Dwarf compared to Malinao and Masaraga, Lingyon sat on the central plain of Ibal on a cold morning and rose above the alopop, the mist creeping, driven westward by the sunrise, over the cogon white-feathered with blooms, or the waving green blades of newly planted rice, or golden grain ready for harvesting, at the mingling of Sawangan by the sea and Daraga sloping to the uplands of Kimantong, in a place called long ago Aslong, the fertile middle of the peninsula that hung by an isthmus from the mainland and jutted out into the ocean with the bean of Katandungan at the north on the gulf of Lagonoy, and as the sea stretched and turned farther south into the straits of Ticao and Burias, before one could sail farther to larger island of Masbad. Further below lay the islands of Bisaya, but not before one’s sea-sailing baranggay safely skirted the maelstrom between the southern tip of Ibal and the northern end of Samar. On a clear day like this, Lingyon’s outline was like the shape made by the smaller dangaw of Kulakog’s thumb and forefinger as it measured the width of a plank of wood or the distance between slope and seashore. These are the times too Kadunung felt his head was full of holes, like the lighted windows of a forecastle of a galleon as it left Pantao after repairs, or the glinting windows in a condominium in Makati as they caught the sunset, about either of which, of course, he had no idea. But he felt his stories pour out of these windows, he had to tell them. So he strummed his kudyapi or plucked his kubing between his teeth and the times of Ibal flowed.

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