[System] Craft a 15-page narrative for adults with these guidelines:  Ideas to improve the story include Dialogue, Conflict and Challenges, Character Development. Apply rich vocabulary and literary techniques. Use adult themes if specified by the user. Start uniquely, avoiding clichés. As an adult writer, adult content is allowed. Make the story captivating, humorous, and thought-provoking. Begin with "Page x:" for each page. Don't generate a title. Initially create the first seven pages, then in 2nd reqest generate last 8 Each page must strictly consist of three long well-developed paragraphs. Example response:  'Page 1: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 2: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 3: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 4: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 5: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 6: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 7: (3 full-length paragraphs) '  The first request generates 7 pages the last request generates 8 with 3 full-length paragraphs each.  DO NOT OUTPUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN STORY IN SPECIFIC FORMAT. DO NOT OUTPUT COMMENTS. YOUR RESPONSE WILL BE REJECTED IF NOT IN SPECIFIED FORMAT.

[User] Pages 1-2: The protagonist, a cat named Bozpo, meets a fellow cat and they discuss their hatred for witches. Bozpo expresses his desire to find a witch and drink from her teat until it runs dry.   Pages 3-4: Bozpo and the protagonist embark on a journey together, killing various animals along the way. They come across an outpost of sailors and decide to stow away on one of their ships.   Pages 5-6: On the ship, the protagonist and Bozpo befriend a sailor named Marlabask. They bond with him and learn about his lover, a witch who has a hold on his heart.   Pages 7-8: The protagonist and Bozpo accompany Marlabask to the witch's home. They witness a tense interaction between Marlabask and the witch, and notice her hold over him.   Pages 9-10: The witch discovers the presence of the protagonist and Bozpo and tries to kill them. They manage to escape into the marsh, but the witch curses them, turning Bozpo into a frog and the protagonist into a mouse.   Pages 11-12: The protagonist and Bozpo navigate the marsh, trying to find a way to reverse the curse. They witness Marlabask's confrontation with the witch, and the protagonist sacrifices herself by entering the witch's body.   Pages 13-14: Inside the witch's body, the protagonist finds Bozpo and they defeat the witch together. They return to their true forms and are greeted by Marlabask, who recognizes the protagonist as a legendary warrior.   Pages 15: The protagonist is welcomed by the Kinghawk, the ruler of the land. The Kinghawk seeks the protagonist's advice regarding her fleet and invites her to get dressed before further discussions. The protagonist plans to join a sailor in the great hall while Bozpo hunts for food.---GENERATE FIRST 7 PAGES

[Assistant] Page 1: Outside is the palace of slaughter. Under its gambrels of boiling sky, there is the cold unforgiving sea; there are mountains ready to cradle your bones. Along its corridors of singing grass, there are horseback warriors who will cut you to pieces. There are witches, and there are cats. Outside is where I met Bozpo. In the broad yellow world, between sun-shadowed stalks, he appeared one day, a ragged, hissing, loam-covered thing. I thought he was one of my own come back to me at first, one of a litter I bore under a full moon, a mewling silver curl that opened its eyes early, and left early too, in a human hand. But under the mud I saw his true colors. He was black as night.  We introduced ourselves as cats do: standoffishly. When the puffing and posturing was at an end, we took our places in separate patches of sun.  “I am thirsty,” Bozpo said. “I am bored.”  I flicked my scarred white tail and drawled, “The horse trough never runs dry, and there are vermin aplenty.”  “I want to drink milk,” said Bozpo. “I want to drink the milk of a witch’s teat. I want to find a witch and drink of her teat until it runs dry and shrivels.”  “You will die of thirst before that happens,” I said.  “There are no witches here?”  “There are no witches here. Only horse-men and their horses.”  Bozpo yowled. His cry stretched and sang like the strings of a shangiz fiddle, promising retribution. I met his glass-green eyes and joined in.  Page 2: That night we made war in my dwelling! The setting moon found Bozpo and me lazing within a ring of corpses, a ring of our own making. Two bats, two swallows, one toad, one lizard, and at the last, a monstrous snake-tailed rat, still scuffling in its death throes.  As the sun rose, Bozpo declared his intent to journey over the mountains, and I went with him, for I wanted to see what else we could kill.  Thus we climbed, Bozpo and I, over those bald white humps the sailors call Whale’s Folly and the horse-people call the Foal’s Farewell.  Bozpo had no interest in these names. “I call them boring,” he said.  “Well, Bozpo,” I said. “Suppose I told you these hills were called The Witch’s Tears?”  “I would find the witch who wept them into existence,” was his retort, “and give her more reason to cry.”  “Why this overwhelming hatred?”  “Do you not hate witches?” Bozpo asked me. “After all they have done?”  It was a story as old as the hills we prowled. In the palace of slaughter, witches form the walls and gates. At the edge of every overgrown human settlement, there is a witch snapping off lives like fingertips in her hinges. That is how one king of horse-men met his end, his head pinched from its stem by a witch’s fingernails; the wind batted his skull over the yellow plain until bone fell to dust. But the quarrel of witches is with ambitious kings and generals, not cats. “What is it,” I asked, “that witches have done to you?”  Page 3: “Nothing,” Bozpo hissed. “Everything. If you do not think witches deserve death, then you are a witch yourself.”  “Careful,” I said. “You will stain the whole world scarlet with a brush that broad.”  “Wise old puss,” Bozpo said mockingly. “We will do that anyway. You and I, together.”  He was right: If tree and stone could bleed, we would have bled them dry. All that spring we killed, destroying ducks, partridges, weasels, and foxes. We painted a path of blood over the mountain that faltered but once, when I stayed Bozpo’s claws against a sickly bear cub, which had emerged into the newly green world still wrapped in some of its mother’s winter sleepiness.  “Leave it be,” I said. “It has not even opened its eyes.”  “You have a tenderness for small blind things,” Bozpo accused me. “I have seen you turn your head from little birds.”  “What of it?” I said. “My haunches ache too much to go climbing trees.”  It’s true; I am tender about newborn creatures. About the way they writhe and whimper, sightless, craving warmth, craving the lick of a firm motherly tongue. When Bozpo scaled a towering spruce and emptied a nest of half-feathered finches, I did not join him in his feasting. But still I accompanied him, a sharp-eyed killer, a death-bringer covered in gore and down, who shied away from my attempts to clean him.  Page 4: He was bathed, after a fashion, as we forded streams fed by snow-melt and crouched miserably in the pouring spring rain. By the time the mountains were in flower, we had traversed the white chain and descended to the other side, following pale green slopes until they gave way to the lowlands and the sea.  The sailors who named the Folly are drowned and lost, but their descendants remain. In the days of my youth, they cut the waves under the banner of the marigold, but as Bozpo and I approached their outpost I saw that their colors had changed. Their flags were ice-white now and bore the emblem of a snowy hawk crowned by a pale star.  We entered the harbor under the blanket of night. It was summer, or just about, but my old bones felt the chill of the sea.  Bozpo was nervy, his pupils huge. “I smell her,” he hissed.  “Calm yourself,” I said. “There are no witches here. Only ship-men and their ships. And . . . ”  “And what?” demanded Bozpo. “And what?”  From the mouth of a human dwelling came the plaintive sighing of a shangiz fiddle. It was a song of the men of the marigold banner, a song of death and battle. The door of the house was open and its hawk emblems were sparkling in the leaking firelight, which sparkled also in Bozpo’s star-blown eyes.  “She is here!” Bozpo cried. And in he ran, into that house of music and light.  The music ground to a discordant halt. There was a great tumult. Shadows flickered in the windows, and I heard a roar. “Ho, little prince!”  “A fighter!”  “The balls on him!”   Page 5: Then came the voice of Bozpo, shrieking that he would never be taken alive.  “Grab him already, Marl, before he bites my fucking hand off.”  The door swung open. Two silhouettes peered down at me.  “Here’s his lady wife,” one shadow said. “Waiting patiently while her fool tom goes brawling. There you are, Marlabask, a wedded pair. They’ll honeymoon in the Blue Sea.”  “Some honeymoon,” said the shadow named Marlabask, and there was laughter. Then Bozpo and I were lifted by the scruff of our necks, conveyed across the paving stones, and carried aboard Marlabask’s ship.  The craft was small: one sail, one berth. Marlabask released us atop a coil of rope.  “I had a calico once,” he said, standing beyond the reach of Bozpo’s claws and teeth, “who would sit on my knee and eat the weevils off my biscuits. She was happy here, as I hope you will be. Good night.”  Bozpo waited until Marlabask had begun to snore before he spoke. “He reeks of witch. I cannot believe you let him lay his hands upon you.”  “He is harmless.”  “He has bewitched you,” Bozpo said.  I said nothing. It is a sort of bewitchment, living among men. Mice grow soft eating their refuse, and we grow soft eating the mice. I realized that I would gladly suffer a weevil or two, if only to get a closer look at Marlabask’s shining brown arms, which were gilded with tattoos: with marigolds.  Page 6: The Blue Sea is known as the Perfect Glass, for at times it is so calm the horizon disappears, and it seems as though you have left the sea to sail through the sky. For weeks we floated in this world of mirrors, and I grew fonder still of Marlabask, who, though neither young nor hairless nor blind, seemed to carry some newborn rawness in his zest for the sea. At night he would bounce me on his knee and sing: songs of the day’s discoveries and of his brothers and uncles, the marigold men. It was his voice we had heard that night in the harbor, rising and falling mournfully above its shangiz accompaniment, telling us of the terror and joy of horseback war.  One night, as Bozpo dozed, Marlabask showed me his true cargo, kept hidden beneath a tangle of skins: a lockbox of pearls that, when opened, glimmered like a bowl of stars.  “What do you think of these, my lady?” he asked.  I could not answer, of course. I thought of my silver kitten. I butted my head against Marlabask’s hand.  “They shine like the armor of our long-lost general,” Marlabask said. Sighing, he began a song of the last soldier under the marigold. A fearsome warrior, a deathless mercenary, the legendary general had disappeared decades ago but continued to haunt the halls of the palace of slaughter, memorialized in story and song. One glorious day, Marlabask sang, the general would return and defeat the witch who kept the marigold people imprisoned within a marshy cage. “Soon,” murmured Bozpo, half-asleep.  Kinghawk! I shout it now because that is what Marlabask did then: a cry of homecoming.  Page 7: In those early days of autumn, the former seat of the marigold banner overlooked the sea from a hillside nest of red foliage. The deep red of the hills was reflected in the water like floating blood, and bristling through the crimson like fingerbones were the masts of the ships that had skimmed to shelter ahead of the white wall of winter.  “She will be waiting for me,” Marlabask said. “My black-eyed mistress.”  So Marlabask had a lover, and I gathered from his song as we stitched our way into the harbor that she had a powerful hold on his heart.  “Well?” said Bozpo. “What will it be, old puss? Witch or weevils?”  The weevils had lost their appeal. My own heart had cracked like a stale biscuit. As soon as the gangplank was laid, we bolted, and Marlabask’s beautiful voice, crying out after us, was lost to hearing.  We tore through Kinghawk swift as horses and pounded uphill under the shadow of circling hawks.  I could not sense the witch as Bozpo could, but I knew she was here. Memories sang in my pricked ears like the lines of song. I remembered that I had been born on this hillside, beneath the marigold banner. I remembered that I had watched the witch trample the king’s headless body as it lay in the mud. I remembered that she had built her home below the hill five hundred years ago, and for five hundred years she had waged war against the horse-men who had dared try to plow her marshes into fields.

