From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
the two protagonists
The two protagonists of the embedded story are Leif and Katita, whose symbiotic partnership structures the narrative's two halves: Newcastle (urban, kinetic) and the interior desert (stationary, surgical). Leif, a military engineer in physical disrepair—cannot walk, cannot see, heart governed by external pacemaker—is paired against Katita, a nurse-assassin in red, strategic and grief-stricken, attempting to "break the cycle." They stage the three temptations: Katita watches Leif's shoulder-blades for the white wings that will erupt at the story's climax.
Crucially, they recur across C. W. Smith's wider oeuvre (Leaving/Leading, Saltando, Pugil, Fellow Disjecta, Oh Sunny Danger Time) as "instruments of return"—the same souls renamed and retransmuted. Each adaptation resolves the glitch through its own version of their interplay. Their dyadic structure (immobility / motion; blindness / sight; governed heart / governing will) encodes the fundamental choice: whether the cycle can be broken or only eternally repeated.