Posts Tagged ‘star-crossed’

silhouetted horses against a backdrop of the starry sky

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Cast of Wonders 620: Fording the Milky Way (Staff Picks 2024)

First published as Cast of Wonders 577, February 2024

Abusive relationships, dysfunctional families

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:32 — 32.3MB)

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Fording the Milky Way

by Megan Ng

There’s a festival celebrated in China that’s dedicated to young lovers. It is not one celebrated here, but Ma tells me about it all the same. Storytelling is our way of killing time as she makes supper for the ranch hands or patches Pa’s shirts, and whenever she’s sitting comfortably with her hands full I know I’m about to hear something interesting. Ma’s stories aren’t like the ones in books– hers seem more thrilling and real, even though I know she’s making most of them up.

She tells me a story about a beautiful weaver girl who lives among the stars and falls in love with a human cowherd. She tells me about a vengeful mother goddess who rips the sky in two with a hairpin to keep the lovers apart forevermore.

On the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the Jade Emperor takes pity on them, Ma says. He allows all the magpies of the world to form a bridge between the heavens, so that the weaver and her cowherd can see each other for a single night. (Continue Reading…)

silhouette of horses against a backdrop of the milky way

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 577: Fording the Milky Way

Cast of Wonders 577: Fording the Milky Way is a Cast of Wonders original.

Abusive relationships, dysfunctional families

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:37 — 32.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Fording the Milky Way

by Megan Ng

There’s a festival celebrated in China that’s dedicated to young lovers. It is not one celebrated here, but Ma tells me about it all the same. Storytelling is our way of killing time as she makes supper for the ranch hands or patches Pa’s shirts, and whenever she’s sitting comfortably with her hands full I know I’m about to hear something interesting. Ma’s stories aren’t like the ones in books– hers seem more thrilling and real, even though I know she’s making most of them up.

She tells me a story about a beautiful weaver girl who lives among the stars and falls in love with a human cowherd. She tells me about a vengeful mother goddess who rips the sky in two with a hairpin to keep the lovers apart forevermore.

On the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the Jade Emperor takes pity on them, Ma says. He allows all the magpies of the world to form a bridge between the heavens, so that the weaver and her cowherd can see each other for a single night. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 470: Matches

This story originally appeared in The Philippines Graphic Magazine in February 2019 and won First Prize in the Nick Joaquin Literary Awards for fiction.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:13 — 29.9MB)

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Matches

by Sydney Paige Guerrero

Madge used to make wishes on raindrops. Lev always said that you could see more raindrops on windows than stars in the night sky and while airplanes and city lights may try to trick you, raindrops were never anything except exactly what they were. Back when they were nine years old and his house was a sanctuary from the emptiness of her own home, they would spend hours wishing for impossible things–ice cream cones that tasted like any flavor they could think of, unicorns and giant robots whisking them away from their math homework, Madge’s father coming home from Singapore to celebrate her birthday. Their fingers would draw new constellations, follow raindrops as they slid across the glass like shooting stars, and let themselves believe that anything was possible even just for a while.

It would be easy, she thinks, to make such a wish now as she watches raindrops quiver on the taxi window. Madge could wish the past year and a half away, go back to a time before she and Lev broke up, before he told her he was getting married, before she ran away to an entirely different universe to escape him. Easy, yes, but certainly not true. (Continue Reading…)