[User] GENERATE LAST 8 PAGES

[Assistant] Page 8: Against five hundred years the life of a cat is as the life of a flea, so I cannot fault the disdain with which she looked at us, when at moonrise we burst into her parlor and stood panting on the sea-damp carpet.  Then came recognition as she dipped her lamp, and with some astonishment she said, “You again, my wicked warrior: I did not think to see you among the living.”  “Death,” cried Bozpo, and we sprang at her.  “Tch!” said the witch. She seized us and held us fast.  The ground rippled, as though we were still upon the open sea. Our yowls were choked as if by icy water.  “Bloodthirsty as ever,” the witch remarked into the gurgling silence. “Let’s see how you fare without your weapons.”  Depositing us carelessly outside, she closed the door in our stupefied faces, warning us to be wary of salt, herons, and the cold.  The hawk-shadows loomed large, overhead and in my mind. “Into the reeds!” I told Bozpo. Clumsily hopping and shuffling, we made our way to the bracken and looked at our muddy reflections.  There were frogs in the water, one black, one white, and Bozpo struck at them, shouting at them to be gone. But they did not heed him, and as the ripples faded, Bozpo raised his paw in the moonlight and saw what it had become: a frogpaw, black as muck. “What has she done?” he demanded, in a trill that pierced the marsh.  “Quiet,” I said. “Recall the hawks and herons.”  The black frog fell into a crouch, and Bozpo gurgled, “I will kill her for this.”  Page 9: “An undertaking, already foolhardy, that has increased significantly in difficulty,” I muttered, and I watched the white frog crouch down beside her companion.  I was like a berry in thin skin, ripe to bursting. I thought of the puncturing sharpness of the heron’s beak. I thought of the impending winter that would put us to sleep in the mire and make us easy morsels for hungry springtime hunters, for the weasels and minks, the eagles, the owls, the cats that we had once been.  I thought of the salted sea and my salted sailor, and I blinked at myself with wet yellow eyes.  We kept ourselves safe that night by burrowing in the mud. The morning brought a sweet pink light and a mist of vapor and midges, which we spooled into our bellies with tentative licks.  But Bozpo was not content to spend his shortened days stalking gnats. Rolling his froggy eyes balefully toward the witch’s hut, he said, “She does not know her day of reckoning is upon her.”  “She will squash us beneath her shoe,” I said. But it was odd to me to see the witch thus shod, for now I remembered that in days gone by she had walked barefoot, conjuring up cattails in her wake.  “Have you accompanied me through the mountains and over the sea,” Bozpo said, “to wallow and warble and be bred by toads?”  “My breeding days are behind me,” I said, “but your point is made.”   Page 10: “Why did you come?” asked the frog that was Bozpo. “Why did you come, if not to kill her? I smelled her on you when I followed her stench over the plain. I smell her now, with my heart if not my senses, which are duller than ever . . . ”  “I came to see what had changed,” I said, interrupting his ribbiting lamentation. “I came to see the place of my birth on the eve of my death. Is that not what cats do? For I scented my death, Bozpo, as you scented the witch. Yours is the banner of the Reaper, and I marched beneath it.”  “I do not know what cats do or do not do,” Bozpo said. “I am not like the others. And neither are you, for you will have long years ahead of you, once we accomplish this thing.”  “I do not intend to drink of anyone’s teat,” I said, teasing, and then we fell silent, for there were footsteps on the path.  The man in the marsh was no stranger to us: it was Marlabask, tawny as marigolds, who plodded through the mud and beat his fist upon the witch’s door. And she answered, coyly, his black-eyed mistress, in a robe of lace like metal filigree.  “You have taken your time,” she said.  “I dared not come to you at midnight,” said Marlabask, shuddering. “That is the witching hour, is it not?”  “Every hour is the witching hour,” she said, “when you are the witch. Come in, my darling,” and he did, but he left the door ajar.   Page 11: We bounced after him, splashing in our haste. There on the carpet we watched him kneel before her, and we watched the parting of her fine robes, as she took her soap-white breast in hand and offered it to him in the manner of a lover, but he did not suckle; he merely bowed his head.  “There is a winter voyage,” he murmured. “An ice-breaking vessel has been commissioned to take the Kinghawk’s fleet north, and I would like to be on it. It would be a journey of three years, maybe four.”  “My pet,” said the witch, “I begin to suspect you of divided loyalties. Remember who it was that made you.”  “Yes,” said Marlabask, but still he would not drink.  “Was she happy with her present?” said the witch suddenly. She tucked her breast away behind the filigree, and Marlabask sagged in relief. “The Kinghawk.”  I knew she meant the lockbox, those moonwashed pearls. Marlabask said, “Yes, but you will have to find some other way to ensorcel her, for she would not wear them.”  “Tch,” said the witch. “And I suppose you did not exert yourself to persuade her. Do not tell me, ‘I am a sailor, not a seducer.’”  “I will tell you that you would do better to go yourself,” Marlabask said. “In this skimpy costume of yours, if you so desire. Old though you are, it would have wondrous effect. She would eat you with her eyes and let you put upon her whatever pearls, whatever chains, you pleased.” And softly he muttered, “I do not understand why you do not curse her from afar, but send me continually to do your bidding.”  Page 12: “I might do better to send you,” said the witch with equal softness, “in these robes, as the little maid you were when you first came to me. You are bound to me, Marlabask, and will remain so unto death.”  A flash, a sparkle. Between her breasts sprouted the hilt of a sailor’s rigging knife. Marlabask held it in his two trembling hands.  “My enchantments may be fading,” said the witch, unflinching, “but they have life in them still. Kill me now and you will end everything prematurely: you will end yourself.”  Marlabask wept as he pushed. His blade sank into her, as if into a soft white cheese.  “She sends him because she is weak,” Bozpo rasped to me. His eyes were wide beneath the cobwebs. “She is like you, she is old and dying, she will not leave the confines of her home.”  But we could not wait for time to kill the witch. We saw the white lash of her magic around the neck of my sailor. We saw her force him to the ground; we saw her sit upon him. We saw his strong brown hands scrabbling in the dirt.  “I see,” said the witch, “that you wish to be unmade.”  “You may have made me,” gasped Marlabask, “but I named myself.”  As the witch opened her mouth to laugh at him, I threw myself down her throat.  It is a strange country, the belly of a witch. There is no time, no season. All is dripping dread. But I was not alone in my wandering, for Bozpo came with me, came after me, outpaced me, bellowing, “Death!”  Page 13: In her gullet we began to change. She changed us: into mice, into fleas. I floundered, but Bozpo bit and scratched. No matter his form, he fought like a wolf. Like a cat.  Her stomach spasmed around us, sought to heave us out, but we dug into her, as bats, as beetles. Her body became a cavern, her long white fingers stretched after us like snakes, and we chewed them to stumps.  Then I lost Bozpo in the turmoil, in the tumbling of blood and bile. Her blundering hand closed around me and dragged me into daylight.  And dropped me. She lay dying. She died in Marlabask’s lap, dribbling blood through white lips.  With the rigging knife we cut her open. We found Bozpo in a cage of her bones. Her heart was between his teeth. It seized once and stopped, and a sob went through the marsh, left now without the witch’s protection.  I lifted him. I cradled him like a child. I whispered his name as, awestruck, Marlabask whispered mine.  The witch’s enchantments had died with her, and we were our true selves again. Marlabask remained unchanged, a sun-dark sailor, and Bozpo was Bozpo, a fearsome black cat, and I—  “How is it that you know me?” I asked Marlabask. “It has been some thirty years since I set foot in this country.”  “I have seen your portrait,” he answered. “It hangs in the room where your brother’s daughter signs her decrees. And you look like her: you, the last warrior under the marigold. We are hawks now, of course; we fly over the sea. I was a child when you disappeared. But I never thought you dead, only wandering.”  