Steppe Radio

Every evening Aigerim and her father go on air from the middle of the steppe: weather, lost horses, weddings, prices, and whatever news from the city seems worth passing on.

Days before the spring migration a storm takes the antenna down.

Rebuilding it is not complicated, exactly. It is just that the parts are four hundred kilometres away, the herders leave on the fourteenth whether or not there is a forecast, and the two people who know how to raise the mast have not agreed about anything since the winter.