19

The grassy plains had turned goldenrod; though beside a modest prow house overlooking the lake, a lone tree with smooth grey skin still bore leaves.

Fender felt relieved to leave the hot wind currenting over the dry slopes around the lake outside. Stepping onto cold grey concrete and now surrounded by white painted steel sheet walls, a sizeable roller door shuddered closed behind them. He felt like he was in a colossal cool room, expanse enough for a king’s casino.

‘So, when they have enough people to make a community, they just build a lake and station themselves there?’ scoffed Fender as he followed a man wearing an embroidered work shirt.

‘What did you expect?’ replied the man who seemed tired beyond his years.

Distracted by the considerably faded paintwork of the genny-truck whose shape reminded him of an old-fashioned concrete truck, Fender was late to reply. He turned around but before he could retrieve the full fraction of an idea leftover from an idyllic youth, he was struck by the presence of a towering stonework structure. Reaching up to the ceiling and into the artificial darkness, rough-hewn bluestone walls, poorly floodlit with meagre lamps, loomed ominously.

‘You ne’er seen a castle before?’

Fender shook his head. Aware of the barren landscape surrounding them outside that stretched on for miles, he intimated, ‘no plants, no animals, save these rocks.’

With dislike for Fender’s tone, came a scowl. ‘It’s history.’

Arrested by the cold stone turrets, Fender squinted. ‘Yes, his story. Say, what’s been broken off the sides up there?’

‘You been fixing genny’s long?’ rounded his guide, doubting Fender was yet sixteen years old.

Fender obligingly returned his attention to the truck.

‘Long enough,’ sidled Fender. He decided against bragging about his work with magnetic perpetual movement energy machines outside Netech, and wanted to avoid deriding the outdated piece of machinery this community was reliant on. This model happened to be the very first of its kind.

‘We were expecting help last Monday.’

‘Well, I was only asked to come here yesterday. I heard the repeaters this way have been down for ages so maybe we didn’t get the message in good time.’

As Fender brushed the sun faded hull, a handful of various coloured paint flakes drifted to the ground. Behind a wheel underneath the mobile generator, neither of them noticed a large grey snake slumbering in a coil as it began to stir.

‘Joan Thurman sent me,’ shrugged Fender shortly, hoping it would abate further questioning.

The eyebrows went up and a step was taken back. ‘Well they have been down a while,’ he mumbled to himself.

‘This model usually keeps a community for around a year,’ began Fender slowly. ‘A new one driving in as the old one drives out.’ His eyes fell on the barely discernible angular patterns of mismatched sets of bald tyres. ‘How long ago did this one arrive?’

A shrug. ‘Can you fix it or not?’

Fender considered him; daring not to ask where this truck had been driven and why.

‘I’ll probably just need to reset the power management chip,’ stated Fender, ‘and check the system management controller.’

They continued waiting for a reply.

‘I’ll be gone within the hour,’ sighed Fender. ‘Unless I find something mechanically wrong with it.’

The weary man nodded curtly, kicked a wheel hub and walked off scratching his head saying, ‘I’ll let someone know you’re here.’ As an important afterthought, he added, ‘don’t wander off,’ and continued muttering indiscernibly as he walked away.

Admittedly, Fender had been looking forward to working on these machines when he was first contracted by the Channelled Forces one year ago. Although he’d initially been excited to visit Raintree’s surface, he was now keen for a change of pace and glad to be heading home in less than a week.

Fender opened the passenger seat door and climbed up into the cabin. Removing his backpack, he retrieved a small torch Nahla had endearingly labelled with his name, as if it belonged to a child’s lunchbox. After opening the dash and checking a USB port he returned to his bag and began sifting through an assortment of cables and connectors. It took three tries to make a cable that would be compatible for communication between the trucks operating system and his own work tablet.

After being given a temporary password he turned on his own tablet through the motion interlock that required him to mark the correct alignment of characters within three passes before allowing him access.

After further logging in with his personal identification number, a program requested the vehicles serial number. Fender climbed out of the cabin with a battery jump starter.

Under the truck’s bonnet, as per routine, he quickly pressed a small piece of soft stone hard enough over the embossed serial number plate to make an impression. While doing so, he was struck to notice a foreign device inconspicuously attached to the battery. Aware it could be responsible for depleting the battery, he dropped the jump starter and reached in to inspect it -he was spooked by its product code. He pondered the odds of the ten-digit code matching his personnel number. Tentatively, he removed the device and easily reconnected the modified cables.

Inside the truck cabin, the generator-truck’s operating system was initialising, supervised by Fender’s work tablet.

For privacy, he closed the bonnet and returned to sit in the cabin with the foreign device. He began picking it apart to recognise that it was a poorly disguised and considerably sized memory card.

The sound of hurried footsteps grew louder –someone was coming.

Paranoid, Fender hastily pocketed the memory card with his number on it and began entering the trucks serial number from the impression.

A second later, someone was standing by the open driver’s side door to the cabin. A woman with dark curly hair smiled up at him. ‘Hi there, welcome to Hiedeberg! I’m Remi.’

Fender threw her a warm smile. ‘Hey there, good afternoon. I’m Fender.’ He punched numbers importantly, stressing how to appear normal.

‘I trust Mike gave you a good reception?’ pressed Remi.

The genny-truck’s travel log and power transfer history appeared. It was blank, as if the generator truck had just rolled off the factory floor. Also, there wasn’t a single network available to connect to, disallowing him to retrieve any possibly existing log. Where there was usually a list of networks appearing, now there were none. There was no one to receive him.

Fender was unable to mask his nervousness. Remi glanced the screen and Fender’s confusion. She allowed him a moment to process what he had found and respond to her.

‘You mean Ben?’ said Fender, recalling the embroidery on his guide’s shirt.

‘You’re Chiaureli’s son,’ grinned Remi roguishly.

‘This truck,’ began Fender slowly. ‘It’s…not on the grid, is it?’

Remi lowered her chin, as if she were wearing spectacles to look over, beckoning him to continue.

‘And neither…are we? I mean right now.’

‘Does that bother you?’

Fender tapped and scratched the surface of the faux leather seat with his forefinger needfully, he tended some loose stitching. Slowly drawing a breath, he answered truthfully, ‘no.’

Her wonder at his answer thinly veiled, Remi continued quickly. ‘We were expecting you earlier but, given the situation, we must practice patience. Not to worry –out here, one’s word is one’s bond.’

‘I’m sorry, but who exactly sent for us?’

‘Poltauramy. The third.’

Goosebumps rippled through Fenders brain as his neck and shoulders tensed, the cool air suddenly felt too cold. ‘Ealahad.’

‘Is dead,’ confirmed Remi.

She stepped back and started walking away, towards the castle. ‘But he knew you wouldn’t be right now. Leave your things, every thing.’