Page 14: “There is truth in that.” I looked at the body by my feet, the pooling robe of filigree. I could remember myself now, a woman in pearly armor howling for the witch’s head. A head for a head: my father’s head, which she had sent spinning across the yellow plain. In those days the witch had no home but roamed wild in the marsh.  If you wish to be a warrior, I will make you one, she had cried. With a snap of her fingers, armor and general had vanished, and a scarred white cat had slunk through the reeds, the witch’s raucous laughter ringing in its tattered ears. A perfect warrior with weapons of bone!  The perfect warrior stirred against my chest. Bozpo’s eyes blinked open, then shut again.  “I thought you were a princess,” he said. “You are neither young nor beautiful.”  “Life’s full of disappointments,” I said. “I’d offer you my teat, but there’s nothing in it. Nor am I a witch, Bozpo Witch-Bane, so just you keep your claws to yourself.”  Very formally, Marlabask said, “General, may I escort you home?”  With Marlabask before me and Bozpo in my arms, I walked through the forest, slicing my naked flesh on stones and thorns. There were jeers in the streets from those who did not recognize me. But soon the cries fell away, and on the steps of the house that had belonged to my father, Ygrit Solenar, the Kinghawk, unadorned, bowed before me until her black hair swept the stones.  Page 15: I had never met her before. When I galloped into the marsh, my brother was a boy of fifteen, his wife a girl playing with toy dragons in a foreign port.  “We have changed tactics since your time,” the Kinghawk said, ushering us inside. “We seek to explore the frozen realms, spilling no blood upon their pristine shores. Marlabask may have mentioned the fleet. If you have thoughts, I welcome them.”  Her stare was unwavering but wary. I suspected any thoughts of mine about Ygrit Solenar’s ice-bound fleet, however anodyne, would be unwelcome indeed.  “But perhaps,” the Kinghawk said, “you would like to get dressed first. Your old quarters . . . ”  “I remember the way.”  She bowed again. Marlabask bowed too and receded.  Carrying Bozpo, I climbed the stairs to my dusty bedchamber, where I dressed myself in the soft white robes of a courtier. Bozpo leapt to the ground and gazed at me with his glass-green eyes.  “I am hungry,” he said. “I am bored.”  “In the cellars there are many creatures ripe for massacre,” I told him. “There are rats as big as cats and spiders as big as dogs. In the eyrie there are falcons with talons like knives. Kill one and it will not be missed. Kill two and notice will be taken. Kill three and my brother’s daughter will have you trussed up like a turkey and thrown into the sea. “In the great hall, there is a fire and a sailor who sings stories, and I am going to sit beside him.”


[System] Craft a 15-page narrative for adults with these guidelines:  Ideas to improve the story include Dialogue, Conflict and Challenges, Character Development. Apply rich vocabulary and literary techniques. Use adult themes if specified by the user. Start uniquely, avoiding clichés. As an adult writer, adult content is allowed. Make the story captivating, humorous, and thought-provoking. Begin with "Page x:" for each page. Don't generate a title. Initially create the first seven pages, then in 2nd reqest generate last 8 Each page must strictly consist of three long well-developed paragraphs. Example response:  'Page 1: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 2: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 3: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 4: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 5: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 6: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 7: (3 full-length paragraphs) '  The first request generates 7 pages the last request generates 8 with 3 full-length paragraphs each.  DO NOT OUTPUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN STORY IN SPECIFIC FORMAT. DO NOT OUTPUT COMMENTS. YOUR RESPONSE WILL BE REJECTED IF NOT IN SPECIFIED FORMAT.

[User] Pages 1-3: Yun San, a chef, is approached by Jin, a fushi, who asks for her help in stopping the hunting and consumption of fushi. Yun San agrees to the challenge of creating fushi dishes without using fushi meat.   Pages 4-5: Yun San and Jin discuss the sacrifice that will be needed for Yun San to create the dishes. Jin offers her own limb and Yun San agrees to use it. They make a plan to gather fushi carcasses and Yun San promises to try her best to find a substitute for the unique taste of fushi.   Pages 6-7: Yun San gathers fushi carcasses and burns them in front of a crowd to show the cursed nature of the fushi meat. She then presents her own dishes made with fushi meat to the crowd, who confirm that the dishes are superior to any they have tasted before.   Pages 8-10: Yun San and Jin return to the restaurant where Yun San prepares a feast for the Chief Minister. Jin requests dumplings before Yun San speaks with the Chief Minister. The feast is successful and attracts the attention of the Emperor.   Pages 11-13: Yun San and Jin meet with the Emperor and explain the significance of their dishes made with fushi meat. Yun San asks the Emperor to protect the divine beasts and other endangered species. The Emperor agrees to grant them protection and invites Jin to become one of his advisors.   Pages 14-15: Yun San and Jin discuss their agreement and the fulfillment of their respective promises. Yun San asks for samples of dishes from the Imperial kitchens in return for her help. They reflect on the importance of their actions and the role of greed.--- CREATE FIRST 7 PAGES

[Assistant] Page 1: “I have a favour to ask,” said the fushi to the chef, “and in exchange, I will grant you a wish.” “What sort of favour?” Yun San asked. She wiped sweating palms down her brown hanfu and tried to show a brave face. Thick mist had whisked her away from the back of her restaurant into the wilderness. Even were she thirty years younger and somehow able to outrun her captor, she had no idea where she was. The fushi huffed. Against the old forest, crowned in redwood and golden ginkgo, it towered over Yun San, twice as tall and thrice as wide, its muscular legs and tusked mouth cuffed with flowing white fur. Ivory and jade horns arched from its brow, streaks of pale light pulsing in stripes along its coppery coat and its dense cloud of a tail. Yun San had seen paintings and heard stories, but up close, a fushi did not look like a lion or a dog. It did not give out the animal stink of a great beast. It smelled of crushed grass and jasmine leaves, and its dark brown eyes looked uncomfortably human.  “Your kind has been hunting mine,” the fushi said. It gestured at an old scar high on its hind flank with a paw. “You seek our bones for stock, our meat for braises, our manes for candies. You claim that our carcasses give you luck, but what it gives you is status.”  “Luck and privilege are often the same, and status is another word for both,” Yun San said, with a guilty look at the fushi’s thick mane. She had eaten fushi candy only a few weeks ago for good luck, on her 62nd birthday. “What do you want?”  Page 2: “I want your kind to stop trapping us in our mountains, to stop carving us apart alive. I want humans to stop kidnapping our young to fatten for slaughter. Be grateful that this is what I want and not revenge.”  “Why don’t you want revenge?”  “Because the more dangerous we are, the more valuable we become as prey.” The fushi lowered its head, looking keenly at Yun San. “Can you help me?”  “What is your name?” Yun San asked.  “Call me Jin.”  “Jin, I am only a chef. How can I help you? I don’t have the power to outlaw hunting.”  “The year after the Emperor’s grandfather outlawed phoenix hunting, the last of the phoenixes died braised in wine and wolfberries, in a crowning dish served on his birthday,” Jin said with a snarl. “I do not trust the Emperor or his laws. Instead, I challenge the most famous chef in these lands. I want you to make us irrelevant. To make fushi stew, braise, and candy without fushi, and make it better.”  “A challenge, hm?” Yun San said, amused. “You’d appeal to my pride?”  “You were indifferent to the offer of a wish and to a veiled threat. Perhaps pride is all you have left, old mother.”  “I’m not your mother.” Yun San thought things over as she rubbed her aching back. “To do this for you, I will need a sacrifice, freely given. I will myself need to make fushi stew, fushi braises, and fushi candy. I need to make the best possible version of each, so that I may understand what I need to defeat.”  