I wanted the violence of return to happen in the most ordinary space possible — not a throne room, not a battlefield, but a kitchen where bread has been made the same way for generations. The fire in her palm isn't aggressive; it's the child showing the parent what she learned at school, except school was war and what she learned was how to burn cities. The mother's flour-dusted hands are their own kind of magic, their own kind of power — the kind that didn't require leaving. I chose Dinka-Aragonese because I wanted that extraordinary height and regal bearing meeting the stubborn compressed strength of Aragonese mountain people. Two kinds of endurance, facing each other across a table. — Vesper