Fender touched the memory card in his pocket before more consciously pretending to rub his face. Feeling the card against his arm, he anxiously climbed down out of the cabin to follow her.

‘I’m sorry, but where are we going? Um, how long will we be…are you sure my things will be all right for a bit?’

‘We don’t need your things, we need you,’ replied Remi as she took an apple from her shoulder bag and tossed it to him before she disappeared into the castle.

Clutching the fruit and walking warily, Fender gulped. He glanced around at entirely unfamiliar surroundings, clutching at vaguely familiar shapes and surfaces: walls, windows, a vehicle, a snake –another living creature. His gladness was short-lived. Nervously crossing the threshold into the eerily cold and quiet ancient stone copse, he resisted the urge to speak aloud, as if for fear of waking the dead.

 

~

Ant descended into the main room of the tournament venue, the largest LAN event any Netechian could experience -the atmosphere was literally electric. He passed countless rows of skilled screenagers feverishly engrossed at various levels of games, hawkeyed officials, and spectators with modified interfaces, privy to player’s information.

Before rising from her pod to greet him, Grey watched a tenacious girl finish driving a car superimposed over the old Amalfi coast.

‘Trust an Ant to find a way in,’ she cheeked.

Ant mocked offence.

‘Let me guess,’ she toyed, ‘their engineering boomeranged. All the metadata they collected regarding your interests was fabricated, so they weren’t able to contrive a suitable reality in which to misuse your emotional inclinations.’

Ant frowned.

‘Not enough displaced ass?’

Ant rolled his eyes. ‘Hmm. Like too many pokes on how to enlarge my stock and nothing about olives.’

Loralei roared with silent laughter. ‘You deserve to be here man. This is it, the last leg. I’m kinda sad but… I’m lookin’ forward to lookin’ back.’

Ant nodded coolly as he checked out her screen. ‘So, what’s your angle anyway?’

‘In getting through this? Phfff. The next point of interest in the curve, something wayside or on the horizon…everything follows,’ she shrugs, ‘flows, from there.’

‘So, you like curves.’

‘Wacky is wonderful.’

Ant relished her air of devious level fearlessness, probably from games played out beyond such screens as now surrounded them. He could definitely see her behind a wheel in Questefuerto, thrilled at the danger in dying.

‘This is your year Lori,’ banked Ant.

She broke into a gentle smile and nodded humbly to say thank you, but either way I’m happy right now –I’m content. ‘Let me show you to your station.’

 

~

 

A resting dragonfly uncurls its tail and takes flight from her temple, as she laughs at ducks startled by a fish who had leapt out of the water. When the goanna slunk hastily away across the grey stone boulders, she rose out of the water to look around. Jaklyn was standing on the riverbank.

‘I have a gift for you!’ Jaky signals, holding up some charcoal sticks.

Kookaburras are laughing as Que’s eyes light up.

 

Clothes drip dry in the heat of the day. Que sits on the riverbank, brushing a spider from her damp matted hair and gently shaking the ants off her arms.

‘Draw,’ signs Jaklyn.

‘How do you make up stories?’ asked Aryamo as Jacklyn was laying down a large sheet of paperbark.

‘I need an end and a beginning, the middle makes itself –problems help,’ replied Que.

‘Draw. Your story,’ insisted Jaklyn.

Que contemplates Jaklyn’s request for an explanation: from her being small to grown, coming here, a passage of time. You cannot walk a path with a single step…so it stands to reason you cannot think a path with a single thought. Que realised she would need more than one picture to explain her parting from the Tekah Ahn. With Jaklyn’s charcoal, she began to draw, remembering accordingly.

When a sunshower began some time later, they carried the paperbark into the Long Hut, to shelter by the smoking fireplace. The drawings on the last sheets Aryamo carried were blurred by the rain but Que didn’t mind. Trying to mend a picture of her running across plains away from the Bloodwood tree, she instead delighted to discover the staining properties water provided when combined with the charcoal dust.

 

~

 

Phaeona noticed wet footprints on rocks at the water’s edge but sensed they were safe, even if not alone. So, leaving her dappled Andalusian, Faér, in the shade of the scarified boab tree marking a sanctuary for Amacite rituals, she walked steadily to the edge of the whispering waterfall; presently tethered to a vast lake of morning cloud, covering the forested length of the Southern Ranges. The cloud lake stretched past Mount Kilmaro unto the giant black granite boulders, rising like spent embers, to make the Shadow Mountains some days travel away.

 

Vanquishing the voice of the stream, aged winds razed the sheer cliff pass they had navigated. It whipped one’s hair and taunted unseen waters below. Heart racing at the prospect of a gust carrying her over the edge, she closed her eyes and burrowed her soles into the rock; the wind buffeted her body.

At Faér’s nervous whinnying, she immediately stepped back and returned to him.

 

Upon Mount Burnett, a stream had been fashioned to flow from The Three Sisters. Together, the crater lakes -presently intense blue, green and red- were known to vary their expressions with the seasons. The pattern of their colour shifts was widely celebrated in the Amery’s textiles, from their linen to lace.

It was strange not to see anyone here now, gathering or placing wildflowers at this site of reverence for want of a monument; no Amery, nor Amacite, nor Ashen -she was grateful. In the peace, she allowed the guardians to witness her sincere captivation by the landscape.

 

Having carefully studied its skin, it was clear the boab tree had been abandoned for a long time; the Amacites regrettably displaced by the toxic mudflows of authorised drilling projects.

Gazing onward over pools of wildflowers upon rocky outcrops, warm in the afternoon sun, she felt themselves a world away from much tragedy: dead fish rivers and breathless children running long before the blast.

 

On the other side of this mountain was a grey desert of ash, charred tree stumps, and pinnacles of prior power peeking from under sky fallen meteors: the ghost City of a Thousand Shrines –Petreya. Now, only the most fringe worthy of souls took shelter in its cloak of historical menace. If the stories were true, crossing the city would be the most dangerous part of their journey. The scale of the dark web, being carved by suspected subterranean inhabitants, was unknown.

Beyond Petreya was the salt flats of the Paper Plains, borne of The Three Hundred Year Drought that had heralded the end of civil realisation and the start of diaspora for Petreya’s children.

 

La Forêt Noire marked the opposite edge of the Paper Plains, where marauding nomads threatened to sack the city of Asher. The Black Forest was their final destination, in search of surviving see’ers –keepers of a language before marks.

 

Before their descent, rounding the last lake red, Faér and Phaeona passed another pearlescent white stone lying in its shallows.

 

~

 

Freja noticed grains scattering in a light gust of wind, falling from torn stitching on the bottom of a sack.

‘Hey! You’re leaking.’

Muksan looked around and quickly shifted the weight of the bag in his arms to avoid any more loss before questioning Freja in the kitchen. ‘What are you doing here, I thought you’d gone trapping?’

