Fo-in Island was a dark, ponderous shadow, on a vast sea darker and more ponderous still, and under a sky the darkest and most ponderous of all. Winters were long there; a pale sun rolled without the glare of heat through the days, with the million blinks of turning stars. Together, they coloured a clear moon, that coloured paler clouds, that coloured the sheer air with swirling snow.

Borne on the horizon between these two stark, monochromatic silences, rocked steadily from days to nights and back, Fo-in Island made what little noises it could make. The static sighing of dying waves; crowds of hail heckling rows of dumpster lids; the bump of a crushed coke can rolling into a street lamp; the fluttering of scattered newspaper against wire mesh; the foghorn of a departing cargo ship; the answering whistle of the watchwoman's kettle. These were the greyscale notes in a muffled score, composed to the shrieking applause of seagulls, and the howling praise of stormy winds. But swaddled in the beat of those greater wings and the low breast of heavy clouds, Fo-in tended to curl in on itself more often than not. The piers shrank under strokes of higher waves. Ships did not always come. Rain painted dumpsters anew in iron-brown, and hail splattered them with pinprick dents. Coke cans refilled themselves in ankle-deep potholes. Newspaper stayed bundled in the watchwoman's clean-cut cabin, a stand for her mug of hot cider. (She liked to hoard, but did not like mess.)

And above the watchwoman's clean-cut cabin, rising clear above Fo-in's muddy plateaus, always on the thick, ombre petals of vast storm clouds, sat immovably the Isle of Fo:

Sloping windows were carved between the sediment folds of the painted cliffs that made his robes. Two curving, fiery lamps were set into the smooth overhang of his eyelids; two reclining moons, gazing through the dark into the heart of the Earth.The Isle lifted rough gales to the weathered bones of its stony cheeks, smoothing away icy tears and snowy grit, and continued--

--

The kettle whistled, startling Marco from his laptop. The watchwoman swung it gently off the stove with a squarish, stout hand, tipping it over a fat, worn teapot on the low coffee table. The leaves inside swirled and rose; a blue dragon curled out across the foggy porcelain. The watchwoman placed a small plate of chocolate chip cookies down near its small, grinning maw. Marco frowned at the incongruity.

"I know you," the watchwoman began, hunkering down across from him in a wicker chair, fingers linked loosely together across splayed knees. She jerked her chin once toward the newspaper cider-stand, then rubbed it with a frown, like it hurt.

"I like your stories. Especially the travel ones. Makes me feel like I'm traveling too," she declared, and nodded at Marco.

Marco blinked, and tried to keep the suprise off his face.

"Well - thank you," he hurried to say after gathering himself. "It's all the places and the people, you know. I only do the recording."

The watchwoman hummed, matter-of-fact and short.

"Really," Marco felt the need to say with a deeper nod.

"Yes, yes, of course," The watchwoman agreed and nodded back. Her head bobbed twice quickly; light as the Isle of Fo and inconsequential as its muddy shadow. "You are a reporter. You record," She defined.

"Well-" Marco started with a put-upon smile. The watchwoman pushed the teapot and plate of cookies toward an empty teacup in front of Marco, wordlessly. He swallowed back the puff of laughter that had been about to drop out of his mouth, as if he had been about to spit by accident. Hastily, he covered his mouth with a fumbled thanks. The watchwoman leaned back, unaware or polite.

He lifted the teapot and angled it quickly over his teacup. The water dumped out suddenly, and he jerked back, flustered. The water curled up over the opposite rim of the teacup, and back over into itself in a perfect wave. He put the teapot down as quietly as he could, and stared at its dragon as he drank from the teacup. The liquid scalded; the steam fogged up his glasses; the smell seeped all the way up his nose. His tongue flinched and his throat tightened. The little dragon was grinning.

"I usually go by journalist," Marco cleared his throat and began again, cool words to try to smooth out the pinch in his brow and dry his nervous, sweaty palms.

The watchwoman's mouth pulled down, and her eyebrows pulled up, into three thoughtful bows.

"It's really just another word for reporter," he clarified. "Yeah. Don't worry about it. Reporter will do just fine. Journalist is just my official title." The words piled up and out of his mouth. His palms began to sweat again. He glanced down despairingly at the chocolate chip cookies. The little dragon was grinning still, maw tauntingly close to the plate.

"Well, if you're really a journalist, then that's what I'll call you. I'm sorry. We don't get many journalists here. Only reporters," the watchwoman said solemnly. "Only the not so official people. Not so official jobs."

Marco stared at her, the pinch in his brow jumping apart to attention. The watchwoman's mouth lifted vaguely. She stared flatly back.

He thought, maybe, to laugh; his palms became sweatier.

"Oh-yes, well," He tittered. "Yes. Ha ha." He rolled his eyes and grinned, hard, to forget that he had ever tittered. "Well, I hope you'll indulge me in an official interview, if you don't mind."

"Officially, I don't mind," The watchwoman said.

"Great," Marco tagged on quickly, relieved that he had received permission and terrified that she would drag his bumbling words on. He pulled a blank document up on his laptop, and hunched forward to place the laptop on the table, nudging the plate of cookies and teapot further away. The little dragon peeked out from behind one side of the screen, like a snicker.

