The iron bars of a cage can be kind of a comfort when the world outside is all hungry teeth and slicing fins.

Mena wondered if her grandmother, the djinn, had ever thought of reshaping the world so it was more amenable to her. A world of hot wind and bursting stars, where women walked strong and brown and proud over land that sang to their bones, where the fires that burned in their veins were lights in the firmament and not threats to be smothered into nothingness at all costs.

A world of hot wind and bursting stars

Peoples desires were easy to read, clear as bottled glass and just as sturdy.

But we will not bury our mother. We have no interest in putting her bones in soft ground, no desire for memorials and platitudes, no feelings attached to the organic detritus of her terminated existence.

Maybe it was for the better. Teach them early that dreams and wishes are things that bring only pain, that nothing comes for free, that for every piece of good fortune, somehow and somewhere the universe will balance itself out with misfortune.

How simple our wants are as children, how easily satisfied.

The powerful can make the truth dance to their song.