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Cup of Salt Tears

Cup of Salt Tears

A Tor. Com Original
Short StoriesFantasy
Published
2014
Language
English

Synopsis

Makino's mother raised her on old warnings: carve your name into a cucumber, and never let a kappa touch you. Years later, her husband Tetsuya falls gravely ill, and a kappa who claims to know her arrives with a barbed promise that could save him, at a cost. Drawing on Japanese folklore, this short story, originally published on Tor.com, is a quiet, haunting meditation on grief and how far love asks a person to go.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

MelancholicDarkAtmospheric

Genres

Short Stories Fantasy Dark Fantasy Mythology

About the author

I
Isabel Yap

Isabel Yap was born and raised in Manila and has lived in the United States since 2010, holding a BS in marketing from Santa Clara University and an MBA from Harvard Business School; she works as a product manager alongside her writing. Her Filipino speculative fiction and poetry have appeared in Nightmare, Tor.com, and multiple award-nominated anthologies. Her debut collection, Never Have I Ever, portrays Filipino girlhood and queerness through folklore-infused stories and won the British Fanta...

Characters

MakinoProtagonist

A woman confronting a kappa's bargain as her husband's health fails.

TetsuyaSupporting

Makino's gravely ill husband.

All characters in Cup of Salt Tears
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