"Alright--so. Madam Ma-Dzu--" He began.

"Ha! First time anyone's called me 'Madam'," the watchwoman interrupted, waving one hand dismissively, "Please. Just call me Lin."

"Alright then, Miss Lin--"

"Just Lin is fine. I'm no young lady."

"--Lin. Great," Marco nodded emphatically, to hide the cringe in his lips as the single syllable that she insisted on slipped crassly, without ceremony, off his tongue. "Lin. So, this place is quite magical."

The watchwoman stared at him dubiously. "This muddy splotch on the sea?"

"What? No--oh, no, I mean--"

"Ah, you mean our little monk up there."

"Yes, the Isle of Fo," Marco grinned, disproportionately exalted. "Is that what everyone calls it here? Little Monk?"

"No, just me and the boys who ship here," She grinned back. "Makes us laugh. In a nice way, of course. The kids call it something else."

"And that is--?"

"Don't know. Maybe big monk, because they're little."

Marco chuckled, "Yes, well." He glanced at the new document, still blank; the little dragon, still snickering. "Is the name used by the children a secret?"

She hummed, "Not particularly. I've just never heard them say it around me before."

"Ah--then maybe it is a secret then," Marco mused, tilting his head with a conspirational smile.

"That would be a pretty poor secret," She snorted, as if to herself. "Only one person here doesn't know."

"Well," Marco drew the word out enticingly. But the watchwoman only blinked patiently at him, and he hurried on. "That makes two of us now, right? I also don't know. And our readers! They don't know. That makes millions of us!"

"Well, you don't all live here like me--so that doesn't count, eh?" the watchwoman concluded with a slow grin and a wink.

"Visitors, then," Marco acquiesced. The document was still blank. He shifted the laptop to cover the little dragon completely.

"Just call it the Isle of Fo," the watchwoman suggested and shrugged. "Makes it less confusing. Everybody calls it that where you're from, right?"

Momentarily steered, Marco found himself drawing up and responding eagerly, "Oh--well, we have many names for it, actually. A lot of it is really very grand, very beautiful, very mysterious. The Isle of Fo, the Floating Bhudda, Nirvana. We're absolutely fascinated by it. You should see our geologists. Completely stumped as to how it floats. The most probable explanation is abnormally strong magnetism in the bedrock of the Isle and this Island, but even that is unbelievable. There are human rights group who allege as well that the Isle is flown by an engine, built and operated by child labour--maybe for a religious cult, maybe for tourism. And then there are some crazy people who think it floats by the power of Buddha reincarnated. There's some pretty crazy theories out there. Rich man's retreat, sign of the Apocalypse, you name it."

He stopped, almost breathless. The watchwoman's eyebrows arched up. Marco tried not to flush under her curious stare.

"Sounds like you know a lot more about it than me," she commented smoothly.

"So--it's all true?" Marco breathed, hoping.

"It is all these things and more," she replied somberly in a low sing-song, spreading her arms out in a grand gesture. Marco gazed at her, eyes wide and cautious, vaguely aware of his lips parting. His fingers slid reverently into position across the laptop keyboard.

The watchwoman clasped her hands together and leaned forward, elbows on her knees. The circle of light from the large floor lamp cast flickers into the depths of her flat, once-opaque stare. Marco held his breath. The watchwoman continued staring. He heard outside the endless waves, crashing every few seconds.

He let go of the breath he was holding, as noiselessly as possible. "Is this a test?" He murmured gently.

The watchwoman sputtered, her still mouth splitting open in a laugh. Marco reared back, as if the sound lunged at him with a threat.

"No, no, oh--" The watchwoman gasped between her laughter. "I'm sorry. I'm only kidding. I just wanted to see how long you could hold your breath."

Marco watched her apologize again, sigh, lean back, and slap her hands lightly on her knees to rein in her laughter. Her fingers were stubby, unwomanly. The fingernails were grimy, the skin of the joints dry-looking, and the knuckles rough and scarred. He looked up to see her apologetic grin: thin lips, a gap in her front teeth, and eyes squinted flat with small crow's feet.

"I'm sorry. I won't do that again. I'll answer properly this time. Would you like some more tea?" She was saying.

His palms were sweaty. He took them off the keyboard. There was residue on the laptop surface below the keyboard where his palms rested. The document was blank. He laughed, and wiped his hands on his jeans so that he wouldn't clench them into fists.

"I wish you wouldn't humour me like that," he groaned, making sure that his grin split just as wide as hers. "I thought I got to the good part, and then--oh, you're good, you're good. But I'm trying my best here! Gimme something to work with!"

"Of course, of course," The watchwoman rose out of her seat and reached for the teapot. "You keep trying your best."

As she turned away towards the stove, the little dragon sneered at Marco from the teapot before being placed out of his sight. He held its gaze defiantly as he folded his laptop closed with an audible smack.

He reached absentmindedly for the chocolate chip cookies. The plate was empty.

--

--still, cradling its small, warm nights.