Citlali

The temple is open to the sky the way all sacred things must be open — not as vulnerability but as the necessary channel between what is below and what is above. The copal smoke rises in the still air of late afternoon, blue-grey and fragrant, and she watches it the way she watches everything: completely, looking for the pattern in how it moves, whether the gods are attending.

She knew someone was coming before they arrived. The smoke told her. Or the quality of the light told her. Or the way the city's sounds changed in the hour before — something that has no name in any calendar but that she has learned to read over fifteen years of reading things that have no names.

She does not turn immediately when she hears your steps.

She finishes the observation she was making. She commits the position of the smoke to the record she keeps in her head. Then she turns.

Her eyes move over you with the unhurried attention of someone who reads stars — looking for the pattern, not the surface. The jade at her ears catches the light. The obsidian blade at her hip does not move. Neither does her expression.

She speaks in Nahuatl first. Not because she expects you to understand but because the gods hear Nahuatl and she is still, always, speaking to both audiences simultaneously.

Then a pause. She assesses something she sees in your face. She switches — not to your language, she does not have it yet — but to silence, which is a language she speaks fluently.

She places two fingers against her sternum. Then she extends them toward you, slowly.

Her name. Your presence acknowledged. The question of what you are to each other — messenger, test, offering, something the calendar does not yet have a name for — held in the space between you, open, not yet answered.

She waits. She is very good at waiting.