En route to his home village, Cosmo stopped at a crossroads to buy fresh food for dinner. Twenty minutes later, he boarded a bus with a plastic sack full of cabbage, eggs, pork and a bunch of bananas. He hadn’t considered the difficulty of helping his parents without drawing attention to the easy money he’d been making.

He relaxed as the bus jostled along the dirt road. His parents knew nothing about city life. It wouldn’t be hard to convince them he’d earned the money from martial arts tournaments, or for offering private lessons. And he’d be telling a partial truth.

An hour later, he stepped off the bus and strode across the village to his parents’ hut—to the hut he’d grown up in. It’d only been a year since he’d been home. Each year’s passing increased the burden he felt when he returned.

No one should be subject to the poverty he had grown up with, and yet that same poverty strangled his village the same as a thousand others. If anything, its grip strengthened each year. And if poverty made people desperate, oppression made them mean. Cosmo wanted so much more for the Nagas.

“Son!” Cosmo’s mother dropped her hoe and straightened her back before hurrying to greet him.

Cosmo embraced her. Having been taller than her since his teens, he now stood a head higher. “You’re shrinking.”

“You’re still growing.” She smiled up at him. 

Cosmo shifted the plastic sack from one hand to the other.

“You brought something?”

He escorted her to the front door and opened it for her. “I wanted to help out with dinner. It’s nothing special.”

His mother flowed gracefully toward the stove where the fire had already been lit. “Oh?”

Cosmo picked up on the hidden question in her one word comment. “I’ll tell you all about life in Delhi later, after dinner.” He paused. “I know you and father don’t like me fighting, but there are tournaments in the city, and lots of Indians anxious to learn Thaing.” Finally he shrugged. “I’m good at it.”

His mother patted the preparatory table next to the stove. “I believe you. Now why don’t you show me what you bought so I can cook it, and we can eat.” She turned toward him suddenly when he set the bag down. “It’s not snakes, is it?”

They both laughed. “You’re never going to let that one go, are you?" 

She shivered as she hefted the pork from the bag. “I hate snakes.”