Tahong -2024- – Recommended & Extended

Ligaya ran.

“They’re singing, Mama. They want us to come back.”

Ligaya laughed, but the laugh caught in her throat. “What else would it be?”

Kiko tried to warn her.

She ran to the water.

She looked in the cracked mirror hanging by the door. Her eyes were the same as they had always been. Weren’t they?

She waited.

The last thing she saw, before the green light swallowed her entirely, was Kiko’s smile — soft, loving, and utterly empty.

Kiko was gone.

The buyers came back in January.

The water was wrong. That was the first thing she noticed. It had a sheen to it, a rainbow slick like oil but thicker, heavier, almost gelatinous. The tahong hung from the ropes in curtains, swaying in a current she couldn’t feel. She reached for the nearest cluster and paused.

Instead, she thought of the roof. The school books. The look on Kiko’s face when she told him they had enough.

Come closer.

The next morning, she went to the western beds alone.

But the sea has a memory.