I always remember snow speckling the orange cone of streetlight that held my first kiss. It wasn’t snowing that night. This was before time fractured, left me slipping through its cracks like a bead of water.
Indrapramit Das
Indrapramit Das is a writer and artist from Kolkata, India. His fiction has appeared in publications including Clarkesworld Magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction and Redstone Science Fiction, and in the anthologiesBreaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana (Zubaan Books), and Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars. He has work forthcoming in athologies including Gardner Dozois’The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press). He is a grateful graduate of the 2012 Clarion West Writers Workshop, and a recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship Award to attend the latter. He completed his MFA at the University of British Columbia, and is currently in Vancouver working as a freelance writer, artist, editor, game tester, tutor, would–be novelist, and aspirant to adulthood. Follow him on Twitter @IndrapramitDas.
The Widow and the Xir
Namir watches his wife and son as they sift baking salt-pans under the sun. They help gather the wet mounds of white clay that will be turned to dry powder later. If they see him, they will avert their eyes. If he comes any closer, they will flee in fear and alert the village.