It was a velvet of a night. I walked along a river that had once birthed a city, but now forgotten, now a ruin. The warm spring breeze nudged the last chill of winter gently away, and the stink of the water awakened, rising like grudge from a sick belly. The sound started softly, and then it grew. It was a croak, a bubble, a splutter. It was singular and then an orchestra. The first call said simply this: I am here. But the voices that answered altered the song: not I am here, but WE are here. Under a crescent moon, in the river that is often written off as dead, the frogs, 100 new, 100 born, started to sing. They filled the silence with their lust, their wonder, their pure joy of being alive and together in this river.
Carrianne Leung
Carrianne Leung is a fiction writer. Her books include The Wondrous Woo and That Time I Loved You. She is working on a new novel, The After.
