The village was ablaze, colors of bright red and orange popped out of windows, collapsing buildings like it was the Big Bad Wolf, the fire doesn't care who it takes, it kidnaps and kills with no hesitations. One Vietnamese teen girl named Hang Nguyen was standing outside her burning hut with her family dead, they were now only charred bodies, just lying there, wondering why they deserved to die without Hang; they were not a family anymore, but Hang didn't care too much for her family, she only saw them as souls now. She danced in front of her tiny one room hut, alight with bright orange and red colors of fires that haven't eaten for weeks, eating up every soul it touched to please itself. Hang's soul was untouchable. She had a guardian angel giving her an angel bubble, making her invincible, but that angel never helped her family. Hang twirled in the dirt, the dirt soft and squishy like a plush toy except it's on the ground for what seemed like acres. She ignored the hungry fires, the terrifying bombs falling like missiles, shiny shrapnel falling flightlessly through the air, and the invisible bubble threw it all away to each side of her body. While dancing in the ugly, disgusting brown dirt, she thought to herself: Why? Why should I survive? Why has the Holy Tugong take my family's souls away? Why does the Holy God of the Soil leave me here, all alone? It was just like when vultures scavenge for their dead prey. Hang felt that Tugong was the vulture and her family were the prey. But Hang, she was not the prey, she was the second vulture, the one who grouped up all the birds of prey to find food and fight for it. But these vultures were dead by the hands of man. The prey stayed dead, and there were no vultures to claim it. Hang thought of her family while performing Tuan Thanh Tugong, or the Holy Tugong Soil ritual. If they served their time for Tugong, then He surely will take them back, into the dirt, to be immortalized into the Earth, to start a new, peaceful life. Hang remembered a distant memory, one the ritual could take.
Hang saw her mother; her dark black hair in a messy ponytail, her dark eyes hard as coals, her skin was lighter than anyone in the village, and her lips plump. She often wore white and yellow clothing to honor the Gods, because she always wanted to please people. She seemed mean, but she was the nicest person Hang knew in her little village. Her mom would always tell her as a young child: "Once someone returns to the Holy One, their story doesn't end, it keeps going, it's only a newer version. We are still in that story, and the best of stories never end."
"But what about nguoi ba tuyet voi? Great grandma? She left to see Him, and she never came back. Did her story end?"
"My little con yeu, her story had a new chapter that we get to read for ourselves. Her story didn't end, it only just begun."
She pulled back Hang's curtain of dark hair from her face and smiled. Her smile made your inner soul open and spring into pure joy. She was known for her smile, people said it was the prettiest smile they've ever seen, that she was blessed with beauty from the Holy One. And she was definitely blessed for as long as she lived. She was only forty two when the bombs dropped. She was tending to grandma, but Hang called her grandma ba me cua ba chay, or mother of beauty. She used to keep up the gardens, planted flowers. She created beauty for everyone to see, but she developed a brain disease called Alzheimer's, she always thought Hang was her dead cousin, Abha. Hang's grandmother was the one who was unable to be identified when their bodies were found. Hang's baby brother, only one year old, gone. In an instant, everything Hang had was gone. All gone. Mother, who sang Hang songs at night; Grandma, ba me cua ba chay, the one who forgot who people were but still impacted people positively; Dacey, Hang's little brother who kept everyone busy but was loved by everyone; just gone in a blink of an eye. Two soldiers watched Hang dance in the dark, dirty brown dirt, and one was mocking her, the other seemed to try to stop him. You don't know what happened! Hang screamed in her mind. Why do you mock my family?! Why do you mock me? Stupid, filthy Americans! Let me finish! I don't want to see any of you, ever! She wanted to scream it out loud, but that would disrupt the ritual plus those "filthy" Americans don't know her language. Hang was livid but tried to keep her emotions in check. She would have to start over from the beginning if she talked, for talking would be an offense to the dead souls being taken. One soldier stopped the mocking one. He was extremely tall and he wore something around his neck that Hang couldn't make out in all the dark, cloudy smoke that hung over like inescapable death. The mocking one was shorter and he even looked like a jerk, no matter how far away he stood. She could see their mouths move between each twirl, making the world spin with the dead. The bigger soldier; the one serving the mocking one's justice for Hang, seemed to be talking to the other, and she heard the smaller soldier's name: Azar. At least that's what she thought his name was. Hang knew very little English, but she felt that his name was Azar. What a silly name, Hang thought. Sometimes you have to play the fool, lam tro he. Americans, good or bad, big or small, stupid or smart, they are all fools. Destructive little fools. They stand on this holy ground, tainting it with their negative energy. But Hang didn't do anything about it because, sooner or later, everyone dies to be reborn as good people, the bad serve a life of hell, and she knew her family was good and those Americans fates were in their own hands. Her mom always told her this constantly: "duoc tot,va neu ban khong the duoc tot, hay can than." It means, "be good, and if you can't be good, be careful." If these soldiers weren't good, at least they were careful. They only took necessary risks and that's all that matters. Hang smiled and continued her ritual as Azar and the other soldier walked off out of her sight into the dark cloud of death.
