“So, tell me, Rose. Where are your people from?” He bent to fondle a leaf, like just caressing the plant was actual gardening. As if it were one of his Wives.

“All over.” She didn’t owe him anything. “What about you? Where did you get these people, some kind of lost and found? Maybe a mental hospital?”

“Basically, yes, I did.” He grunted as he stood, ignoring the barbs in her question. “They were lost out here in this unhinged world, and I found them. After the last round of flus, when the armies moved into the reserves, I was on my own, just Nam and me. This Two Spirit kid of my sister’s is the closest thing I have to a son to help out around here. Well, for now, anyway, until sons come from the angels we’ve collected.”

“By angels, you mean hippies, right?”

“You are very judgmental, aren’t you?” He tipped his head to the side, one eye closed against the sun, with his hands laced together over his hard, round stomach. “It’s a lonely place to be, sitting at the judge’s bench all the time.”

“It’s a powerful place to be.” She wasn’t going to break in either direction. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of making her truly angry. And she sure as hell wasn’t looking to be his friend.

“I’m not your enemy, you know. I have done nothing but provide a roof and care for your friend, who, by the way, wouldn’t have lasted much longer with that infection,” he said. “And I haven’t even gotten so much as a thank-you.”

Rose bit the inside of her cheek. “Thank. You.”

“You are truly welcome, sister.” He turned back to the plants. Rose resisted the urge to point out that she was not his sister, not by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, she pulled some dandelions and pocketed the greens for later.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“I guess.” Anything to make this be over soon.

“Do you not feel that we have an obligation to help?”

“Help who? Help ourselves to breathe? Our families to survive? Our children to have a future beyond having everything taken from them? Then yes, of course I do,” she answered.

He chuckled. “Classic victim stance. No, no. Do you not feel that as the chosen people, the ones who have lost nothing important, nothing we can’t find elsewhere, we should help those who are truly without?”

Rose stood to her full height and placed her hands where they fit the best, on her hips. “Where exactly do you think our dreams come from? My dreams are full of lakes and the small islands that skip across them like a heartbeat. They are all that I am. They are my land. Yours are different, I’m sure. If you’re from the north, they are all the colors of freeze, as deep and devastating as their stories. In the south, they are red sand and hills cut from the glass formed under a red sun. Our lands are who we are. That’s not something easily replaced.”