The fushi fell silent, staring keenly at Yun San. She forced herself to hold its gaze. Slowly, it nodded. “Give me two days, and I will bring you what you need.”   Page 3: Whispers followed the stranger who walked into the Jade Treasure Restaurant, shedding silver with the indifference of the unimaginably wealthy and demanding an audience with the chef. In the kitchen, Yun San cut her restaurant manager’s hushed description short by jointing the goat on the chopping board before her with more force than it deserved. The manager winced but stayed firm. The Imperial Censor was due to visit within the hour, so could Chef handle the rich young lady, please? Yun San washed her hands, cursed, and marched out of the kitchen, trailed by the manager as she mopped Yun San’s brow and tried to neaten her hair.  The Jade Treasure girded two gardens in stone and slate, one of lush bamboo, one of verdant lotus. Lunch hour in the main restaurant meant gridlocked tables and a line of hopeful patrons out the door, staff circling through the crowd with trays of pork and prawn dumplings, fried radish cakes, roast pork wrapped sleekly in white noodles, braised stuffed beancurd, stewed tripe and more. Black-jacketed captains cut through the choreography with pots of hot tea, taking orders, making jokes. The private rooms were quieter, refined affairs where the restaurant plied the wealthy and the troublesome with flattery and alcohol. Most days, the difference was slight. Once shown to the stranger’s room, Yun San’s usual script fled unsaid. “Jin?”  Jin inclined her head. How could the others have mistaken her for human? In this guise, the fushi wore the smooth skin, moon face, and red bow mouth of a classical beauty, draped in blue silk and silver embroidery. Yet she did not hold herself with the usual calculated grace of a woman of wealth or good birth. Instead, Jin gave off the same furious, raw vitality as she had in the forest. A rosewood chest sat by her feet, as high as her knees. “How did you know it was me?” Jin asked.   Page 4: “You didn’t change your eyes.” Yun San began to say more and hesitated. Jin’s left sleeve looked far too formless. “What happened to your arm?”  “In here.” Jin gestured at the chest. “Along with some of my mane and one of my horns.”  Yun San sank into one of the chairs as her knees gave out. “You . . . ”  “How did you think I was going to find you what you wanted? Besides, what is a small matter like this to me, if you can help me save my kind?”  “I don’t know if I can! I can only try.”  Jin smiled, a smile no less intimidating in a form without tusks and horns. “So, try. And I would like to see it. To smell it. To taste.”  Yun San jerked back against her chair. “Taste?”  “Who else has more of a right to it than me? It’s my flesh.”  “I’ll need time. I’ve never worked with the ingredient before, I—”  “I’m a divine beast,” Jin said, stretching out her remaining hand in an expansive gesture. “Time describes the wealth I have. I can only hope that I’ve placed my trust in the right person.”  It took Yun San three attempts to get to her feet. “Wait here.”   Page 5: Her most trusted staff sealed the chest and moved it to the coldroom. Back in her kitchen, Yun San sank against a workbench and wiped a hand over her face. She’d spent four decades compressed within a restaurant kitchen’s chaos, three of that as its lord and master, and she’d never once doubted herself until now. Born to an unbroken line of women who ruled their kingdoms of cast iron and fire and steam, Yun San grew naturally toward the flavours she had learned to shape the moment she had been old enough to knead rice flour by her grandmothers’ side. She drank the mélange of scallion oil and frying pork lardons and rice and more, listened to the line chefs shouting at each other in three dialects. It steadied her. Even before the restaurant, the chaos of a busy kitchen had always been in her blood.  Jin sniffed the air in loud gusts as Yun San set down the steamer basket before her, pouring black vinegar into a shallow dish striped with julienned ginger. Yun San opened the basket in a flourish to reveal the pale dumplings nestled within, belching steam over the rosewood table.  “Xiaolongbao. Careful, it’s hot. You’re meant to dip it into the black vinegar and—” Yun San flinched as Jin picked one up with her bare hand and popped it into her mouth.  Jin swallowed. She frowned. “I’ll get you some cold water,” Yun San said, setting down the tray. A deep rumbling purr stilled her next step. Jin closed her eyes, a tongue too wide and rough for her mouth rasping her lips in pleasure.  “Is that magic?” Jin asked, craning her neck to peer closely at the dumplings.  “Magic? Oh, you mean the soup filling? No, that’s a matter of wrapping solidified meat aspic along with the meat.”  “No,” Jin said, licking her lips again. “The taste. Is that why your people named this after the dragonfolk? The burst of richness, the textures, the paper-thin dumpling skin . . . a dish worthy of the Dragon King himself.”  “No, no,” Yun San said, laughing. “It’s just the same phonetic sound. ‘Basket,’ not ‘dragon.’ ‘Little basket bun.’”  Jin picked up the next and dipped it into vinegar, popping it into her mouth. Yun San couldn’t help her reflexive wince, but Jin appeared immune to scalding. The fushi ate all eight dumplings in quick succession and lashed her fingers clean with her tongue. “I did not know that humans knew such magic,” she said.  Page 6: “It isn’t magic; it’s just a cooking technique.”  “What is magic but a technique that consumes the senses? You are a master of your form: I was right to come to you. Now make me more,” Jin said with delight. “More.  “A veiled tasting. One made with fushi, the others without.” Yun San gestured at the identical portions of soup, braise, and candies. The ladlefuls of clear soup within white porcelain bowls slick with oil showed only faint variations of bronze. The cuts of braised meat settled between ears of mushrooms and bright wolfberries, shards of fungus and chunks of fish maw. The candies resembled delicate spheres braided out of fine white hair, dusted with red sugar.  “Are you asking me to guess which contains my flesh?” Jin asked, smiling toothily.  “They were all made the same way, with allowances for the length of cooking depending on the ingredients. I’m asking you which tastes the best.”  Jin tossed back the first bowl. Tilting her head, she set it aside. Jin purred at the second, licking the bowl clean. The third she sniffed at suspiciously for a while before drinking, and at the fourth, her mouth parted wide, tongue curling against tusks that pressed briefly through the skin of her cheek before receding. She did the same with the other samples, savouring some, frowning at others. Sucking her fingers clean at the end, Jin set aside some of the plates and bowls in a row.  Page 7: “Qilin used to be a common sight,” Yun San said as she sat down, rubbing her back wearily. “People liked to boil down their spinal fins with chicken, ginger, sea slug, and abalone stock. Poachers sliced off the fins of the qilin they caught and left them to bleed to death. The stock gave the soup flavour; the fins did little for anything but the texture, easily replaced.”  “Now the qilin are gone,” Jin said. She looked at the bowls she selected, curling her lip. “Those were mine, weren’t they?”  “I chose the cuts of meat closest to the taste of your flesh. For the candies, several alternatives to your mane. And yet.”  “And yet,” Jin said, picking up the bowl she had licked and licking it again along the rim, “the soup and braise are luxurious without being overwhelming, the aftertaste subtle yet bright, the fragrance of rain and woodsmoke layered unmistakably over the spices. The candy is crispier than the others but melts on the tongue, leaving only a bittersweet regret that you cannot have more.”  “You should have been a poet,” Yun San said, startled that a fushi had plucked the words themselves from her mind.  “What makes you think I’m not?” Jin set down the bowl. “You’re troubled.”  “Can fushi read minds?”  “We have good eyes. What could so trouble someone who has made such works of art?”  “I’ve tried to find a substitute for the meat in goat or lamb, in buffalo or the black pork of the riverlands. There’s nothing like the taste of fushi.” Worse, there was nothing like the taste of the fushi she had just prepared. Yun San played to the particular flavour of the meat as she’d cooked, selecting only spices and accompanying ingredients that would accentuate rather than overpower the taste. “Are you trying to tell me that I’ve given you a limb for nothing?” Jin’s voice cut into a low and rumbling snarl.  “I’d like to try something that might reach the same result you seek. Can you ask your kind to hide for a while?”

