[Closed] All that was shown to me

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Afternoon, 27 Bethas, 2720
Tseq’ule Caravan, an Oasis to the South of Tsaha’ota

Nkemi nibbles at another bite of the jerky, chewing slowly. Bit by bit, she has made her way through the tough meat; she eats the last of the strip, now, and washes it down with a long drink of water. She watches Anetol through it; he is frowning through the distance at Ipiwo. He looks back at her.

Nkemi does not take the date just yet; she brushes the last grain of pepper and spice from her fingertips, resting her palms against her bare legs and looking up at Anetol. She does not away from his words, nor does she particularly acknowledge them; they both know he speaks truth. She does not doubt that, anymore, if she ever did.

“We call it dzum’iqe,” Nkemi says. “Drowning in the sun,” she and tilts her head back, looking up at the vivid blue sky above. “There is little that can be done once it comes over you.” She does not look at Ipiwo, not now; her gaze is on Anetol. “There is no cure, but to rest and to drink. The best cure is prevention: the wearing of long clothes,” her small hand brushes his sleeve, “and a hat,” she grins at him, “and the drinking of water before one becomes thirsty.”

Nkemi has drank too much sun, before, and come close to drowning; she remembers hot days of her earliest years, of being a child who did not know her limits, of throwing up until her stomach heaved and ached and cramped. She remembers her juela’s cool hand on her forehead. She remembers, too, her jara’s arms wrapped around her, and her head cradled close into his shoulder, his hand on her back as her mother went to fetch the doctor.

She knows well how to value such memories; there is nothing in all of Vita for which she would set them aside. There is not a smile on her face; this is not a moment for such smiles. But there is a loosening of a small knot inside her chest, a relaxing of a muscle she has all this while held tense, unknowing. This, too, she breathes out; it dries off her skin like the water of the osi.

“I cannot, either, say when,” Nkemi says, simply. “If we are wise enough, we may never know. It is not found in chafing pain or the ache of the legs; it is found in the churning of the stomach, the headache. If you become sick – if you begin to sweat, if your body feels weak, if your head floats – it is best not to tempt such things. Beyond this and the heat may be more than you can bear; such men may see things which do not exist on the horizon, or speak to those no longer with them.”

Her hands take his now, small, gently cupping them; she squeezes.

“You are not alone,” Nkemi promises; she does not think he has forgotten, but these are hard words to speak, and truth lies too in the telling. “You are not the only one to watch yourself.”

Nkemi lets go; she picks her date, now, and nibbles at it, looking at Anetol. “I spoke earlier of the ised’usa of camel riding,” Nkemi says. She tastes the sharp vivid sweetness, the richness of the dark date flesh. “It is not a meditation of letting go of the body; it is a meditation of becoming. It is not of overcoming the body’s weakness with the mind; it is of reaching inside, and feeling that which the body has to offer, and understanding what it means.”

Nkemi eases the last of the flesh from the date with careful teeth, not leaving a sliver behind; this gift, too, she does not wish to waste. She sets the pit down on her napkin, delicately, and smiles at Anetol. “They become trees, in time,” Nkemi says, admiringly, looking down at the seed. “Roa, too, is wise.”

[Tom Cooke]

Tseq’ule Caravan • Traveling South

Morning on the 27th of Bethas, 2720

T
here are so many ways to drown. This is a new one, where he’s concerned; never in all his thirty years would he have thought you could drown in sunlight. You drown in things you can’t breathe, he had thought – like water, like wine, even like smoke. The sun has never been a threat to him in his life, except perhaps the morning after a bender, and it’s a reminder even then, a knife-sharp, unrelenting sort of hope.

Dzum’iqe, he repeats, the old tradition. Dzum’ulusa? Isla Dzum? He learns the word for sun like this.

As he finds the proper shape of it, he pictures lungs filling up with too much heat and light. But there can be too much of anything, and that he knows fair well – no matter how good it feels.

And it doesn’t, admittedly, feel too good right now.

“Point taken,” he says, grinning back, brushing his fingers over where she touched his sleeve.

She goes on, and his face falls, his brow furrowing. I am not, he wants to say, this. My body can’t affect my mind, he wants to insist dumbly; I wouldn’t get dizzy or see things, because that’s him, and it’s me in here, and we’re separate.

Her hands are cool on his; they’re not damp, but they’re soft with the memory of fresh water. He feels the baton-calluses on her palm.

When she lets go, he doesn’t know what to say; he watches her and listens. He knows this wisdom of hers is hard-earned, but it frustrates him still. He doesn’t like it, the word becoming, and he never has. He is alone – he’s different from her, different from all the rest of them. But he meets her eyes and inclines his head, field pulsing softly against hers.