‘Here?’ accused Freja.

Jvhanna overtook Muksan with her own bag of seed. ‘Are you looking to lose an ear?’ she teased under the sound medley of exchange -twitter and tattle, broken singsong and taut banter –coming from the open kitchen.

‘Muksan, you have something for me today?’ insisted Sonya.

‘Je suis désolé!’ grinned Muksan as he hastened away.

‘Savage,’ mocked Freja as Sonya feigned offence.

‘Save those seeds per favour,’ winked Sonya as she handed a small silver bowl to Will. When she saw small welts on his arms, she tsk-tsked.

‘You’ve been running around in the long grass,’ scolded Katherine.

Evading their judgements, Will dutifully skipped on by and bobbed down on the ground. As people walked around him, his efforts began to reap some attention and the tone of exchange in the kitchen shifted. It was the black soil, so unlike the dust they had traversed at length, reminding them of the plains after the flood -Midorey. That time, when on the brink of starvation, the earth had sprouted for its people. In the desert, an oasis.

‘Leave some for the chooks,’ called Katherine in kind.

 

~

 

Refused entry to the gallery for failing to report what Roderick had said the day before, a woman in red and black tartan slunk against a wall in the foyer and simmered at passers-by.

‘An apt name for a paper proclaiming official messages.’

‘Try this dhimmi. B.Y.O. flavour.’

‘Don’t you hate it when they italicise the commas. Like, why?’

She looked at her notes. How will your company support the interests of society during this crisis, in a way that makes the case you are capable of acting beyond the pursuit of profit?

She crushed the paper in her hand as an Armin ushered her to leave. On the way out, a friend noticed her and stopped in his tracks; people walked around him, large in stature as he was.

‘Carmen! Where are you going?’

On her course, buffeted by the stream of people fixated on entering this building, she lifted a hand to motion drinking and pelted a balled-up paper back through the doorway. The Armin watched her emotionlessly.

‘See you at The [other] Sun?’ he allayed.

 

In The Rising Sun, Carmen and Lukas were discussing how secrecy and complexity was used to obscure corruption when it came to corporate tax planning. They roiled at how Thebes tax evasion havens had allowed financial services to penetrate the state and shape its laws for their own benefit; their power coming to comprise one third of the unjust trinity with darker arms of the Armin’s military industrial complex and false apostles in the Holy House of Gondor.

Swigging a beer, Carmen admitted, ‘I failed to pass on yesterday’s racist rhetoric.’
‘Disparagingly assuming all eastern looking people are Daugn, or Draunken even? Hmm, you gotta learn to stick to the script,’ mocked Mica. ‘Overuse their phrases and opinions to destroy the original truth, and go hard on the hyperbole –exaggerate everything!’
Carmen smiled wryly. ‘I quietly mentioned how many productive policies Prue managed to pass over Richard in a fraction of the time before being ousted.’
‘You mean stepping down?’ smiled Mica devilishly as he continued with a performative air. ‘Thou art not happy with our dear Lord Rinehart?’
Carmen rolled her eyes and signalled the barman for another shot.
‘Meeting with -was it near all?- of Asher’s previous leaders…’
‘Who no one’s seen, ahem,’ Carmen coughed, ‘met since.’
Mica’s eyes glittered darkly. ‘Standing stoically, unsheltered in the rain during honorary ceremonies.’
‘As opposed to unsheltered in the line of fire,’ shrugged Carmen.
‘We have our time and place,’ astuted Mica in a baritone voice. ‘How humble,’ he rose, ‘to stop in the street for the children…’
Carmen shook her head heavily, ‘another ploy.’ She exchanged a look of gratitude with Dusty as Mica raised his shot glass to her.
‘Coolly discussing all manner of aspirations with vivacious young women…’
‘Flirtatiously,’ corrected Carmen as they chinked glasses and downed another fireball.
Mica placed his empty glass and ran a hand through his dark hair. ‘Aptly questioning the care afforded veterans,’ he continued.
‘Letting an old man through a crowd, all the better to see him.’
Mica was disturbed to realise another chunk of his hair had unnaturally brushed out into his hand. Conscious of Carmen, he turned and discreetly brushed it away.
‘That old man probably lost all his sons in the last “great” war,’ said Carmen, ‘if not his wife too. He’ll need more than an Emperor in new clothes to live and die deservedly in peace.’
The time to chortle soundlessly passed to the sound of sipping drinks.
The briefly raised voices of a couple nearby drew attention from several people in the room; they peered discreetly over their newspapers. Realising their tension was escalating over some current affair, Mica unexpectedly slammed his beer on the table –startling Carmen. ‘Don’t lose heart my friend!’ he sang boldly, throwing an arm over her shoulder. ‘Our world is actually becoming more peaceful. There is no growing Raken threat, we don’t need more public armaments!’ he exclaimed strenuously.
Their tempers distracted, the couple ceased arguing and turned to stare at Mica and Carmen; as did most of the people in the room that weren’t engrossed in other antics.
Carmen respectfully stifled her urge to giggle, lest it be misread. Holding a straight face, she let the mirth roll around in her stomach, warm also with spirits.
From his pocket, Mica produced a little piece of paper to make a coffin nail. ‘The people putting on this show... printing this show... the Cayotl Cartel owns their arses.’
Conscious the couple was watching them, Carmen pretended to be told while admiring Mica’s face, framed as it was by his hair.
Smoking paper gently held between his index finger and third digit, he wistfully flipped a newspaper within reach to the back page. ‘They’re creating a reality more befitting of their own purposes. See here… deriding scholars, dismissing the protective actions of honourable Regalian Councillors, criticising female leaders with outright misogynistic statements, flippantly ridiculing environmental guardians, and continued blatant racism –on one page alone! To hell with evidence and reason –it’s a world of pure imagination.’
Mica threw the paper into the air and pages rained on a group of youths gleefully eavesdropping on his righteous babel.
‘Who’s the biggest gossip in your family?’ asked Mica as he reached for a tobacco leaf.
‘Camelia, clearly,’ smiled Carmen.
Mica snorted amusedly. ‘Imagine having the power to spread gossip all over town,’ he posited as he crumbled and sprinkled the leaf in a paper gutter. ‘If you oversaturate the landscape with this information it could prevail as popular belief, maybe even become common sense. Phft! You hear what I’m saying?’
Carmen was looking outside, to the river, as a woman successfully negotiated the care of another with a group of people already on the bank. ‘Yeah. I hear you.’
Mica leaned back in his chair and sparked a match upon the table. ‘Welcome to Murdacoc’s empire of the mind.’

 

~

 

Upon a blanket of wool, Akash unfolded a peculiar timber quilt of slender oaken hexagons. Each held together with wire thread and many marked, decorated, burned, writ with fire.

