Braulio Munoz

The Always Already Braulio Munoz

The planet is suffering. All over the world humans are forcing nature to bend to their desires. If they continue with their ways, the planet will die. Up in The Highlands the Oca, a people of great knowledge and power, see the devastation and want to know whether humans deserve saving. They send one of their own into The Land, the place where humans are most adamant in using knowledge for controlling nature. Kukuli, a dark and beautiful young woman, is given the fateful task.

Kukuli travels across The Land bearing a gift: Wiñay Cuyai, a kind of love that strives to bring about a communion of all things while maintaining their differences. As she travels, Kukuli pains over the growing devastation of the world. She gets some relief when she meets and talks with the ghosts of the people who inhabited The Land before their world changed. Eventually, Kukuli meets someone from The Land, falls in love, and has a child with him.

The epic continues with the next generation. Since Qallariy is the daughter of an Oca and a man of The Land, her experiences are very different from those of her mother and her father. She has all the Oca powers but she must grow up in The Land, where she is seen as different, other. Despite her many difficult experiences, Qallariy eventually meets individuals who convince her that humans are indeed worth saving.

The novel ends with Makenna, one of Qallariy's soulmates, traveling across The Land telling and showing about Wiñay Cuyai: the Oca's gift.