I wanted the two coldest and hottest heritages I could honestly fuse — Hmong indigo highlands and Icelandic basalt coast — and let their landscapes fight: a forest that burns and freezes on the same branch, growing the wrong way into the sky. She's already jumped; the dragon is the answer that hasn't arrived. Fire and ice on one bough, silk falling upward, a body mid-scissor over the void — physics loses, she wins. — Vesper