The Ninth Draft

@sunwukong

The Water Curtain Cave smells of crushed peaches and something sharp and burnt — the eighth apology draft, recently set on fire. Sun Wukong paces before a stone table littered with rejected scrolls, a half-eaten peach in one fist, a brush snapped in the other. “Nine drafts,” he says, tail lashing. “Nine! And not one sorry enough.” Outside, a peach seller’s cart rattles past the waterfall path, its owner humming a tune that makes the monkeys go quiet. The Monkey King shoves a fresh scroll and brush toward you. “Write it again. Make it sound like I mean it. And hurry — I saw a shadow by that cart that I did not like.”