The Tekah Ahn scouts Akhtar and Elstir immediately recognised it was a map. ‘Vinae should see this,’ thought Elstir as he hurried back out of the tent. Outside, he glanced a multicoloured signpost for directions. Blue, green, yellow, white… this way.

Akash, Celeste, and Enlil, the trio charged with observing signs of Arundhati sky people and other unnamed and non-physical entities, had taken especial interest in the orbital tesseract and were keen to confirm its origins.

‘We wish to know where you saw the other white stone,’ urged Akash. ‘And where you have been. You are…here right now.’ He gave Urik something from an inner pocket of his shirt coat.

Urik rolled the imperfectly round wooden stick in his fingers, its hexagonal shape matched the pieces of the map. Looking at the iron black mineral in its heart, he wondered if this was the writing instrument with which she had inscribed the pages of the silver book he had returned unopened.

‘From here the sun rises and here the sun sets,’ contributed Celeste, that Urik might gain his bearings. ‘And you came to us from this direction.’

Elstir returned with Vinae as Urik had begun to recognise mountains, rivers, and lakes. He wondered at the drawings of canyons, forests, and deserts. Had the Tekah Ahn’s underground passage been the length of a forest or even a desert? What had they missed in wandering the flatlands of The Paper Plains all these years? He felt a strange sadness, looking upon the site of his life laid out before him -a small mark on a large map. Where am I from, where was my home? What was I, before I became a Tekah Ahn? Memories flickered of climbing shady trees, dissipating sunlight, clutching bloody wounds in agony, Pretty Shield returning to the ancestors before him, a red flower in the desert, a canyon with rocks like knuckle bones and a mountain with rock like smooth poured mud, gently wavering grasses, ghostly wisps from purple wildflower water…

Vinae interrupted the heady expanse of his recollections. ‘Are those travel lines?’

‘Yes,’ replied Akash as he repointed to where they were for Vinae, saying, ‘and we’re here.’

Considering the size of the spread, he pointed extremely close to a thumbnail drawing of entangled triangles the Tekah Ahn did not recognise. ‘What’s that?’ asked Akhtar.

‘Asher,’ confirmed Akash.

The Tekah Ahn’s unease was palpable; unspoken conflicting emotions thickened the air. Without knowing the full lay of the land, their search for allies and sanctuary had ironically brought them closer to the heart of the city that had deracinated their forebears.

‘But it wasn’t always so,’ mentioned Enlil. ‘That symbol is not Ashen as far as we know. You see, this map is the collective work of a number of surveyors. Some of the names or meanings of these marks are now unknown to us.’

‘We suspect a Key is missing,’ mentioned Celeste, though the original Tekah Ahn didn’t understand what that was.

‘We’ve found many of these marks don’t match significant places at all,’ continued Enlil. ‘Like this clearly intentioned mark here…we found nothing there,’ he pointed to another, ‘or here…or there.’ Enlil leaned back, allowing each of the Tekah Ahn’s attention to drift back to the entangled triangles. ‘That mark was found carved into stones found in the old forest where the city of Asher now stands.’

‘How did I not know this already?’ exclaimed Celeste.

‘Because you spend your time on mountains looking up at the stars instead of crawling around in crypts like Enlil,’ joked Akash affectionately.

Enlil chuckled warmheartedly. ‘As far as we know it’s just a unique sign left by an unknown people, and now we use it to identify that place.’

‘Must be significant to have endured,’ thought Celeste.

‘We cling to curiosities,’ shrugged Akash.

‘I’ve seen many collections in the Alecsee Library,’ boasted Enlil. ‘And I’m sure there must be an example, one of those rocks, kept inside.’

‘Library?’ repeated Urik.

‘A place in the city, where they store things for safekeeping and study… such as printed documents and objects, including paintings, artefacts, and ephemera.’

‘So, let me understand,’ began Urik, ‘when the first Ashen were clearing the forest to build their city…’

‘Actually, the people before the Ashen,’ interrupted Enlil.

‘The first people found stones,’ retried Urik, ‘with that marking on them?’

‘Yes,’ confirmed Enlil.

‘So, they know who made them?’ assumed Urik.

‘Well… that part wasn’t clear to me from what I read, I suspect the Ashen don’t know because the people they took them from didn’t know.’

‘Or didn’t tell,’ quipped Akhtar.

‘Took them from?’ brooded Vinae.

‘Maybe it was their ancestors?’ suggested Urik.

‘Maybe,’ agreed the ghost hunting trio.

‘Our ancestors?’ trod Urik.

The trio dedicated to unseen aliens looked at one another. Akash spoke. ‘Well, yes. If you are descended from the tribes Asher dispersed…and there was among them survivors from that long ago, yes, it’s possible.’

‘Why do you say survivors?’

‘Because there’s no sign of activity there for an extraordinary amount of time, suggesting whoever left the stone or stones was gone long before the first people we know of.’

‘And how do you know how long the first people were there?’ asked Vinae.

Akash paused and looked to Enlil. Celeste bid Enlil to answer. ‘We don’t,’ he confessed gawkily. ‘There are no records of conflict,’ added Enlil searchingly. ‘Maybe they perished of pestilence or migrated because of changing weather.’

Urik contemplated. He recalled the giant footprints of unknown beasts exposed at low tide on a rocky shore, set hard into the stone. Then, other unusual footprints seen high above their heads on the vertical surface of other rockfaces. ‘So, the right marks could prove where one has been?’

‘Continued,’ Celeste nodded.

Akhtar, Elstir, and Vinae absorbed themselves in locating the places and events of their lives at different points in time through the map.

Urik was recalling three strange stone pillars on a dusty plain. From a distance they had thought them to be limbless trees. On approach, they had passed two immovable fragments of pale stone and found they were not trees, but perfectly smooth round stone pillars, free standing very close, side by side in a line, ten feet high. Remote, their purpose had been a mystery to them.

From the enigmatic sign of entangled triangles, Celeste traced the course of a river to the sea.

Akash felt hungry, he endeavoured to finish the strayed conversation. ‘Let’s see, if a people were here and they left by the water, they could have ended up…here?’ He pointed to a place far on the opposite side of the map.

When Elstir frowned and Urik looked as confused as Vinae, Akash flipped the map face down, then proceeded to roll it into a cylinder -connecting two opposite sides and unfathomably distant places in an instant.

To the Tekah Ahn’s incredulity, she continued to fold the map in on its self until it became a sphere like the moon.

Eyes were drawn to a missing piece, a dark empty space, a black hole.

‘Who knows, what other lands we haven’t found yet,’ said Celeste.

Akash grinned at an astonished Urik. ‘Would you like to hold it?’

