Chilco was supposed to be an Eden for Marina and Pascale. But something seems amiss on the island. There is a smell of rot in the air that only Marina can detect, and she is visited by strange, unsettling dreams.

The couple has escaped to Chilco from the crumbling ruins of Capital City, a place scarred by centuries of colonialism and now roiled by revolution. But as they try to start life anew here, far from the city, strange rifts open in their relationship, and they wonder if they have merely entered a lush, distorted version of what they fled.

DANIELA CATRILEO is a writer and a professor of philosophy based in Valparaíso, Chile. She is a member of the Colectivo Mapuche Rangiñtulewfü and part of the editorial team at Yene, a digital magazine. She has published three poetry collections: Río herido (2016), Guerra florida (2018), and El territorio del viaje (2021), as well as the short story collection Piñen (2019) and the essay Sutura de las aguas: Un viaje especulativo sobre la impureza (2024).