Guardian lions and pagoda across the back

The lions came down off the ridge this morning, or at least the survey drones say they did, and I spent the whole walk up to the shrine trying not to run. Silver streaks have been crossing the basin for three nights, the same pale light you used to chase along the temple eaves when we were children. The wardens call it ice-dust catching the sun. I have stopped arguing with them. The lions don't care what anyone calls it.

They are not quite as I remembered. The left one still holds its mouth open on the sound that begins things, and the right one keeps its jaw shut on the sound that ends them, just as Grandmother taught us. Both have manes curled like cut ribbon and paws planted on the terrace as if the terrace owes them rent. Behind them the five roofs of the pagoda climb the cliff, built from the printed plates the founders carried down during the cold years, and the characters on the lintel still say what Grandfather first brushed there. I have repainted that lintel every spring for thirty years. This morning I didn't need to.

The crack I filled in the left lion's shoulder, the one that has leaked resin every summer since I came here, was gone. Not healed exactly. The stone under my fingers was warm and smooth, like something that had been held for a long time. I sat on the terrace with the fine brush and tried to touch up the right lion's eye where the pigment had worn away. The first stroke went on dark, then lifted itself back out of the grain, as if the lion had decided it would do its own looking.

I'm not frightened, Mira. Come up when the rains stop. Bring the good brushes and the bad coffee, and tell me whether you can see the light too.