He smiles at length. “Trees,” he says, looking down at the pit in her hand as she sets it on the cloth, and then the one he’s left on the cloth with the remnants of his jerky. He didn’t even think of it; it’s like eating a cherry, spitting out the seed. “I used to make myself sick on cherries, as a lad,” he says, running his thumb over the rough woody seed, the riff-sharp edges that near scratched his tongue, “when we got them. Piles and piles of pits. Roa makes Herself heard.”

They wind on, her drying off in the sun, him cooling in the shade, all the smell of warm grass and fresh water and camels. You don’t plant these seeds for yourself, or your children; your grandchildren, someday, will eat the dates from these. He supposes he could plant one and eat of it; he could plant a few, over a few hundred years.

With the laughter and the camels, fanning himself with his hat, feeling the sweat drying on the back of his shirt – it’s hard to think of. He feels nothing if not alive, and more than a little grimy. Nkemi, smiling across at him, knows nothing of it, and so much of life.

So he doesn’t; they talk of date palms, then of the cherry tree that he remembers from a long time ago, and he works at the last of his jerky.

In time, the camp stirs back into motion. When she pulls him to his feet, it’s easier for him to keep them. He teeters, once, the soles of his feet sore against even these sandals, but he finds his balance fair well, and he doesn’t need her help to walk now. The men are raising the camels up, one by one, securing the ties, leading them back away from the water. The frown is back on Ole’s face, and Inis’, too; there are lines around her mouth, dark circles under her eyes, but she whistles and clicks her teeth and laughs briefly with the men.

He looks about for the man with the scarred face, by the tree; he swears he meets his eye, then glances sharply away. Up in the boughs, there’s nothing, and he’s not quite sure why he looked there, either.

In time, they’re mounting again. Before they do, he takes his canteen up and drinks. There’s a prickle of thirst at his throat – nothing he’d’ve done anything about, back home – but he remembers what she says, and he smiles at her as the camel kneels and they begin to take their places. “I’ll do my best to listen,” he promises, once he has hitched the canteen back. “Thank you.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Afternoon, 27 Bethas, 2720
Tseq’ule Caravan, the Desert’s Edge

T sotusú,” Nkemi murmurs full of sweet nothings in Mugrobi; she rubs her hand over the camel’s shoulder. Tsotusú’s head swings back, and she blinks long eyelashes at Nkemi. Nkemi grins, and comes forward to stroke at her head; Tsotusú, kneeling, bows her head beneath the gesture and holds still.

Nkemi hears the soft swish of water behind her. She does not look back until Anetol speaks, and then it is to smile at him, and to nod. He is walking with stiffness, but he is walking on his own; after their time in the shade, his face is pale between his freckles once more. If the lines sag a little more than they did - if the skin around his eyes is dark like a bruise - he is smiling at her, and standing very straight.

They climb on once more, Nkemi in front. She holds the reins, and leans back as far as she can, her headwrap gleaming in the sun. Tsotusú rises, tilting and pitching and then straight and upright, standing even.

There is a little flutter of shade left; there are a last few breaths of it. The string of camels begins to move once more; the camel before them has only one rider, Ofero, who sways uncomfortably with the motion of his camel. He was late to arrive, hurrying back from the wagons; he did not speak to them, this time, but for a grim nod.

Nkemi does not look back, this time. She knows the oasis will disappear in the gleam of the dirt and the haze of the afternoon’s heat; she knows the desert will swallow up the green and blue, and leave it only a distant memory.

They go onwards. The ground beneath Tsotusú’s feet is hard and cracked, and each of her steps echo softly. They go onwards; her steps soften as the sand piles up. This now, on the afternoon of the first day, is the desert.

It comes gradually; there is more and more sand heaped on the ground around then, huddled at the base of camels and drifting in the wind. They pass through a drift of it, and then back on to the firmness of the ground. But it comes, and it rises about them, and as the sun beats down overhead, so hot that even Nkemi’s eyes flutter, they pass into the desert in full.

“All sand is crumbled stone,” Nkemi says. She reaches for her water; she lets Anetol see her, and she takes a mouthful and sets it aside once more. Small sips, she has told him; small and frequent. Tsotusú sways beneath them, steadily marching on.

“It is said that long ago, long before our memories began, this place was an ocean,” Nkemi says; her voice is not so loud, but she sees Ofero glance back from before, and she does not lower it. “There are many ways which rock may become sand; there is the slow steady grinding down of time, the rushing of the wind over the surface of it. There is the tumbling of rock against rock, and the small frictions with each pass. There is the beating of the waves; there is Hulali’s strength, which is soft and breaking and never yields. Bash beneath it knows of patience and of lasting; Bash beneath it knows to make himself anew.”

