Can you talk a bit about how this story took shape and what inspirations fed into it?

It started with the idea of telling fortunes through tea leaves from Chinese traditions and how I find interesting there are many who seek to know the future, yet would ignore glaring issues and impending paths in front of them that can be understood without divination. The growing issue of climate change and disasters has been something I’ve been exploring more in my works, particularly through a science fantasy lens that is less hard science but more so meditative and taps into human nature and our connection to the natural world.

While reading I couldn’t tell if this is a post-climate change future viewed through a fantastic lens or a secondary world with no connection to Earth, and I thought that was rad. Was this a reading you intended to be transmitted, and are there other readings you had hope that readers would invest in?

Given that I do not personally have a science background, even with research, I often find it difficult to ground my science fiction in real science and so chose to explore a post-climate change future through a fantastical lens, but I also wanted to offer secondary world elements to further illuminate the issues at hand and how they might manifest in the form of what doesn’t exist within our own world yet feel as though these fantastical and secondary world elements are still grounded in our reality. When approaching science fantasy like this story, I want to give enough of the world and allow readers to interpret the rest, to bring in their own ideas, experiences, feelings, and become a part of the story in immersing the reading rather than being distant from the piece.

This story is full of emotions: anger at “unjust treatment” and a burning determination for revenge, but against people who themselves suffer because of the original treatment. What led you to wrap the story around these feelings?

One thing I find interesting is the cyclical nature of humanity, of repeating pasts and histories, of being unable to move forward somehow even as time passes, at the way we always seem to be causing our own destruction even when what we truly desire is peace. Injustice is something that has persisted throughout human history, and it is something that seem as though it will always be prevalent, and the solution we often turn to when it seems our kindness has been taken for granted, when our benefit of doubt has been thrown back in our faces like cold water, when our trust is stomped on like nothing, is revenge.

Between the focus on the human child and the nature of the elemental narrators, the story led me to reflect on the themes of revenge and the justification of atrocities being not only easy, but immature. I’m sure those aren’t the only ones implicit in it. How did you develop the themes at play in the story, and did they change during the writing?

I find the ideas I begin a story with always evolve, and I usually allow the story to guide me in what it wants to be and what it wants to say. One thing I wanted the human child to symbolize is hope. Something people around me always say is that the next generation is the future of the world, of humanity, and it’s something I believe in as well, because when we are no longer alive, it is those who come after us who must deal with the consequences we’ve left behind, redirect the course of humanity’s path, and reshape the future for better or worse—though hopefully it’s the former.

Is there anything you’re working on that you’d like to talk about? What can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

The novel I have on submission is somewhat in line with this story, a science fantasy about a post-apocalyptic world inspired by Chinese Opera. I’m hoping to finish two projects very close to my heart later this year as well—one that’s a blend of haunted house, body horror, and in the vein of Cloud Atlas, and the other is an expansion of my short story “Give Me English.” Next year, I have a science fantasy novella duology coming out with Titan Books, the first of which is titled A Palace Near the Wind—nature versus industrialism through a secondary fantasy steampunk world. There might be some announcements forthcoming . . . so hopefully all the readers will check in for future updates!