[Image description: a digitally illustrated comic featuring various people across time against the background of a river reflecting a starry night sky.
Page 1: Tom sits at a desk, creating an illustration. His illustration forms the background of the page. It shows two men beside a river of stars, with mountains in the background. Narration reads "Tom is working on a new illustration, a piece showing two boatmen next to a river that mirrors the night sky."
Tom watches a film. A scene from the film shows two men, one close up saying "They are after me, Yue." Narration reads "It was something that popped into his head while watching a film called "The Croaking of Frogs" by Xu Jiaying.
Page 2: Xu Jiaying appears in a headshot and says "I wanted to work on this theme, ever since I read the novel "The Shadow Groove" by Camille Vargas. The Novel is the tragedy of a gondolier, who is unjustly blamed for a crime. Belong is a scene of a man being arrested.
Camille Vargas says "That story is based on things my mother told me about her youthful travels."
Page 3: A woman sits in a gondola, with a canal and town behind her. The gondolier stands, rowing the boat, and says "I never thought of doing this." In an aside, he says "But I saw pictures of the gondoliers a few years ago, outside the movie theatre in my town. They looked like nice guys, and had smiling girls all around them."
Page 4: The gondolier as a young man looks at a photo of a gondolier and two women. Standing beside is a man with a camera. The photographer says "Ahhh yes, for a while I traveled around Italy, with my camera. I had been very impressed as a child by a military man, one of the Partigiani, who took pictures of the mountains.
Below is a landscape, including the photographer as a young boy talking to a man setting up a camera on a tripod.
Page 5: The young boy sits inside with the military man, while he slices an apple. The photographer narrates "During the night, we talked. His name was Emanuele. I asked him is he was hiding from someone, in our house, but he didn't answer. He taught me a song, instead:" Emanuele tearfully sings while the boy listens. He sings "Little boat, take me away down the river once again. All forward, to that place where this sadness meets its end."
The boy stands in the same room, now sunlit, where the camera on the tripod remains. The photographer narrates "In the morning, he was gone."
Page 6: The boy holds the camera and looks at it intently.
A man with a guitar inside an orange toned crowded bar sings "Little boat, you know well I'm not from here, or anywhere else. Take me back to those days. Take me with you, far away." A man in the crowd is identified as 'Young Emanuele'. The musician says "This song is called "Lejos", and it is said that its composer, Hipólito Venegas, heart it in a dream... ...whispered in his ear by the ghost of an 18th century seamstress called Sally."
Page 7: A blue toned illustration of the ghost of Sally whispering in the ear of a sleeping man, Hipólito Venegas. The ghost of Sally says "My last years were spent in the Faber mansion, poor and sick, remembering tunes sung by my nana. Wandering through corridors.
Sally wanders through a large room and coughs.
Page 8: Sally looking over at an open book. Sally narrates "Distracting myself with the objects and pictures that the master of the house has brought back from his travels." The open book showing an illustration of two people beside a river, with mountains in the background. Sally narrates "Two figures by a river in China." /end ID part 1 of 2]
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