Urik took it into his hands and turned it carefully, searching for where they were, where they had been. A strange and creeping feeling came over him as he pondered and imagined himself on farther shores. The reality of his physical limitations blunted an excitement to explore, yet the vast unknown inspired hope.

‘How old is this map?’ asked Vinae as Urik relinquished it to her next.

Akash hesitated. ‘I don’t know how to answer that.’

‘Here,’ said Vinae abruptly. ‘I’m sure of it, this is where we saw drawings of people with the stones.’ She turned to Urik, ‘you remember after the canyon by the river, in the caves. Umm…Orana’s daughter found them. She asked what the people were doing with them. We saw an unnatural pattern of evenly spaced, repeated rows...’

Urik remembered. ‘Tharwa suggested it was a field of seeds, sown by men, so straight and orderly as they were, like knots in a fisherman’s net.’

‘Oh my gosh,’ blurted Celeste. ‘The sky…turn it that way again, wait! How did I never notice before? If I’d been thinking in relation to our axis yes, but… to these lands, yes, it’s there I can see now, oh my gosh. These aren’t towns or maybe they were, but.’

‘Celeste, spit it out!’ encouraged Akash.

Celeste pointed to some of the minor symbols scattered across a landmass and the ocean. ‘These are things in the sky not the land, they’re constellations, star constellations!’

Akhtar and Elstir animatedly looked at the map anew as Celeste excitedly began rolling off names. ‘Sirius! That is Sirius! This must be Aldebaran, that’s definitely Orion’s Belt. The Pleiades! Betelgeuse! I just love the name of that,’ she giggled.

‘Hydra,’ pointed Akhtar.

‘The water snake,’ Elstir agreed.

‘Are you okay Urik?’ asked Vinae.

Mistaking Urik’s silence for indifference, Akhtar and Elstir warmheartedly ribbed him for not having the same cognizance as themselves being scouts.

Urik looked to Vinae, remembering the mural. ‘If there are more of these things and they are like seeds, what do they grow? I mean, what exactly is to be harvested?’

 

~

 

Kiara came away from the cooking fire to help pick up the spilled seed grain and Jullee soon followed, putting down her empty bowl.

Will fumbled, and the cup of grain he had collected so far was sent flying.

With her fingers, Jullee pushed a few of the spilled seeds deeper into the soil rather than taking them. She winked at Will, ‘you never know.’

As the chatter dropped, or was swept away in the breeze, Jullee tried not to notice most of the people in the kitchen watching her as she kneeled with her hand still on the soil and quietly pried, ‘you know why right?’

‘Germ nation?’ replied Will.

‘Germination,’ smiled Jullee.

‘It drinks water and the cells start making more selves, and end times start.’

‘Enzymes. Very good,’ smiled Jullee proudly. ‘So, you know the most important things for these babies? Food…’

Will grinned knowingly. ‘Water, and light.’

 

~

 

The trees were shrouded in a haze of smoke so thick, every breath drawn felt like she was smoking sage through a pipe –though the experience was nowhere near as relaxing or as enlightening as done whilst conversing with a Hadarach refugee.

It was clear that ground fires begun near the Burdon Valley had finally reached the highest country forests, abandoned by their caretakers in the wake of Ashen settlement. These hills were prone to fierce firestorms, and so The Black Forest grew faster with the years. Jullee wondered if Nahul’s Forest to Protect the Three Wests suffered such circumstances on top of disease, from a lack of diversity in growing excesses of single species, and whole forests planted without experienced parent trees to converse with. Jullee hoped there would be trees left, and humans to find them, in a million years -if not beyond their next migration. She pulled a bandana over her mouth and nose, then masked Chess to his disapproval. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t let anyone see you dressed like this,’ she teased.

 

Wearing face masks to filter the air they breathed, Jullee and Chess passed solemnly through a region affected by an abandoned Loaman Settlement that once been a foul factory for the burning of medical, and other, waste. She pictured Sonya as a Mother, scrubbing the sins of factories, refineries, and smelters from the hair, skin, and clothes of wriggly little children and the cooling bodies of deceased loved ones. Longing for clear air, clean water, and voices of consciousness while her rightful rage was silenced by formidable punishments.

Her skin gently battered, Jullee was roused to don a rain cover. To her horror, it was not rain but thousands of beetles, falling like hail –a bitter end to their migration. Their fluttering wings and shells, normally glistening like opals in the sunlight, now dull under a grey skies and ash. Little pebbles perishing.

 

~

 

Finlee is sifting through silt, sand, clay, and gravel for gemstones, gold or diamonds. After a time of unsuccessful panning, he ventures from the bank of the river to inspect the sediment in a stream running to.

Soon, stumbling through lush undergrowth, Finlee spies a familiar tree and a significant plant. Its leaves shy away, withdrawing at his touch. Looking around he notices a change in foliage, like a narrow band through the forest. Diamold.

‘Have you found anything?’ asks a camouflaged Armin gruffly behind him.

‘No,’ lied Finlee.

‘Move out!’ yelled the lead Armin. A concealed posse revealed themselves to acknowledge the order. After Finlee walked through the middle of them, leading back in the direction he had come from, the group began a wide retreat.

‘Thank Gondor,’ lazed one of their company as he unknowingly passed a python. ‘I’d rather be settled at Norwood before nightfall, a decent meal and moonshine, than have to sleep in this neck of the woods. Haunted by Ama’s they say.’

‘Meh, Jhara’s moonshine’l keep em away,’ said another.

‘I thought Seb had our brew.’

They looked at Jhara, a severely starved looking young boy with skin as pale as his cloud coloured hair. He was scrambling over a cracked log on boulders, struggling to hold up his now ill-fitting pants. The ankle of one leg caught on a low branch and they were nearly pulled off as he stumbled forward.

‘Belt the boy,’ suffered the lead when he saw the others laughing at him.

‘What like this?’ one teased as he took the cloth from his head and motioned to whip him.

The posse was still guffawing at Jhara’s expense when they re-entered the rocky clearing by a fast-flowing river.

‘Where’s Catar?’ asked the gruff Armin.

They scoured a narrow stony bank and large steep sloping boulders. Water churned below.

The group looked back into the forest. A green sea swelled with birds and butterflies.

‘Bhaa!’ roared their lead. ‘You four, double back. You three, check downstream. The rest of you, go on.’

 

~

 

Koyan sensed an unfamiliar presence. He looked around and saw red eyes in the darkness. The girl found in the forest was awake, firelight in her eyes. He smiled warmly to reassure her and she disappeared.

Koyan spoke quietly under the chorus of frogs coming from the river. ‘The girl is awake.’

‘Your mashkikiwan,’ praised Finlee.

Koyan tipped his head politely, insistently, ‘partially, partially.’

‘This girl,’ began Koyan, ‘we don’t know where she is from. Her parents must be from very different tribes. She carries shadows of Illiocan...’

