and Maria Cruz. His editorial voice, not the characters’ voices.]