I care for the sun god who nests at the top of Hua Mountain, perched in a bed of feathers and torn silk plucked from the branches where women’s scarves once hung to dry. It’s an easy job: I only need to blanket the god in the evening and wake it up in the morning and it knows to do the rest: lend its warmth to the breathing, coax seedlings to the surface, put the owls to sleep. While the sun god works, I weave its blanket, a fabric growing larger by the day but never faster than the expansion of the sun god’s domain. There is always something new it hasn’t touched before: mountains formed from magma rising and lifting the earth’s surface, cracks in the ground created by plates shifting, canyons carved by water deeper and deeper until the sun god can no longer reach, though it tries. There is always something new that needs blanketing. I warp the loom, pulling the strings tight. The threads are made from cloud bodies and pollen dusted off flowers with no trees to shield them. The blanket folds by my feet as it lengthens, a slow trickle of fabric. I weave prayers of the sun god into my fabrics so those nestled away from its glance may obtain a blessing. The sun god doesn’t speak much, and yet it is more than I have space for on the loom.
In turn for my care, the sun god protects me from the anger of the fires that spread with each passing day, devouring the land as oceans once did, spilling and crushing and carving the world flat. I’ve lost many blankets to the fires.
I ask the sun god what drives the fire’s wrath, but it tells me not to worry, the fire cannot live long, not once it has razed down all surrounding willows and shrubs. I move to different caves whenever the fire draws near, often a climb over the next mountain or a scrambling exercise through plants and vines, but I’ve grown accustomed to moving quickly and dream of reaching the peak of Hua Mountain where it is said nothing can touch you—not a flame or a scattering of hail or dust storm that so often chases me until I am further out than where I had begun. The fires make it increasingly difficult to approach Hua Mountain. I reside by the coast, sleeping in the sand and eating seaweed that washes onto shore. The fires are not so stupid to move to the oceans.
I can tell the sun god grows lonely as the nights lengthen and daylight flickers like a rip in the sky. The sun god sleeps in the cold while I am warm within the sand, inhaling ash and burning bark. I wrap the blanket I’ve woven around me, trying to smother out the scent.
When the fires reach me again, I ask what drives them. They blame the forests, the greenery that once stood as though nothing could cull them. They blame the woodland creatures scurrying around even as the sun god blesses them with its every movement and breath, tirelessly. They tell me they were sent by the sun god as a form of self-correction, and that they can learn to burn any entity. Even the ocean, they swear. Give them a chance and they’d evaporate the entire basin of water and send it so far away even Earth can no longer latch onto the vapor.
But not me, I insist. I would not roast alongside the rest, else who would be left to cover the sun god. The fires lick the edges of my blanket, spreading and dancing to the pull of gravity, and I look away from their glow, keeping my limbs snug within the threads which seem brighter under the light like they’ve been dusted with ember fireflies. The flames are warm, but not hot. I let my feet reach toward the edge so my toes can thaw. My weavings don’t burn under the fire because the yarn is imbued with phoenix feathers, a gift from the sun god who rises and self-immolates so regularly that I imagine the pain has become a passing thought.
The fires laugh, a thunderous crackle of burning branches that’ve been blown toward the ocean. The sun god has abandoned the mountain, they say. And we’ve burned it down. I look toward Hua Mountain. It had been standing tall just several days ago, covered in granite and alpine shrubs and broad-leaved forests. But now, I cannot even see the shape of a peak in the distance, my eyes watering from the heavy smoke casting a shield over my surroundings. I pull the blanket over my head and clench the edges together.
Looking away won’t make a difference, the fires chortle. I gather the fabrics in my fists and hold my palms to my heart.
When the sun god first rescued me from the remains of Si City, it taught me to lay my clothing outside so the sun could disinfect the stench of death from my body. It guided me far from the city despite my desire to linger. I’d look back at the empty streets and high rises, decaying monuments, and glass structures with cracked panels waiting for someone to call me back. No one did, of course. They’d all fled Si City earlier when the power plants collapsed from a Great Shaking. I had been a tile setter, constantly handling grout and cutting ceramic, but the remaining cities no longer used hand-cut tiles in their buildings, instead constructing them from acrylic and fiberglass with monolithic machines, and so I lingered behind, scavenging from one empty building to the next until they too crumbled and the sun god found me from beneath the rubble. It guided us away from the ruin, nurtured me when I fell sick, taught me which plants I could eat, sang lullabies in an indecipherable language when I lashed out from my sleep in fits, trembling at the memory of concrete blocks suffocating my face. In return, I began to weave the sun god a blanket because it kept me warm.
I poke my head from the blanket and tie it around my neck like a cape. I turn to the south, where Hua Mountain should be. The fires, like they’ve grown bored with me, dance down the sand toward the sea and approach and run away from the tide like children tempting a wolf. I walk through the remaining flames and stomp them down while the blanket trails behind me.