Ash and Small Bear go on an adventure!

More cousins.

Conversing through a dictionary, every word gains the weight of the time it takes to translate it. Every sentence becomes so heavy, the simplest questions enough to crush you if you aren’t careful, until impatience and the heat drag everyone back into their own languages, save for the occasional important thought: ‘I met your aunt once - the one with the parrot.’ They want to know about second and third cousins of mine, people I haven’t seen or heard of since the last big family reunion when I was… how old? Seven, maybe, or eight, young enough to remember only the tiny crabs under rocks on the beach and the boy who wouldn’t swim with me, not until I called him a coward and splashed ahead so far he had to yell to tell me anything. I don’t remember who he was or where he came from. I remember, though – in the end, he swam.

And after everyone left and I retreated to my room to cover myself again with my own thoughts, Lenka brought me a picture of my auntie Mary, standing on a hillside, ‘1957′ printed at the top. In our shared language, part English, little Croatian, mostly gestures, she points to Mary and explains, ’see, we used to be thin like you. Now I am here and she is dead. You don’t know how your cousins are… but I care about these things, because I am a grandmother.’