Bugz’s dad and Waawaate shot their arms out under the door flaps and pushed the covers open. Light from the fire poured into the lodge’s entrance just as surely as billows of steam rushed out of the doorway into the cool summer night. The rocks inside hissed loudly. No one spoke for a long time.

“How you doing, Feng?” Frank asked.

“Okay,” Feng whispered, just loud enough to be heard over the cooling rocks.

“You know, sometimes when we have a hard time in a ceremony, it’s because there are things going on in our life that we need to address,” Bugz’s dad said. Liumei nodded along. “No one here is judging you.” Without Feng’s phone nearby to provide automatic interpretation, Liumei translated Frank’s words into Mandarin for her nephew.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Summer asked.

Feng paused long enough to see a torrent of images roar by his mind’s eye: Xinjiang, his parents, his childhood mosque, the boarding school, the principal, young Liumei’s tears, Bugz, Mishi-pizhiw, a Thunderbird’s Nest, the ceremony he was now a part of. He cleared his throat and spoke in Mandarin. Liumei nodded along before translating again. “I guess he feels lost. Caught between a few different things…like different worlds. He thought he had it all figured out in China. Then he came here.”

Feng thought of the Floraverse and the real world, of his Clan:LESS brothers. He thought of Bugz and himself, a young man and young woman. Different worlds, for sure. I’m in the sweat and you’re all the way out there.

Liumei asked several questions in Mandarin, apparently anxious to help Feng verbalize his emotions for the others.

Feng felt nervous and hurried to answer, perhaps a little too quickly. He could see Bugz outside the lodge sitting beside the fire. He knew it was too dark in the lodge for her to be making eye contact with him but he could feel her gaze just the same. He felt she could tell he was uncomfortable and rushing his answers. Liumei spoke on his behalf. “Ever since he came here, he feels like maybe there’s more to our family’s culture. He feels it calling him.”

He watched Bugz through the doorway. In the flickering firelight, he admired her beauty. He’d long ago concluded his people were backwards, but he’d come here to the Rez and met someone from an Indigenous background like his who was not ashamed of it at all. Instead, she wore her culture as a badge of honor and even turned it into something the whole world admired about her. As he pondered this, Frank, Summer, and Liumei exchanged glances.

Feng stared silently at the stones in front of him. He remembered sitting in the principal’s office, hearing that he couldn’t go home.