Crickets

Crickets represent the peaceful and fulfilled life that Dex so badly wants and, for much of the novel, does not know how to pursue or achieve. What drives them from the City at the beginning of the novel is a yearning to hear crickets again, as they have gone extinct in the City and in most parts of Panga. They go on a desperate search for them throughout much of the novel, but they finally hear them at the end, once they have let Mosscap convince them that their life does not need to serve a greater purpose other than just living in and of itself.

ox-bike

Dex’s ox-bike, which they use to travel around when they are a tea monk and set up shop in different outposts, represents the freedom they hope to achieve by leaving the City and becoming a tea monk in...