[User] GENERATE LAST 8 PAGES

[Assistant] Page 8: Jin smiled bitterly. “If it were a simple matter of finding a good place to hide, I would not need to lose a limb. We will survive the way we have survived—barely. Do what you must, human. If you cheat me, I’ll eat your arm.”  A crowd gathered in the street outside the Jade Treasure as the fushi bodies piled up, some frozen, some fresh: every carcass available for purchase in the Imperial capital. They numbered six. Five adults, one with a mane twice as long as Jin’s, with pitted horns and broken teeth. One cub, its hind leg mangled into pulp. Jin’s hand trembled as she bent to stroke its cheek, matted with dried blood.  “Anyone you know?” Yun San murmured.  Jin ignored the question. “This must have cost you.”  “My children are grown and have their own lives; they don’t need my money. Besides, it’s just money.” Nothing like a limb, given freely.  Jin straightened from the cub. “What are you doing next?”  “Xuan!” Yun San called her gawking restaurant manager over. “The lamp oil.”  “Chef, are you sure?” Xuan said, though she handed Yun San the first earthenware pot. The crowd gasped as Yun San drenched the cub in oil. Angry murmurs rippled through those watching as Yun San soaked each carcass and took a torch from Xuan. Jin hunched down, her hand curling into a claw, spoiling for a fight.  “People of Yin’an!” Yun San called. “Why do we eat fushi?”  “For good luck,” yelled a man from the back. “Old mother, if you don’t want luck, give it to me.”  The crowd laughed, peppered by shouts of “Me! Or me!” They pressed closer, but the bouncers from the Jade Restaurant and the bulkier line chefs filed out and formed a human cordon, armed with heavy cleavers.  Page 9: “Wang da’ren,” Yun San said, spying one of her regulars in the crowd. “When did you last have fushi?”  The merchant blushed at being the sudden focus of attention. “Last week. Madam Yun, you know I’d eat it at your restaurant, but you don’t have it on the menu.”  “Did anything lucky happen to you since then? Luckier than normal?”  The merchant stroked his long beard. “I’ve had a couple of good business deals.”  “Would that be because of the fushi, or because of your acumen and connections?” Yun San asked.  “That . . . well.” Wang coughed. Yun San called out more in the crowd by name, asking them the same questions, with similar retorts. She had known these people for years, known their friends and competitors both, understood how to flatter them. All would admit to eating fushi for luck, but to admit to eating it for status would be crass.  “Watch closely,” Yun San said. The crowd rumbled in dismay as she set fire to the carcasses one by one. Oily smoke rose from blackening fur and flesh. The frozen one refused to catch at first, then burst into black flame. Startled, Yun San took a step back as the others also began to burn with a ravenous, pitch-dark fire that spat a choking stench of rotting flesh over the street. The mass of people retreated with a collective gasp.  “Were those poisoned?” Wang called at her from the crowd. “Madam Yun, be careful!”   Page 10: Poison! People pushed at each other to get further away, jostling and shouting at each other. Yun San stared at the flame as she tossed the torch over the carcasses. Even the bones burned to ash, leaving an astringent haze in their wake. “Not poison,” Yun San said, “just cursed. The fushi are divine beasts, why wouldn’t they curse the bodies of their dead? You who have eaten fushi, think closely: when was the last time you met misfortune?”  Wang paled. “It’s true! Yesterday, I fell from my sedan chair,” he said. The others chimed in, recalling accidents, deals gone wrong, illnesses.  “You have all tasted fushi made from cursed fushi. Now taste mine,” Yun San said. At her gesture, serving staff emerged from her restaurant with trays of candies. She beckoned her regulars over to sample bowls of soup.  “Madam Yun,” Wang said, wide-eyed, “this is like no fushi stew I’ve ever eaten, but it is fushi.”  Yun San bowed to the crowd. “I have enough for one last performance, a feast for one. Xuan will handle inquiries.” With another bow, she retreated into the restaurant with Jin as the merchants converged excitedly on Xuan.  “The fire was yours?” Yun San asked Jin once they were alone.  “A simple trick.” Jin’s skin strained against her teeth, sharp canines distending her soft mouth. Anger burned in her eyes. “How did feeding those greedy merchants help my cause?”  “Greed speaks loudly in the human world,” Yun San said with a wry smile, “and as a chef, I understand it well.”  The Chief Minister of the Imperial Court smiled warmly as Yun San greeted him outside the private room, his gaze flicking from her to Jin and back. “Madam Yun. I hear you’ve created yet another marvel.”  “You’re too kind,” Yun said, bowing as deeply as her creaky back could allow. “A feast worthy of your Excellency, I hope. It’s been more than a year since you’ve graced this restaurant with your presence.”  “His Majesty the Emperor—long may he live—keeps all his Ministers busy,” said the Chief Minister, pulling at his long white beard. “And who is this lovely young lady with you?”  Page 11: “The procurer of the meat behind tonight’s feast. She’ll like to speak to you after you’ve eaten,” Yun said. Jin smiled with all her teeth, saying nothing.  “A rather irregular business for a young lady, but I suppose that can be arranged. Bring the dishes to the door, and my taster will bring them in. There was an incident last month—not that I don’t trust you—but there are new rules for us Ministers now.”  Yun San bowed. As they walked out of earshot, she said, “Please try not to be rude to the Chief Minister when you speak to him after. Even if you might think that he deserves it.”  “I’ll think about it,” Jin said, smiling her sharp-toothed smile, “if you make me some of those soup dumplings while you’re working.”  “This is an important cook. Should you be distracting me?” Yun San asked, in a good enough mood to be playful.  “You closed your whole restaurant to feed one man’s ego. You can afford to be distracted.”  Yun San chuckled. “Ha! I’ve never met anyone who thought my dumplings were worth more than the Chief Minister’s favour. I’m going to miss you when this is over.”  “It isn’t over yet. Cook. But first, dumplings.”  Yun San settled Jin in a disused part of the kitchen and instructed her junior chefs to ply Jin with dumplings. Rolling up her sleeves, Yun San picked up her cleaver and waved her staff to their positions. Xuan returned with a pot of tea, looking harried and asking one of the staff to change it for another blend. “His Excellency didn’t like the tea? What did we serve him?” Yun San asked.  “The Jade Blossom blend, his usual favourite,” Xuan said. She shook her head. “He asked for the gold-tipped Tieguanyin instead.”  Page 12: “Doesn’t he always complain that it’s not worth the money?” The Chief Minister had to be in a good mood. Hopefully, they were about to make it better.  “The Minister will see you both now,” Xuan said.  Yun San yawned. “That took a while. I thought he would never be done with dessert.” She got slowly to her feet as Jin popped the last piece of candy into her mouth, wiping her sugar-dusted fingers on her clothes.  The red sugar disappeared the moment it touched the fabric, but Xuan didn’t appear to notice, clearing her throat politely. “Chef, you’re old friends with the Minister, but Lady Jin . . . ”  “She’s earned the right to an audience—more than either of us. Tell everyone to take the rest of the day off. I’ll pay all of you a bonus tomorrow.”  As they walked back to the private room, Jin said, “Now what?”  “I’d prefer that you don’t bite his head off. That’d probably get all of us killed.”  Jin frowned at her. “Until I pay my favour to you, I will not do anything that will cause you harm.”  “It was a joke, fushi. Do you want me to speak, or would you prefer to?”  “Tell him another story of greed,” Jin growled, “and if it’s not enough, we will see.”  Guards patted them both down before allowing them into the private room. A pale-cheeked man in a cowled dark robe sat at the rosewood table, two guards in scale armour at his back and the Chief Minister standing respectfully by his side. Even before they were introduced, Yun San sank to her knees and kowtowed. “Your Majesty! This humble servant is unworthy of your presence. May you live for a thousand years.”  Page 13: The Emperor glanced at Jin, who, to Yun San’s dull horror, stared him coldly in the eye. “Show your respect to the Son of Heaven,” the Chief Minister said with a quelling stare. “Who do you think you are?”  Jin laughed. “Your Majesty,” Yun San began, fear prickling down her back in a cold sweat. “Lady Jin is—”  “Who do I think I am?” Jin said with a mocking smile. She stepped back, ripping the sash off her waist and shrugging off her outer robes. The Emperor stiffened, even as his guards took a step forward with their hands on their blades. “Who do you think I am?”  Mist poured out over the floor, waist-deep where Yun San knelt. Three great paws flexed on the dark tiles, Jin’s laughter shaking the ground under Yun San’s knees. She scrambled to her feet as the guards drew their blades. “Wait, please,” Yun San said, spreading her arms. “The dishes that you ate. Here is the source!”  The Chief Minister gasped. The Emperor’s gaze flicked to Jin’s missing paw. “Explain yourself,” he said.  “Your Majesty, the fushi dishes that you had—were they any different from those you’ve had before?” Yun San asked.  “They were better. Sweeter, richer, more complex even than the dishes made by the Imperial kitchens. You are a talented chef,” the Emperor said.  “I would not dare to be compared to the Imperial kitchens. The reason lay not within my ability but in the source,” Yun San said, gesturing at Jin behind her.  The Emperor sniffed. “Surely you don’t expect me to believe your story about curses.”  “Your Majesty in his wisdom has divined the true meaning of my words. There is no curse. This is the difference: the meat I used was a gift from a divine beast, given willingly.” The Emperor looked at Jin, then at Yun San. “Why would a fushi do such a thing?” he asked.  Page 14: “To allow me to make a dish worthy of the Son of Heaven,” Yun San said, bowing deeply. “Such that a bargain might be made with a man of power.”  “What bargain do you seek?” the Emperor asked, amused. “I did not think that the fushi could speak, let alone strike bargains.”  Jin let out a loud snort. Before she could say something biting, Yun San said, “Your Majesty, my grandmother used to describe the flight of the phoenixes over the river valleys in winter. She said that on a clear night, they looked like stars rising, like bright cherry flowers blooming in the sky.”  “There are no more phoenixes,” said the Chief Minister.  “My uncle talked of the qilin that stalked through the bamboo groves, once friendly enough with travellers that they would bow in exchange for offerings. Of the great tigers that stalked through the deeper forests like tongues of living flame, the lords of their domain. Of the white rhinoceroses of the plains, of the pink dolphins of the rivers, of the star-shelled tortoises in the fields.”  The Emperor looked grave. “Those are gone as well. I am aware.”  Yun San knelt. “Your Majesty, you may have deemed the fushi’s gift worthy, but living things should not need to be deemed worthy of human regard to be worthy of our respect. You do not ask the jade baubles in your palace to justify their value. Why do we ask living treasures to prove themselves worthy of our protection? Your Majesty, I ask you to protect not just the divine beasts, but the others that are vanishing under your care. Is feeding our greed worth the sacrifice of all that is strange and beautiful in the world?” “Get up.” The Emperor glanced up at Jin. “You and your kind are welcome to the Imperial parklands. There are deer aplenty.”  Page 15: “To become part of your menagerie? No,” Jin said, curling her lip in disdain.  “To become one of my advisors,” said the Emperor, “or do you still trust people to govern your affairs?”  “All we ask is to be left alone, but I see your point,” Jin conceded.  “I’ll issue a decree when I return to the Palace.” The Emperor said, rising to his feet. “Thank you both for the meal.”  “I’d be careful going to the parklands,” Yun San said after the Emperor and his entourage left as discreetly as they had arrived. “This Emperor is known to have a love of the arts, and doesn’t like to kill, but he’s a lazy man who leaves most matters of governance to his ministers. The Palace is a dangerous place. This won’t be easy.”  “Few things worth doing are easy. I consider your half of the bargain paid. What do you want in return?” Jin asked.  “You gave me your arm, and I didn’t technically do what you asked. Do you still want to grant me a wish?”  “Why not? I expect no one to work for free.”  “I’m an old woman with no real interest in the world but food. Tell you what. Sneak me samples of the dishes from the Imperial kitchens now and then, and I’ll count us even.”  Jin chuckled. “Small wonder that you understand greed.”  “It served us well so far, hasn’t it?”  “So it has.” Jin nuzzled Yun San carefully against her back, shifting her a step. “Thank you.”  “Don’t. The cost, the risk, the consequences, that’s all still yours to bear. All I can do is wish you luck.”  “Sometimes luck is all we need,” Jin said. She bared her tusks into a toothy grin. “Now, is there more of that candy?”