Finlee wrestled with a vague memory of Prue talking. They had been pouring over a map of the Ashen empire in the study of Rinehart’s Estate one time. Prue had mentioned the first people but their names had not been written. He tried to remember the sound of it. ‘Wet scar wattle or something?’

Koyan tilted his head firmly. ‘No, we Amacite were here when they came; so too, were the Amerys, and the Osvaldur monks… it is said the Song clans were here before us, and now are so few and far between. Many people have never met them. Perhaps our wanderer is from among them.’

Finlee was surprised and puzzled. ‘Song?’

‘There is a folktale about a land unified by a woman, whose countrymen travelled out over all the earth. They could leave in one direction yet return from the other. They travelled as if around the circle of the moon, or as the sun around our world. She lived in a little city decorated with the most beautiful gifts. She kept galleries of treasures open for her people to look upon, so that they would know of their brothers and sisters in the far and away lands. It is said there was a single house filled completely with dolls, each unique and magnificent in their differences. It was a time of peace, and it was by the grace of the sea that their people flourished. So, she loved wearing water colours and was affectionately called The Blue Empress -her real name is long forgotten.’

‘How is that possible?’ thought Finlee.

‘Their culture was erased,’ stated Koyan buntly. ‘In those days it was quite usual for people to be gone for many many years, to hunt and gather in abundance for their homeland. One day, some of her people came home from the sea to find the people were being hanged, stabbed, stoned, burned or buried alive. The people were terrorised as their homes were stripped and temples robbed. She had died; some say by brother, some say lover.’

‘A sister?’

‘No, for the man to follow took hundreds of women as his property, such was the culture to come. Her murderers ordered their followers to destroy many things, old things, new things, ancient things. They scraped, chipped, and tore her name from all paper and stone, removing all marks of her being. While they burned every doll, they made one man on pieces of sun. The new ruler forced people to build his world, working without rest on great and dangerous projects. They say some escaped to the sea before many boats were destroyed and trade was banned with outsiders.’

Finlee thought of the Ashen expansion, as Koyan continued.

‘Finally, one day a great wave came and lay waste to the men’s work. Some say it was her hand from the sea. The people became further divided and in civil chaos the ruler had no control. They went here and there, scattering like seeds to the wind. Without a heart, the Song people were no longer one. They say some thought their brothers and sisters would come back for them from the far-away lands, no one knows if they did. Maybe some of them became us, Amacites or Amerys, but I’m not sure. Anyway, it is said, the Song Dynasty knew the whole world before the Ashen. They explored, mapped, and traded in every direction. Imagine the Ashen can take themselves to the whole world, what would they share, their bloodthirst and reverence for violence and death? The Ashen have lost feeling, they are single minded, they have no instincts for the natural world. They are fearful of being weakened by the decadence of the capital their savagery has brought them. They are fearful of losing their power to instil fear.’

Spectacular scenes of slaughter in The Arena crossed Finlee’s mind. He drew breath without speaking, sloganish rhetoric muddling his mind. Upon his fingers, he counted the weights in his heart. A State being devoid of moral anchors, systematically removing expressions of The Great Spirit. City leaders inducing fear, making people believe in crises to effect policies enslaving populations at the price of free will. He considered the dumbing down of Asher’s children through detrimental educational reforms with unavailing testing and scarce resources; undermining families with imbalanced interventions such as removing children for adoption or bodily mutilation; rewriting history by fostering false media narratives in public newspapers privately owned or controlled; the promotion of obscenity and immorality by heavily financing depraved productions and legalising harmful social norms such as child marriage. The slow subversion and rotting of decent things. Finlee wondered if the tax collectors including the trafficking of drugs and humans for sex or slavery or their body parts in their ledgers, were doing so with apathy, resignation, or secret hope. Asher was crumbling from within; a growing wasteland of disconnected and soul starved, hungry and desperate, predators. In his chest, Finlee felt the swirling weight of hope that the Ashen could come to their senses. He sighed deeply to relieve himself.

‘Don’t worry,’ counselled Koyan, ‘don’t hate. Bad feelings towards others is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will get sick. Focus on what you can change, accept the things you cannot.’

‘You seem so distant and safe from the Ashen…how do you understand them so? And how do you know about The Song?’

Koyan laughed. ‘You think I was born this old? How far downriver you think I’ve been, as far as that bend? Who’s to say I haven’t been on more bends than you ever will?!’ he laughed silently. ‘And besides, it’s just a story we’ve been passing on for long time.’ He leaned into the fire and said soberly. ‘We should know how this one came to be here, in case more come.’

Finlee brushed the back of his pale hands and picked at a lesion made while breaking branches for the fire. ‘Do you think she is a runaway slave from a Loaman settlement?’

‘No.’

‘Maybe I could try and talk to her,’ offered Finlee, considering his experiences as a wandering outsider, an entangled fringe dweller.

Koyan slowly sat up straight. ‘No. Let the women speak with her.’

Finlee took the end of his fishing spear and prodded the embers on the edge of the fire.

‘Finlee. I think you should return to Asher.’

Finlee bowed respectfully. They were the words he had been hoping not to hear, though he suspected they should have come sooner. He felt guilty for leaving it to Koyan to suggest.

‘I understand. If anyone is sent long enough to look for me, they may find you,’ conceded Finlee. ‘I will continue on to Norwood, make peace, some explanation, and return to Asher. You have my word I will do what is in my power to help you. May your land and lines be spared.’

Koyan was pleased. ‘You have made an old man most happy.’

‘If you will it, may I visit again if ever my passage allows?’

Koyan’s expression was troubled but he gave his blessing, ‘on the condition you come alone always only. Whenever you need, return to the river and we will take you in.’

 

~

 

‘Poltauramy had a hand in rolling out the last version of the distribution map,’ explained Remi as they descended a stone stairwell lit with glowing globes. ‘Records are broken all the time. Data loss is inevitable when transferring… and so during the upgrade, he made sure we quietly disappeared.’

‘But surely someone would notice the discrepancies in power output over time?’ asked Fender tentatively.

‘We’ve been taking the remaining power from other communities near the end of a cycle since before we first settled here.’

Dragging his hand over the cold blue stones as he continued stepping down, Fender recalled being in the heat only minutes ago, surveying grassy plains. ‘Wouldn’t solar power have sufficed… why do you need so much energy?’

‘To run the cloaking device of course.’

 

~

 

Prussia looks up at the ceiling.

Seeing his protégé arrive, Ronan straightens his collar.

Ataur can see the Boarstone behind Ronan. Elbrihim is empty but the clearway is open. He looks at the translucent floor underfoot to calm his mind. He had grown up playing here, running and roaming this Hall alone.

Now he was standing, still as a statue, enclosed by others with no room to run, no room to move. He felt watched, surveyed, judged.

