Eight Questions for the Goddess
Eight questions. One night. A goddess decides her fate.
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14–20 min read
The night before her sixteenth birthday and the marriage that will cage her, Little Mei — large, defiant, quietly in love with girls — chants a mantra, and the goddess answers. Ekajati appears, nine feet of jet-black warrior beauty, and sets the rules: eight questions, then it’s decided what Mei becomes. Stone or alive.
Love in a Dead Language
She cannot lie to a girl who hears every lie.
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15–23 min read
At an island seminary folding Christian and Buddhist faiths into one, Sister Ruth hides the blood on her hands and the silver that paid her tuition. But the novice who has stolen her heart can sense every lie the moment it’s spoken — and Mei lies constantly. A weekend storm drives the temple toward honesty.
How to Deal with Death
Condemned by a child. Defended by a ghost. Judged by Death.
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13–20 min read
Ten years after fleeing the farm, Little Mei kneels beside a freshly dug grave, condemned by junkie child-gangsters for a theft she didn’t commit. Her only defender is invisible — Rebecca, her murdered lover, now a ghost bargaining with the Lord of Death himself, ready to trade silver, soul, and eternity to change Mei’s fate.
What About the Yak in My Mother’s Kitchen?
A yak in the kitchen. A mother’s ghost. A girl about to run.
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13–20 min read
It’s 1908, her sixteenth birthday, and the anniversary of her mother’s death — the day Little Mei means to flee the farm forever. She rises to bake her father’s butter cakes one last time and finds a full-grown yak standing impossibly in her dead mother’s kitchen. On this island, an obstruction is rarely just an obstruction.
Keeping Up with the Daughters of Mara
Three demons, one forbidden love, and a nun who walks in dreams.
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12–19 min read
By the end of WWII, Sister Ruth — once a yak farmer’s daughter — has learned to wake inside her dreams and roam the astral plane. But her freedom draws Mara, lord of temptation, and his three luscious daughters, who lure her toward forbidden rooms. Her hardest temptation: her vow-breaking love for a gentle novice.
A Portrait of the Daughter as a Young Rebel
She refused the marriage — and the yaks took her side.
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9–14 min read
An island in the East China Sea, 1909. Sixteen-year-old Little Mei is seated beside the gray-haired man her father means her to marry. To him she’s a broodmare; to herself she’s smarter than the men who fear her. So she stands at the Sunday table and says no — as a hundred yaks gather at the windows.
A Study in Silver
Fourteen silver coins. One hunger for books. A love no law allows.
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9–13 min read
At sixteen, Little Mei leaves the farm with an old mare and fourteen pieces of silver for the Walled City. Too green to cook, too big to dance, she sweeps floors — then becomes the gang’s enforcer. When the unapologetic Rebecca arrives, the two women become secret lovers, trading notes they eat to seal the vow.
Parallel Lives of Melvin & Mei
A boy who wants to die. A girl about to. One shared dream.
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13–20 min read
1920: a condemned farm girl turned criminal hides from the gangsters coming to kill her. Decades later, a despairing thirteen-year-old boy lies in his Woodstock bedroom. Their broken hearts beat on the same page of the book Death is reading — so for one impossible morning, they share a single dream, unable to lie to each other.
Sister Ruth
She sees the gods no one else believes are there.
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10–15 min read
Autumn 1923. Big-boned Little Mei climbs to a five-faith seminary on the island of Pain that is secretly an administration of magic. She has seen ghosts and gods since childhood; now she must learn to focus that inherited power. But the order takes her silver and sends her to the kitchens — to disappear.
The Joy of Painting Your Own Reality
The dead crowd every hall. Only one book can quiet them.
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9–14 min read
At an island school where Christ and Buddha are taught in one breath, the novice once called Little Mei is losing her mind to the spirits only she can see. Desperate, she turns to the sly immortal librarian, who hands her not an answer but a riddle: a fragile book on painting that could free her mind — or paint her into hell.
Uninteresting Moments of Necessary Silence
She buried her past. One teasing smile dug it back up.
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9–14 min read
In the great silent kitchens of a 1933 island university, Mother Ruth has spent a decade burying who she was — an enforcer with blood on her hands. Mealtime is her one quiet joy. Then she offers her half-eaten lunch to a striking young novice, whose mocking, too-sweet thanks kindles a desire every vow forbids.
Milarepa’s Ghost
On a sacred mountain, the only enemy left is her own lies.
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11–17 min read
High above her monastery, Mother Ruth leads eleven nuns into a year-long wilderness retreat that strips the ego to nothing. Twelve weeks alone, she’s visited by the ghost of Milarepa — a wild, flesh-and-bone saint who arrives on a swarm of biting ants, bearing songs, riddles, and a warning: for the unconfessed, saints turn to tormentors.
The Three Mahasiddhas
Three dead masters. One freezing nun. Each lesson costs an illusion.
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17–25 min read
On the Island of Pain, Mother Ruth sits a solitary winter retreat, resolved to freeze to death in perfect stillness if she must. Instead, three long-dead masters visit at her lowest moments, each drawing her into a luminous pure land with a single dangerous teaching — and each lesson costs her an illusion.
About Melvin Horton
Melvin Horton is a Buddhist practitioner whose work draws from Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana traditions, as well as Gnostic Christianity, Zen meditation, Neopaganism, and Tibetan Buddhist practice. His writing holds these traditions without collapsing them, treating faith not as resolution but as inquiry. His essays and meditations move through the places where belief, embodiment, and daily practice meet and sometimes fail to agree.
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