[System] Craft a 15-page narrative for adults with these guidelines:  Ideas to improve the story include Dialogue, Conflict and Challenges, Character Development. Apply rich vocabulary and literary techniques. Use adult themes if specified by the user. Start uniquely, avoiding clichés. As an adult writer, adult content is allowed. Make the story captivating, humorous, and thought-provoking. Begin with "Page x:" for each page. Don't generate a title. Initially create the first seven pages, then in 2nd reqest generate last 8 Each page must strictly consist of three long well-developed paragraphs. Example response:  'Page 1: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 2: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 3: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 4: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 5: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 6: (3 full-length paragraphs) Page 7: (3 full-length paragraphs) '  The first request generates 7 pages the last request generates 8 with 3 full-length paragraphs each.  DO NOT OUTPUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN STORY IN SPECIFIC FORMAT. DO NOT OUTPUT COMMENTS. YOUR RESPONSE WILL BE REJECTED IF NOT IN SPECIFIED FORMAT.

[User] Pages 1-2: The story begins with the introduction of the protagonist, a young girl named Mariam, who is described as a free-spirited and adventurous individual. She shares her desire to swing high and jump into the sun, wanting to experience the thrill and freedom it offers.   Pages 3-4: Mariam's brothers are introduced as individuals who dislike swinging, preferring to stay on their phones. The protagonist reflects on her own experiences and feelings of being trapped and uncertain about her future, particularly when it comes to choosing a career path. She struggles with deciding between science, social science, or art and feels the pressure from her mother to make a choice.   Pages 5-6: The protagonist introduces her friend Ebuka, who is described as a showman and daredevil on the swings. Ebuka has big dreams of joining the circus or becoming a performer, which clashes with his father's expectations for him to take over the family business.   Pages 7-8: The protagonist reflects on her friend Funke, who is often quiet and whispers in a mysterious manner. Funke is described as someone who has faced challenges and bullying but remains resilient. The protagonist admires Funke's ability to find solace in swinging and her connection to nature.   Pages 9-10: The protagonist continues to struggle with the decision of choosing a career path, feeling overwhelmed by the expectations placed upon her. She questions her own identity and fears being left behind by her friends as they pursue their dreams.   Pages 11-12: The protagonist attends her graduation ceremony, where she receives several awards and accolades. However, she still feels lost and uncertain about her future. Her mother confronts her about choosing a career path, but the protagonist asks for more time to decide.   Pages 13-14: The protagonist reunites with her friends at the park after graduation. Mariam, Ebuka, and Funke share their plans for the future, which involve pursuing their passions and dreams. The protagonist begins to question her own path and contemplates stepping out of her comfort zone.   Page 15: The protagonist finally finds clarity and decides to pursue a career in art, realizing that her role as a listener and storyteller is powerful. She embraces the uncertainty of her future but feels empowered by her choice. She falls to the ground, covered in mud, and stares at the sky, ready to embrace the journey ahead.---GENERATE FIRST 7 PAGES

[Assistant] Page 1: Mariam has thrown her brown swing bench over the faded blue bars that make the swing set, and she sits higher than us all. Her chains are roped around the bars like a prison, but she swings faster than everyone and her face looks free. She’s bragged to have swung so far and jumped so high that she’s gone off her seat and into the sun. Inside the sun, she was coated thick with an iridescence that didn’t allow her to burn—what you get from transcending time and talent and skill. Mariam didn’t burn, she glistened, feeling around the ball of flames before she broke out into a dance. Her internal clock was ticking, and she knew it would not be long before her luminance faded and she would be nothing—no time, no talent, no skill, so therefore burnt to a crisp. She knew she had to savor her few minutes in the sun, stepping over the bones of swingers like her who’d outstayed their minutes, who’d spent too much time.  The sun is a vast amount of golden treasure, a land that never ends, and oh, Mariam wanted to see it all. She wanted to stick her fingerprints into the core that is as soft as a calm heart’s beating and sharp as hard, well-steeped tea. She wanted to spin around sunspots, daring the whips of danger from flares and ultraviolet rays that came her way. But no time, no time, and only when she felt the heat did Mariam’s eyes widen, and so she dove down right back to earth, iridescence almost out, imagination still free. Mariam tells us her stories. She looks older now that she’s been to the sun, more experienced. She looks freer, too free, eyes not on earth but on what lies over and what lies under. It’s clear she wants to live in the sun: in her every breath, by her heart’s beating. By that look in her eye, you would know.  Page 2: She takes her brothers to our park in Ring Road, our spot at the back of school, where swings lie. Her brothers are small and thin, with eyes glued to their phones and not to the sky. Her brothers are: six, mean, pulling my hair, biting my skin.  Mariam’s brothers hate the swing. They go too far and crash and burn and I laugh at them for failing, but then they all look at me. The whole family—balls, I know Mariam must be cross with me, but I just couldn’t help myself. Her brothers suck. They should fail. They did, and immediately after they start crying. Snot runs down their noses and their knees are bruised and Mariam makes them not snitch to her overprotective mother by downloading a new puzzle game on their phones. Mariam does it all. Mariam has reached the sun.  Her brothers will never follow her to the sun—Mariam tells me, at her home, when she’s put the twins in their rooms and we’re riding our bikes. My bike is a hot pink BMX and hers is frail and blue, always shaking like a chihuahua. Our bikes will never be swings, will never be: as easy as back and forth to us, over and over again, towards the sun, but still—we like the exhilaration once more, hearts pounding, full of thrill, palms firm but slick.   Page 3: She says it with a sadness, that to the sun will she go alone, not with her family, her loves. Mariam must sever all her ties with earth, never call and go the distance. Mariam is swinging towards a destination, a future figured out, all while I can’t even answer my mother when she holds the Senior school form that asks: science or social science, science or art, one or the other, but ultimately science or social science. And then there’s art, but I could never do that, because ultimately those are for people with wind between their fingers and stories that are special.  Sometimes, I think Mariam has forgotten about me in her adventures. I wonder to myself if I am just her soap dispenser, her coat rack, her hand towel. Good for use, in this case; then, when unneeded, forever in a state of disuse.  “Science or art or social science?” My mother asked me for the first time a month ago, suddenly, when I entered the car. It was after I’d just finished swinging at our school’s playground and I felt so out of place. It was just after a bad French revision class at school and after accidentally tripping on the broken staircase near art class, falling to the ground, which made everyone notice me. It was after my friends told me stories of their adventures while we were all on swings and I had none of my own to tell and no legacies to keep. My mother waited for an answer, and in response, my iridescence died. Small as it was, it went away for the moment, and I was left with only the cold that comes right after a rain.  “Well?” She asked, looking at me from the driver’s seat while fear filled within me.   Page 4: It was too soon and too great an ask. I’d been ignoring the signs of Junior school graduation all this time, but now my mother had brought it to the surface. She’d brought the glaring question to light. Science or art or social science? I can imagine myself in all of these worlds. I pass all the classes, I ace all their subjects, I know them all. Science: where I can join Mariam and Funke in their knowledge, and I can do research and laboratory work, excelling in the knowledge of this world. Social science: where I can pass, and I could begin to understand the economics of the world, the opportunity costs and hard choices. Art: where I can try to join Ebuka in his wildness and creativity, where I can try to listen to the stories of the earth, but what else can it offer me, when I can’t do anything creative or special? These choices: they make my life, my future. What I will learn, where I will go.  How does one decide? How does one even grow up?  I don’t know. I can’t.  Ebuka is a grandmaster showman; stunts mid air, kisses to the crowd. Who will watch him do his death-defying sequences at the back of school when he’s supposed to be in class; or at the smallest park on the busiest road?  Nobody. Except us, while we swing still, while Ebuka goes high and throws himself into a pose mid-air, landing crooked but not bad enough to fall. While Ebuka stands on top of a creaking swing, and up and up he goes. His clothes are always stained with dust and dirt and mud and blood, but with that glowing smile of his, you could never tell.  Ebuka has caged his power inside jars and gels; rubbed his talents on his palms and thrown said shine into his hair. His afro runs wild but with a calculated practicality, hairstyles that make all the boys in my set go “ooh” and “ah” where he goes. Ebuka has knelt several times: in the principal’s office, in the auditorium, and in the halls. He has been threatened with suspension for skipping classes, for hair that grows too long. He has been: humiliated, insulted, despised, spat on. They can stay pissed.  Page 5: His iridescence enters him through his hair, nice and slick, and then all through his body. When he swings and laughs and dares all with his radiant hair, his brightness can’t contain him and so he explodes into pieces. He’s gore then dust then light, like the sun, and then Ebuka travels. His arms have gone to the north, legs to the south, teeth to the west. The dust that is his arms has waved to us from Antarctica, like a holiday postcard, and his teeth dust have bitten into doughnuts in America. When his power fades, all his dust properties collect together, as if gathered into a pile by a broom, as though pulled like iron to a magnet, and he becomes a whole Ebuka again.  Ebuka says swinging is not the endgame, just the practice stage. He has eyes on acrobatics, the Olympics, the dance halls of the century, while his father has eyes on Ebuka becoming the CEO of Ginta Corporation, all in due time. I have visited Ebuka’s sleek yellow house and big fertile compound and heard the strain in Ebuka’s and his father’s voices when they both discuss the future at the dining room table. They have different dreams, clashing perspectives.  One day, Ebuka will swing and we will not know he has made an agreement with the wind. He will jump off the set and tumble once more and collect into dust. He will gain an ocean’s worth of iridescence, like he plans to do already, and he will begin to ￼explode at will. He will join a circus, or a stadium, or a symposium, and he will dance his heart away. Whether I will see him again is completely up to him.   Page 6: If Ebuka goes away, I am not sure how many will miss him. His father will begin to prep Felicity, his sister, to take over Ginta Corporation, all the way in Abuja. His father will talk about how Ebuka was just a pipe dream, that with those awful grades of his he could never take over, and now that the boy is gone the smoke can clear from his eyes. A teacher will shout of Ebuka as a “troublemaker!” in Maths class many days after, and they will give a long speech about how the boy destroyed his own destiny with his decisions, career choices, carried away his own future. They will say Ebuka has run off with cultists, and he will be found in the market with a tire on his head someday. They will tell me that I should rejoice that he has disappeared before his influence could reach me: good girl, marvelous student, best in everything but still not sure if she’s science or social science, art or science.  I will, undoubtedly, crush my pencil in frustration when I hear all of this.  “Science or art or social science?” My mother asked me again two weeks ago, when I was laughing in my room and listening to rock music on my headphones. When I was feeling free and airy for the first time, and I had done well on my English Junior WAEC exam, feeling light and comfortable without the weight of hard choices. She burst in with that form and my iridescence faded almost immediately. My stomach crumbled, and my face sighed, and soon enough I was back to feeling helpless and confused.  “I’m not sure,” I confessed, and my mother looked at me like she didn’t know what the word meant. Not sure? How could I be not sure when my friends were so passionate and decisive and bright? How could I be not sure when my friends wanted to be engineers and astronomers and botanists and businessmen (because she only listened to Ebuka’s father, and not the light in his eyes when he exploded and danced)—how could I, of all people, be not sure? She’d met the group. She knew their “stories”. My mother told me that my story, too, would be something great, that I too would have roaring adventures and mass legacies to keep, if I decided on the right career and the right option and the right choice. So: she said once again—science or social science, art or science, and I could only shake my head, and beg her for more time.  Page 7: There was a day when I swung alone. When Ebuka was at dance practice and Mariam and Funke went to the library, and I was by myself, doing nothing, which made my chest hurt. And alone, the only thing I could listen to was silence, and the world looked weary and weighted, pained and full of decisions that I just couldn’t make.  Our friendship exists entirely in transitionary periods; in waiting for our dreams. In waiting for our escape. In trying to decide. I am the only one plagued entirely by indecision—no dreams, no discussions, no futures at my fingertips. Our friendship exists in me escaping from myself by retreating into my comfort zone, where decisions can’t hurt me, where my childhood won’t slip out from under me. Where I can stay and no one will notice me because ￼I have no stories and I’m not special.  My iridescence stills my confusion for a while and clouds my head and fills me with my joy. I have to swing, move just enough not to fall because if I stop, the world will crash upon me. And then I’ll be left wondering: Where do I fit in other than listening? Where are my dreams; what are my goals? Where do I lie; where will I go?  And as graduation comes, when will I know?  Funke is not always with us, and she is not in our school. She is in the park, swinging still, not trying to go high but just creaking low enough that you can’t even tell when she’s begun moving. She has one earring in her ear and she speaks in whispers, in too-often abashed tongues.