A pinprick of sparkling blue light blinked seemingly from within Lassalle’s floor. He fleetingly wondered what was happening in his brain to cause such a visceral glitch in his sight –stress? He blinked hard. Unbidden, a memory of the first tear falling from his Father in decay, echoed through the soles of his feet. He paced this place for nearly a millennium before me, he is embodied within this ground beneath my feet. Ataur lifted his head to the walls tapering up into a great ceiling of yellow light…and in every partition raised from it.

Delighted murmurs rippled through the crowd.

‘Butterflies?!’ people gasped.

‘No, A.D.I.’ scowled Ronan as he ordered Leed to make the Aleksi remove the autonomous drone insects.

 

~

 

‘How did these stones get here?’ asked Fender as he rolled a dislodged rock between his fingers.

‘By train,’ replied Remi. ‘There’s a line from here to the mountain from which they came.’

‘Train? I’ve never noticed any…’

‘Oh, the tracks are long gone. The young boys forced to build the line in the first place, became the men that were obliged to destroyed it. They used the steel to make weapons for a war.’

Fender recalled the concept and cost of war hotly.

‘And don’t ask me what became of the others,’ lowered Remi.

Fender felt a cold rush to the pit of his stomach.

‘There are fates worse than death,’ reminded Remi as they stopped at a heavy wooden door.

 

~

 

Buried deep inside the labyrinth untouched by sun since its inception, Joan sat alone in the darkness at a piano.

The enormous cavern was humid, the faint swish of unseen creatures disturbing the water was suspected to be heard every now and again.

The chandelier, lit by Matahari, gushed dissipating blue sparks effervescently. Solemn stone columns bore witness to surfaces touched only by the cold light.

 

Softly tracing her fingers over the keys, Joan tentatively chooses a key to play, and presses it so gently and so slowly it doesn’t make any sound at all. She gauges the weight as it rises, and returns with more gravity.

 

~

 

The hard and fast thump of hooves suddened towards Jullee. She was removing string from the leg of a pigeon as she left the kitchen behind her.

A woman on horseback, short gold hair flying, galloped up. She threw herself down from the saddle and bounded towards Jullee.

‘Edy?’

‘No, I’m her sister Sal,’ she apologised breathlessly, pulling the hair from her eyes and waving frantically at Jullee to lend her ear.

Jullee scooped some maize from her pocket into Andy’s, the Ariod’s proxy who had delivered the pigeon. ‘Let Jim finish eating,’ she instructed. He took the bird and respectfully left them to talk.

‘Armin!’ warned Sal as Jullee read a note. ‘South-easterly, passing around Lighting Ridge. They’re moving fast, it’ll probably take them three days but I think we have two at best,’ she stressed.

Confused, Jullee clutched the gourd hanging at her side. She knocked the top off, drank deep and thought quick. She caught Katherine’s eye, who was already marching out of the kitchen towards them, sensing something was wrong.

Jullee nearly choked on her drink at the sight of their Pleiian Ward Bennet. ‘Bennet!’ she cried with joy and moved towards her. She took Bennet’s hand in hers and pulled her into a hug, Jullee’s hands sliding over the raised scars on Bennet’s arms, shoulders and back.

Sal tensed impatiently at the sight of Jullee embracing a woman with beaded skin that reminded her of reptile scales.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Katherine.

Jullee let go of Bennet. ‘Armin are travelling this way -do we know why?’

Sal shook her head vigorously.

The colour drained from Bennet’s face.

‘This is not your doing,’ dismissed Jullee reassuringly.

‘We can’t back down now, we’ve got nowhere to go,’ she waved in the direction of the desert plains. ‘If we retreat, we’ll be running forever, they’ll easily chase us down -what with our elderly and the kids…’ began Katherine.

‘I know,’ hushed Jullee.

‘This wasn’t supposed to happen,’ breathed Katherine.

‘Well if we can’t go backwards we have to go forwards. Where’s our map?’

‘Akash took it to Urik.’

Jullee thought, ‘there’s an entrance three leagues from here…’

‘You want us to run at them?’

‘Yep. We’re gunna leg it. It’s easterly, to the right, of where they’ll be coming from, and we can make a diversion to drag them even further nor west -buy us some time.’

‘We’ll never make it,’ gasped Bennet.

‘Don’t talk like that,’ quieted Jullee.

Katherine whirled around, suddenly burdened by the scale of the campsite, it’s inhabitants, and their possessions. ‘She’s right, there’s too many of us, there’s too much stuff, and besides how are we going to fit everyone, we can’t possibly fit everyone in those tiny little tunnels all at once -we’ll suffocate! We don’t belong down there in the dark. If people panic they’ll crush one another.’

‘Then don’t let them panic,’ ordered Jullee.

Katherine stilled.

‘Better to retreat in an orderly fashion than in a blind panic,’ quoted Jullee.

Sal realised she was trembling as she watched Katherine and Jullee looking at one another resolutely.

‘If we get caught going in…’ implied Katherine calmly.

‘It could expose the Pleiians, I know. Then we better make it a good distraction,’ admitted Jullee. ‘We don’t want any dead Armin on our hands.’

‘Yes, but we could expose them too -the south bank is still in infection control, isolation, after that outbreak of DPRS-2.’

‘Sal,’ commanded Jullee, ‘did you hear that?’

‘Yes.’

‘We need you to go to the Eastern Gate. As soon as the first section is ready to leave, lead the way. As soon as you arrive, tell Remi to tell Lizitsky about our sick ones and this new strain of desert plains respiratory syndrome. We’ll send them last to give them as much time as possible to prepare.’

‘We’re going to send our most feeble last?’ tendered Katherine.

‘We’ll provide our nurses more hands,’ replied Jullee. ‘Let’s hope we have enough protective equipment.’

Katherine turned to her shadows, ‘Mark the Eastern Gate, we’re leaving. Alert the marshals, their section must be ready to move out in ten to twenty minutes. They’ll be summoned in order; we’ll move the treatment centre and hospice last by horse,’ she added. ‘I’ll hit the stockmen now and let them know.’

‘Everything will be okay,’ Jullee assured Sal. ‘I’ll take responsibility for the distraction myself. Go.’

As Sal left, Jullee mentioned to Katherine, ‘Geoldoff and Velda are due to reach the city gates.’

‘How will we join them in time if we go under?’

Jullee squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead. ‘Gather the Wards, we’ll come up with something together. Let’s just get everyone safe first.’

Katherine turned to Bennett, ‘gather our Wards to the Eastern gate.’

 

Urik was returning to where the Wards had last gathered, looking for Jullee, when he noticed the smoke from all the cooking fires had gone out. A few small blue flags fluttered outside people’s sites and a large light blue flag stood taller in the distance somewhere in the camp. He picked up his pace, as he saw people hastening back and forth.

