“What is a miracle?” The boy asked. 

The Hunter looked down from the building they had just landed atop in Ungwan Sarki. The boy was too green for his liking, both in skin color and his limited knowledge of his purpose. Miracle Hunters are created once every fifty years. So it was to his great surprise when he woke up one morning to find a young Hunter next to him on his patch of grass near the Murtala Square stadium. All he had been left with to figure out the mystery was a disappearing message on the child’s forehead that read, “Hunter 85499’s ward. Train him.” That was undoubtedly his number, the same tattooed on the inside of his forearm, but he had no reason to believe this green creature was his ward. Had they, the ones who sent Hunters to this world and encoded a mission of hunting miracles, really given him a ward? The boy looked as fresh as ugwu leaves picked just as they reached maturation. Compared to his paler green skin tone, the Hunter judged that the boy must be less than a year old in miracle years, even though he stood at half his height. 

“That’s what I am supposed to teach you,” the Hunter said. 

He scanned the length of the street where commercial activities dulled as men had dispersed into nearby mosques to pray. He was looking for a desire. He had felt it when he was more than 5km away. It had to be close. 

“What’s a miracle,” The boy asked again, agitated at his general reply. The Hunter chose to ignore him. The potency of the desire was bottomless and, therefore, strong enough to lull the Hunter, but the location was muddled. It was always so hard to find a desire during prayer times. Everyone was processing a request upward, and it congregated to make finding Hunter requests harder than usual. He pulled out his tunnel finder and realized it was low on energy. He had forgotten to keep it out at night for the moonlight to recharge it. Still, he clicked on the bright blue button at its center and hoped it was enough to give him a rough estimate of where the desire came from. 

“I said what’s a miracle!” The boy forcefully tugged at his black robe and almost toppled the tunnel finder out of the Hunter's hands. 

The Hunter turned angrily. “Shut up.” 

His annoyance must have been gotten across. The boy turned quiet and folded his arms across his chest. The Hunter ignored the feeling of guilt washing up his chest. It was not the boy’s fault that he had been thrown into a world, and all that was rattling in his brain was one question: What is a miracle? Hadn’t he also been like that all those moons ago, a young green hunter with only one thought for which he could find almost no answer? It had been maddening, nearly destructive. He wondered whose idea it was to create beings with such a singular purpose. A miracle hunter lived to know what a miracle was, breathed, and worked for miracles. A miracle made a Miracle Hunter, and a miracle Hunter who didn’t know a miracle was like a human being who doesn’t see the pleasure in living. It could drive one to an unfortunate ending. He put his hands on the boy's shoulder as if to console him, then changed his mind and dragged him off the ledge. 

Mid-air to their destination, as led by the tunnel finder, the Hunter found the calm within him to give the boy a less ambiguous answer. 

“A miracle is an extremely unbelievable thing.” 

He wanted to say more. He wanted to quantify the awe of a miracle, but he kept quiet. The boy seemed to accept his answer and said nothing until they arrived at the destination the tunnel finder had led them to. There was a woman in front of a gate. The gate was massive and dominating against the woman’s small, crumpled form. Her shoes lay strewn next to her as if thrown out after she was. 

“Why is she crying so loudly,” the boy asked. The Miracle Hunter laughed because the woman wasn’t crying at all. The boy was hearing his first desire, which sounded like the pitch of human tears to Miracle Hunters. A human being could be as silent as a dead body, but their desire could sound like the wail of a thousand mourners to a Hunter. The boy had learned his first lesson. It was not the show of emotion that determined the depth of the desire. Rather, a good Hunter had to learn to recognize and depend on the strength of their long ears. 

“Because she wants something from you,” the Hunter said. He pushed the boy forward, “You are a miracle yourself.”