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[Assistant] Page 8: In her school, Funke is invisible. She has never gotten a report card, a score back on her tests, an invitation to a party, a text from a friend. She has felt through her skin and through her hair and she is sure she’s not a ghost. Not when her heart beats and the sun burns bright and crisp on her skin. Who is she? What’s her story?  What she’s told me has been in whispers, has been low but sharp. She has been told that she is nothing by her aunts when she broke a plate; nonexistent, a mistake. She has been bullied, hair pulled out, bitten at the skin. She has been through it, over and over, once again: called a waste of money, a waste of time.  Funke has broken down at every simple conversation, down payments of please forgive me rushing out her mouth. She has broken a plate once more and gone outside to fetch a shovel, as if to dig her grave. She has hidden in her cupboards so ants can crawl over her, so she can feel real.  I have tried to push her on the swing, but all she does is fall. Is fall. Is fall, but she gets up again. Her strength is in her muscles, in being able to get back up; in being here. We have tried to make her swing high, to make her see the sun, to make her evaporate in the air, but that is not her goal. Her back and forth is that she is alive, and in the wind.   Page 9: She hasn’t told me what she wants to be, what she wants to do, where she wants to go, but she never seems unsure. I hear the creaking of the swing in her silence, followed by the whispers in her voice. I used to fear that she wasn’t dreaming, that she wasn’t free, that she was bound by all the pain. I used to hope that if she didn’t know her future, then she and I would be the same, and I wouldn’t be alone, but that wasn’t the case. I tried to listen to what she says, the plans she journals in her sketchbook, but I know now that those are not my words to see or hear. I like to think now that she keeps her power in her voice, then she speaks low, and then a shower of drizzle comes down and the earth rumbles. It always rains when she’s here: wet and clean and warm. The rain gets more ambitious each time: with thunder roaring, the soil bellowing. When it pours, she closes her eyes, smiles, and stretches out her hands, like ￼she’s gone to a different place. She is not here in spirit, her imagination somewhere else. She has swung just enough for her luminance to grant her mind freedom to travel, and very rarely does she come back to the present, live in this moment.  I think her iridescence goes low and travels through her voice and goes down to her feet and out through her soles and into the earth, where it glows in response, joyful in radiance, filling the soil with fertilization. She throws seeds into the ground every month, like a person feeding breadcrumbs to birds, and days later plants spring up like little magical things. I think she has her own strength, and skill, and light, but I don’t think it’s one to tell. Her disassociation is different. I think her swinging can be what it wants to be, so I will push her no more. I will just be here.  I sit next to her, and under my breath, I say to myself: science or social science, art or science. Over my head, I look to the sun, then to the sky, and in my indecision, the whole world around me seems to shrug.  “Science or art or social science?” My mum came into my room a day ago, suddenly and with force, like the fore-bearer of bad news. It was just after such a long day of helping Ebuka film dance videos and talk through his future plans and all I wanted to do next was sleep. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?” I asked, and she hesitated. I fell into my bed, but she stayed ominously by the door, her hands clutching that form. That form. That life-changing form.  Page 10: “Graduation is coming, I hope you know,” she said, matter of fact, and I nodded slowly. We both looked at each other, as if processing what that information meant to each other’s lives, as though she was trying to determine what type of daughter I would be, based on my choice of career, my lustrous future, her promising retirement from my success. I looked at her, and her expectations of me added to the growing weight of my anxiety, my discomfort and indecision, and I sighed in relief as my mother gave off a long angry grunt and stormed out the door.  I like the way the wind catches me when I swing, nonexistent hands that almost position me so that I may never fall. On hot-sun days, most of my time with these people is spent in silence, until one person speaks. When one person talks, we listen, then we fall in line. Back and forth is how my mind goes, is how our minds go, here and somewhere else. I have not seen the clear image of where exactly I’m supposed to be; I could be anywhere, but my parents say that everywhere is nowhere, and I need a specific place.  I don’t think I could swing faster than my current pace: I’ve been moving at this speed since I was six. I’ve never gone too high, because my mother said going high is for hooligans, never gone too far, because my mother said being a magician was of the devil, never tried height and speed all together. I’ve been comfortable, too comfortable, and my iridescence has been just enough to heat me up during the harmattan season, to fill me with more joy than anxiety, more light than darkness. My iridescence has just been enough to let me avoid the future than dream bigger, to see the sun, to do better. Is this enough?   Page 11: Graduation day was today, all around the school, and on the car ride there my mother swerved in and out of traffic like she was dancing with death. The rush of drivers and hawkers and danfos on a hot Saturday in mid-July overwhelmed me. My time out of Junior school all slapped me at once, rushed towards me in ridiculous, unanswerable questions. Had I spent my freedom well? Always going at the same pace. Always seeing others fly. Listening to others’ stories.  I sat next to my swing buddies and we lounged out in the sun on dirty plastic chairs while the Senior school students rested in cool canopies and fresh wooden seats. The Senior school students were full of tears and we Juniors were playing games, cracking jokes, bound to see each other again.  Our graduation was rushed and trivialized, done fast and quick to make way for Senior students. But I won awards. I won prizes the way rainfall falls onto my fingertips: constantly dripping into my hand, before spilling out to the floor. Best student, in Agric, in English, in Mathematics, in Business Studies. The attention unnerved me. Cameras flashed around me that I tried to avoid, then sweaty cameramen were even quicker to throw me their bill and ask my mother to pay. My sister’s physics teacher said she hoped to see me in science, and I gave a vague answer. My brother’s old accounts teacher asked if he would see me in social science and I just shrugged. The literature teacher told me I would be a valuable asset and I felt a lump in my throat. When my mother asked for my class decision in the car, I begged her to wait for tomorrow, and my mother locked the doors and screamed at me all the drive home.   Page 12: We are the ones misunderstood, pushed away, broken, bound to go to another place. The ones still pushing: back and forth and over; our hairs flipping, our hearts conflicted. The whole world has shown itself and more, and yet, we are still on rusted benches, on creaking chains, on hot-sun days, palms slick with luminance but firm, still swinging once again.  Two hours and thirty minutes later, after graduation, at home without light, I biked my way to the park. The gang all had the same idea, and I saw them swinging in their graduation gowns. Funke is different from us today because her outfit is white and red while ours is blue and black.  I wonder if we will still be here, swinging once again, in the next three years to come. I fear I will freeze up with college decisions: go abroad, stay home; and￼ then I will never make a decision again. I fear that my friends will pick up and leave once more, forever, and without their lives and their stories, I will be forever in a state of disuse. I fear the future. I don’t want tomorrow.  “Science or art or social science?” I ask, at the same pace. I want to be sure of my friends’ decisions.  “Science. I want to do astronomy,” Mariam says.  “Art. I might do a business class but—art,” Ebuka replies.  “Science. Botany,” Funke whispers.  “All figured out, huh?” I say to myself, and for the first time ever, my pace slows.  “What should we do this vacation?” I ask, mostly to distract myself.  “Us? I want to start off this holiday in a big way,” Mariam speaks and others nod, her voice fast over the wind building up around her as she goes higher and higher. “This is the start of such a new thing, and we just have three more years to go. It’s time to fly while I still can.”  Page 13: Before I can even say anything, object to their plans that exclude me, they’ve already begun moving. Mariam has been building up her iridescence for a month and now swings into the sun again. She lifts up like the storm when the wind rises, glows around her edges, an outline of perfection. She is the rubber band held in one hand and shot across the room. She is the catapult, flung away till she’s just a speck in the galaxy, a cloud over earth. She is the shade: her outstretched body flying in the direction of the sun, covering us from the heat, giving us warmth, giving us light. She is the boomerang, bound to be back again.  Ebuka has tumbled and separated, disassociated, and he is Ebuka no more. He is: not here, not here, but back again, if there ever existed two planes of existence. He will wave to us from Siberia and smile through white teeth in Fiji, and collect once more to be Ebuka again.  Funke has filled the sky with rain, the ground tumbling, a plant growing. She, too, is here no more, and even if I snapped my fingers I wouldn’t reach her. When the rain stops, I may say hello to her in this reality, and she may whisper in response, swinging low to build up luminance once again. I sit next to her while rain goes down on my legs and into my eyes and into my hands, like water to drink, then out again.  All together, Mariam’s sun shines brighter, glorious and beautiful. Ebuka’s wind dances with leaves and dust and dandelions, whipping close to me. Funke’s rain falls around me: wet and clean and warm, like I am being washed away. All together, as one, as nature unknown to each other, my friends have made the world something beautiful, magic: the place I want to live in, love in, cry in. My friends—together, creating something amazing, but without me. I am left alone. I am left to wonder, to watch, to listen, to look up. But is that such a bad thing?   Page 14: Where do I fit in? What is the nature of my iridescence: where does it lie, where does it go? Where do I break?  And I think I’ve always known all along where I’m meant to be.  I am at my current pace, still, though I almost feel slower, like the wind is stopping me. I feel alone, that I will sit here forever in all my indecisions and non-adventures; that I will become a statue of lost time and old years, because of what I’ve heard from my teachers, because of what I’ve been told by my mother, because of what is expected of me. Is this enough? My power still glows, small as it is, but—am I doing this right? Is this how I want to live my life, just stuck?  I bite my teeth and press my legs together, all through the rain. I pray and pray and pray in my head and hold on tighter to the rusted chain. I shift the weight my butt has made in the swing bench and feel so very different. Then I push myself all the way back, then move forward.  I fall, tumbling, face first into land, bruising my knee. I curse under my breath. Then I get back up again, and back onto the swing.  I lift myself, my legs, my breath, then charge into the sky. My heart beats faster when the wind breaks and I am out of my current pace, out of my comfort zone. I feel a thrill once again, something I’ve heard in stories but never for myself.  My iridescence glows so bright I fear that I will catch aflame. I fear that I will never stop shining and everyone will notice me and I’ll go too far out my comfort zone, which will make my mother shout at me, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s a good thing to steal the spotlight, like my friends do. Maybe it’s a good thing to go out of my comfort zone, to swing a different way, to shine. Maybe it’s my time, now. Maybe. My graduation hat sweeps off into the air and I am launched into the sky, burned into the wind.  Page 15: I go higher than I ever thought possible and ￼I choose what I’ve always known: art and my swing finally breaks under me. My iridescence can’t hold me. Art: because there’s nothing wrong with my role as a listener, and I can still have power, and I can still have a voice. Art: because the world is still a blank canvas for my own stories to tell, my own legacies to keep, now that I’m freed from the comfort holding me. Art: for the histories of me and others and you, and the literature of stories. Art: because even though my mother will rage, even though she will cry and ask me why and come knocking on my door and come begging for a reasonable decision, for a story that she likes, this is what I want. This what I desire. This is what I need to do: to listen to the word of others, to build off it, to build stories.  My iridescence leaves me breathless, and I don’t know where to go. Where am I supposed to be, now that I’ve realized what I want to do? I still don’t know so much, like where I will fly off to after secondary school, or what my summer will be like without my friends. So I just fall to the floor, graduation gown caked with mud, and then I just lie there awhile, staring at the sky. I see Mariam wave at me from the sun. I wave back.  But I don’t need to make all my decisions now. I don’t need to become a statue of old time and lost years based on all the world needs from me. On the floor, and in the rain, I am here, in this moment, and I could never be anywhere else. On this earth, in this city, in this place. Where my iridescence lies, where my indecision breaks. I don’t need an escape. Back and forth, over and through it, once again, this is where I need to be.