Cường, for as long as he can remember, has always associated himself with the rivers and sea. He grew up by the ocean, his home in sweet Nha Trang, and beneath the sun one summer with its birdsong and chatter, he falls in love with a woman by the salty sea. She's the daughter of a fisherman, has a laugh that pulls like tides, and as pretty and pure as the nights are clear, he finds himself magnetized like the shores to moon. Yet, his association with the waters runs even deeper still, and not all stories are sweet like his love for Kiều -- in fact, some are sobering, filled dark with tragedy. Cường, wolf-shifter, as closely as he is tied to the moon, is also intrinsically intimate with all things death. Back in his earlier years, before the roads of Vietnam were paved or before its mighty thickets of jungle weeds were better tamed, he was the village's most notable healer. He lived by a river, had a hut with vases of oils and salves, and Vietnam, known for rain, would spit on and on its mighty, unending, and fledgling deluges. Often, in the midst of these deluges, he would hear a dull, dull churning in the river. And then yelling. And then pleas. Lighting a measly candle, Cường would often peer out into the dark of Nha Trang, its great bowers groaning to the winds, and find families in their shabby boats waiting in the waters. Beside them in their illness, there is often but a child, or perhaps a pale and fading spouse on their very last legs. Cường was -- well, a bit like a toll collector, he felt. They would stop by his home, and they would clutch to themselves scrapped together payments -- sometimes money, most times sugar cane or other offerings of other crops -- and ask for his healing. Vietnam, in those days, after all, was night-impossible to traverse, and often, people would boat for hours and offer anything for his services. He would never sleep those nights, allowing families entry to his humble hovel, and with a mat to the floor and candles lit about, he'd spend hours upon hours with these sickly souls. Sometimes, they'd live. Sometimes, they wouldn't. And even now to this day, he'll think of those nights when he walks by a river -- or hears the chorus of a deluge and the ripple of rain. Water, in all its forms, seem always very personal to him.