[ What Do You Have To Say? | Ni'Srilan: The Desert ]
Posted by stormcrow on February 12, 2009, 4:55 pm Alkonost didn’t bother speaking of Voraer. He was silly as all adults were silly, engrossed as they were in petty competitions, until all sameness between them and their fellows was simply eroded away like cartilage (and, like cartilage, its absence hurt dreadfully). Alkonost was not competitive – if she stole a horse it was only to challenge or amuse herself. She wondered whether Hypatia saw her peers as horses or chess pieces. Ultimately, whether he had almost started a war or not, Voraer (and her judgment of him) didn’t really matter. She knew it, and no doubt Hypatia knew it, so regardless of Hypatia’s preference in conversation topics Alkonost didn’t waste their time and her breath giving voice to her opinions; Hypatia had heard it all from the source anyway. “It seems foolish,” she said instead, studying the oasis and its absurd collection of greenery, “to live here and depend on this when there is so much food and water elsewhere.” There wasn’t much else to say, and her voice reflected her vague disinterest in hearing more about this jewel of the desert people. With barely a thought Alkonost knew that the water from the oasis came from deep within the earth and that plants, naturally, were drawn much like their more mobile cousins to it. “Cost?” Again Alkonost ruminated on the fire, licking like so many slavering tongues her – them. Her life had gone into the earth then and come back up as water, as salvation. She didn’t waste time balancing her checkbook then and wouldn’t do it now. “Cost is irrelevant; without family, you might as well be dead anyway.” The white filly peered into the oasis’ glassy water, turning her head this way and that to examine the livid scar on her throat. A single bead of red fell from the wound and diffused in the pool below. Alkonost turned to the mare and said, quite unnecessarily, “I think it’s still bleeding.”
129.110.241.19
“ Water is a very good servant, but it is a cruell maister. ”
- William Bullein, 1562
these are the clouds about the fallen sun,
the majesty that shuts his burning eye.
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