Tiger Moon.

The first sound of morning in the prison was always the same. Keys turning. Boots echoing. The faint, dry rasp of wind against the walls. Lin Tariro moved through it as though it were part of her. Sixteen years of routine had folded her into the rhythm of the place. She had stopped thinking about freedom a long time ago.

Her hair was pulled tight, her collar buttoned. She walked with the stillness of someone who had learned that emotion was a kind of weakness. The prisoners filed into the yard, eyes half awake, faces unreadable. She watched them move, not with cruelty but with a heavy sort of discipline. Above them the sky was a pale blue wash. At the edge of it, the moon had not yet set. It glowed faintly orange, strange against the daylight.

Someone behind her said it looked like a tiger’s eye. Lin looked up again. The color deepened. Something inside her chest moved, slow and unfamiliar, as if stirred by memory. She turned away and resumed her patrol. She did not believe in omens.

That night she dreamt of water. She was standing on a cliff above a vast fall, mist climbing around her in white veils. A woman was standing opposite her. Same eyes. Same mouth. The sound of the water filled everything, yet Lin could hear her own heartbeat, steady as a drum. The woman lifted a hand as though to reach her. Lin tried to speak but the mist swallowed her words. She woke before dawn with the sound of rushing water still in her ears.


On the other side of the world, the woman from her dream stood in the same posture. Tari Lin had come to Victoria Falls after years in Hong Kong, chasing a story she could not name. Her mother had been from Zimbabwe, her father from Guangzhou. She had grown up between languages, between faces, between expectations.

The air by the falls was alive. The sound was endless. Tourists gathered on the viewing platforms, shouting over the noise, their words carried away by the mist. Tari stood apart from them, still as a tree. The water threw light over her face in ripples. She felt small but not afraid. Only aware of how immense the world could be.

She looked up. The sky was turning the color of smoke and honey. And there it was, the same swollen moon, heavy and luminous in the daylight. Someone near her whispered, “Tiger moon,” and pointed. Tari whispered it too, tasting the shape of the words. It felt familiar, though she did not know why.

That night, in her mother’s village, she ate maize meal by the fire while her aunt told stories. The old woman’s voice wove through the dark like a soft thread. She spoke of the tiger moon, how it was a bridge between the living and the lost. How the river opened its mouth to carry souls across the world. The children around her listened with wide eyes. Tari smiled, pretending not to believe, but her heart listened harder than her mind did.

When she stepped outside, the moon hung low over the trees, huge and red. The air shimmered with insects. For a moment she thought she saw someone standing in the distance, just beyond the reach of the firelight. The figure was motionless, a shadow with her own shape. She blinked and it was gone.


Morning returned to Guangdong with the same sharp sound of keys and boots. Lin stood in the yard, giving instructions. The day felt ordinary, though a pressure sat behind her ribs like a warning. A prisoner named Wei was restless. She watched him too closely, perhaps. The men were being moved for a workshop shift when the first noise came.

A metallic click. Then a sound that did not belong. The report of a gun, sharp and final.

Lin turned toward it. Another shot. Someone screamed. The world folded inward. Wei stood near the gate, the gun in his hand small and bright in the sun. Lin shouted something, she never remembered what. The second bullet struck the wall beside her. Smoke filled her lungs. The yard tilted. In that instant she saw the same water she had seen in her dream, rising, luminous, pulling her into itself.

She fell, not onto concrete but into cold light.


Tari was on the platform at Victoria Falls when the same sound found her. A gunshot behind her, then another. People screamed and ran. She dropped to the ground, heart pounding, face pressed to the wet stone. The mist thickened until she could see nothing. She crawled toward the railing. A third shot cracked through the air. Someone’s voice shouted for help and was lost in the roar.

The mist changed color. It glowed orange, then white. She tried to breathe but the air had turned into water. The sound of the waterfall swallowed everything.

Then there was silence.


When she opened her eyes, she was standing on a wide stone plain covered in silver mist. The air shimmered as if lit from within. A river wound through it, dark and endless. Above her, the tiger moon hung enormous and still. On the far side of the river a woman was standing in a grey uniform.

Lin looked across the water at Tari, and Tari looked back. Neither spoke at first. The light between them moved like breath.

“Are you me?” Tari asked.

“I think we are what each other lost,” Lin said.

They stepped closer. The river did not stop them. It was only light now. When they stood face to face, the air trembled. They touched hands, and a quiet current ran through them. Lin saw flashes of Tari’s life, crowded streets, neon signs, the weight of loneliness inside noise. Tari saw Lin’s life, routine, silence, the heavy calm of order.

They understood each other without speaking.

The moon brightened until the whole world glowed. Lin felt something pulling her backward, the air tightening around her like a tide. Tari reached for her. Lin smiled, the first true smile of her life.

“You belong there more than I do,” she said softly. “I have lived too long behind walls.”

Tari tried to answer, but Lin was already fading. The light folded around her until she was gone.


When Tari woke, she was lying on the ground near the falls. People were running, shouting. The shooter was gone. Someone was helping her sit up. Her hands were shaking. She looked at her arm. There was a burn there, a small red mark shaped like the curve of a key.

She stood slowly. The air smelled of rain. The tiger moon was sinking into the horizon, pale and distant now. She felt something in her chest that was not hers alone, a calmness that did not come from her own life. When she spoke to a police officer nearby, her words came out in Mandarin before she caught herself.

Later, when she looked into the water, she saw her reflection flicker. For a moment, two faces looked back, one steady and still, one full of light. Then the mist moved, and only her own remained.


In Guangdong, a new guard walked the morning rounds. He passed the empty locker that had once belonged to Lin Tariro and paused. Her notebook was still there. On the cover, in her even handwriting, was a single word in English.

Tiger.

He closed it gently and moved on.

Outside, the moon had vanished into daylight. The yard was quiet, but the wind carried a faint sound that did not belong, the distant rush of falling water.