Urik found the hand designated to them on their arrival - Aaron - overseeing the marshalling of their people as they were gathering their belongings. He saw Eva, playing a game with magnetic stones. He ushered her towards Lei as she easily bundled them from a string into a cluster. ‘Go to your Dad, now.’

‘Don’t worry,’ assured Aaron as Urik neared. ‘We all knew the closer we came, the more dangerous it would become. We’re organised for this and practiced at clearing camp quickly.’

Urik watched his people gathering themselves with unease.

‘All you have to do is follow the signs,’ added Aaron. So Urik stood by the marshal to garner his people’s attention, and redirect them with assurance as Aaron conveyed everything he knew.

 

~

 

‘Son, it is time to return those books,’ said Celia. ‘The Greybarian’s prefer to move the sections wholly in order; we’ll drop them off before the ceremony.’

Sonique closed the book she was reading and added it to the stack.

‘Let’s go,’ smiled Celia, excited for Sonique to hear their songs for the first time.

 

~

 

Joan relished the reflections of a deep note resonating throughout the cavern. She judiciously followed it with a procession of notes, they cascaded into an arpeggio. The water surrounding her began to glow again.

 

~

 

Water ran underfoot, the orchestra had begun.

She felt herself bleeding but she didn’t want to leave. She grasped Celia by the wrist and whispered, ‘I have to go.’

Celia recognised the urgency in her voice.

‘Do you want me to go with you?’

‘No, I’ll be okay.’

‘Wait,’ she said as she reached into the folds of her clothing and discreetly pushed something into Sunni’s hand.

‘My husband invented them for me, I call these little cotton fingers lady sticks. Hurry up and you won’t miss too much.’

Que spent the second movement in silence behind stone walls but returned to an ocean of sound so affecting her throat seized and tears sprung to her eyes.

 

The melody took Sonique back to a sunlit day; brushing her hands over long grass as she walked towards her Mother, Orana, who was humming a familiar song to which Que did not yet know the words.

The women ceased threshing the grain from the straw in cotton bags. They began carefully pouring the contents from the bags into baskets. The last little pieces of straw were being blown away in the wind so that only the heavier seed grain remained.

When Orana saw Que, she sent her to cool her itchy and inflamed skin in the water of the river.

It was behind the men tiredly but blissfully eating and resting by the river, that Que saw a figure rise from the bank. Covered in smooth grey mud, the cloaked blue-grey golem picked up another mans scythe. He leaned on it, using it to pull himself upright. As he did so, he saw Que looking at him and paused.

Fearful of death, she turned and hailed a young man. She anxiously reached toward him. Brother take my hand, I want to be with the living.

 

‘Which way?’

‘This way!’

He guarded her as she left the crossroads, until they realised there were others.

Like a rabbit, she had hidden in the long grass on the side of the road for the longest time until the dangers passed.

 

Now, in the crowded underworld cavern, the Pleiian’s southern amphitheatre Elbrihim, firelight blossomed in the walls higher and higher around them. Sonique realised there were balconies in the bedrock, filled with people. Higher still, firelight now exposed thousands of yards of cables stretched tightly across the cavern ceiling. She assumed they were power lines for the glowing globes providing light to navigate the dark.

 

Sustained notes grow louder, resonating throughout the enormous cavern and across the lake. Sonique looks down at the water flowing like blood through veins, along carefully carved channels underfoot, down the amphitheatre steps and into the lake below. Immersed in this underground place, the dimly sunlit forest on the far side of the lake beckons because she recalls waking as Que.

 

≈

 

Under blue skies. A yellow buttercup flower in green grass. I reached out a hand, and detached it by breaking the stalk with fingers. I put the plant to my mouth and ate a petal. We are made of the same stuff. I became aware of my self, looking at the little flower, no longer connected to the earth I suddenly realised it would die. What had I done? Where did I get these things, these hands? The shock of realising I was separate, and the inability to recall how I had come to be here, was wilfully abated by the wind fussing my lashes like the billion blades of grass before me. Everything was happening as I felt should, but I could only discern through this bounded opening. When would it widen? Would I soon remember all I knew before? What have I forgotten? Am I less? What am I now?

I felt loss, unable to be outside time in this density. It was as if a veil had been pulled around me. An inkling of suffocation, I began to love breathing.

How long would I be here, wherever here was? I began tracing the green field with my sight, something, my means, now following as I began to move through space experiencing time.

At first, I simply anticipated finding more ephemeral beings like this little yellow flower, but was soon confronted by a magnificently complex field always retreating unto a horizon. I moved to inspect things closer. This was the day I stopped walking, and started running.

 

~

 

Suddenly awestruck by the intent of Lassalle’s architecture, Ataur found himself standing in a sea of upward gazing faces, like an inflorescence of tiny flowers pressed together on a serving plate for the sun. He surrendered to the moment, feeling significantly small yet paradoxically all at the same time. He felt centred and grounded, whole.

Ataur watched robotic butterflies fluttering overhead, followed by some bees. Ronan had spoken but he didn’t hear, despite the silence that had gently fallen during his pensive entrance.

Ataur remembered paint liquid running on the other side of the wall – resistance is fertile.

The unity of all being in his awareness, he stood in his own power, and the others subtly sensed the ghost of Poltauramy within him.

 

~

 

‘Celia,’ whispered Sonique under the sound of the wind instruments. ‘Where is the sun?’

‘There,’ she pointed across the lake to the island on the other side.

Relief washed over Sonique as the sound began to rise.

It is time for me to leave this strange sea cave.

In front of the musicians, people bearing baskets approached the water’s edge in a queue.

 

~

 

Jerica descends the steps of Quatar, no longer weighted by water in the buckets attached to the long pole still carefully balanced across her shoulders. Nearby, the adorned Mara are standing on the platform near Jeremoth enacting a ritual performance for the ecstasy seeking crowd below. 

The foreign sound of dissent rises somewhere in the crowd. Clamorous complaints, vehement disapproval, anguished cries of grief, and blatant protest. The unclouding was beginning.

She turns her eyes away from the violence and the children by the altar, to the shadows cast by firelight of violet flowers that had begun flourishing around the cities complex water supply canals.

 

~ 

 

Joan closed her eyes to see with her hands, and sunk deeper into memory. Chords summoned microscopic hydras, anemones, blind salamanders, arthropods and other aquatic stygofauna. Together they reanimated and illuminated their watery world.

 

~

 

Lights were waking in succession, according to the sound. They appeared one after another in the depths of the lake around its edge, before descending likewise in a spiral, clockwise.

Individually, they grew stronger with the passing of time and Sonique began to see curious curves; grey metal beaded with bolts and melted seams. Is this a man-made loch? She wondered. What a fascinating design…

 

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