Nkemi takes another sip of water against the dryness if her mouth. It is harder, here, to talk. Wind swirls though the landscape and scatters sand against them; she feels the prickle and pop of it against her cheeks.

They go deeper into the dunes. They climb up the side of one, slow and steady and marching, leaving deep footprints behind in the sand; the wagons have their sand wheels now, changed out during the break, and go slowly and evenly through the worst of it.

Tsotusú crests the top. Nkemi’s hands are busy with her wrap; she untucks one fold, and then another and another, and she wraps the cloth around her face. It is not as she showed Anetol, but it is not so different either; she, too, leaves a softness at the mouth where she may tug the cloth down to drink. She eases her goggles on as well, now before they are needed, covering her eyes and wrapping the strap around the back of her head.

The desert gleams before them like a sea of sand. There is nothing in the distance but rolling dunes; there is nothing in the distance but the endless promise of sand and heat and scattering grains. They pass through the shade of a dune as tall as a hill; they wind onwards, deeper and deeper, and still Nkemi does not look back.

[Tom Cooke]

Tseq’ule Caravan • Traveling South

Morning on the 27th of Bethas, 2720

S
mall, frequent sips.

It first, it wasn’t enough; now, by the time sand piles and drifts round them, he can restrain himself. His mouth isn’t dry anymore, and though the sun beats down, he’s not drowning in it. Underneath, Tsotusu sways, even with the motions of her thin legs with their knobby knees. He’s heard Nkemi murmur to her in soft Mugrobi; he’s stroked her flank himself, running his fingers through the warm fur.

He looked back over his shoulder – once – too late. Osi disappeared quicker than he thought it would, or maybe the time seems shorter than it is. Time, it seems to him, is both longer and shorter than it ought to be. As the long line of camels, the slow steady wagons, pass into the dunes, he feels like there must be at least a day between the world of Tsaha’ota and this one. But the sun isn’t quite sloping down toward the horizon, yet.

He adjusts his hat, listening to Nkemi, looking out over the sand. “An ocean,” he repeats, not disbelieving but taken aback. Anatole’s voice rasps, no longer so deep as usual. He waits, then reaches for his own canteen.

Ipiwo’s husband rides ahead. He hasn’t seen ada’na since the osi; he eyes the wagons off and on, wondering if she rests or retches, wondering if she’s curled on her side in pain. He catches his eyes in a backward glance at Nkemi. He frowns slightly, looking back at Nkemi, at her delicate, set profile and the bright cloth at her scalp.

He has never seen anything like this.

The wind comes, but it’s no relief, not really. He doesn’t realize why the air tastes so, why it feels rough on his cheeks, ‘til Nkemi wraps her cloth and settles her goggles on her nose. His hands are very red at the joints, and they shake now; he chafes as he fidgets to tie it round the back. The tie Nkemi has used is not the one she taught him earlier, and he peers at it, wondering at the folds. He tugs at the cloth about his nose, where it chafes the bridge and presses uncomfortably.

The goggles chafe, too, in their way. The weight of them is unfamiliar. All of this, unfamiliar – to body and soul, but it’s the body that speaks and nags. He itches. He breathes the warm, close air underneath the cloth, lips twisting with frustration. Sweat gathers in his hair, underneath his hat.

Boemo, Auntie, boemo, he thinks once, into the whipping quiet. Funny to think he and the old incumbent would be in the same boat, right about now; lucky you’re dead, he thinks once, grateful nobody can see him smile, and I’m the one who has to deal with this aching tailbone.

Sway, ruffle, breathe. The creak of the wagon wheels, sliding easy-like somehow through all that sand. He eases back, his eyes fluttering shut behind the thick glass.

When he opens them, they have gone deeper – they have crested the hill. He tips, holds onto the reins white-knuckled, for it’s all light glancing off motion. Shifting, too slow to be waves in the ocean, too fast to be earth and dirt. Ancient things all broken down to dust, or so she says. He thinks of the way Ipiwo’s husband looked back at her; he thinks of all this covered in water, and shivers.

The day draws on, and on. There are more meditations to be had, but he hasn’t the breath to speak, or the space of mind. He holds himself to listening, like she said – ised’usa. He doesn’t let these winds break him up; he’s young yet, and there’s too much of Bash in him and Nkemi and all of them for that.

He feels where the sweat gathers at the sharp thin line of his jaw, where the thin tie of his hat rubs at the close-shaven skin. There is a sweat drop at the tip of his nose, unwont to fall.

He realizes he’s forgotten to pull the cloth down and drink; he starts taking small sips again. He watches the sand shift all around, endless.

The sun is sloping toward the horizon. They pass beside a dune almost big enough to be a hill, tall enough to cast a shadow. They’ve stopped for some reason or another – a tie, improperly secured, or somebody else failing – a natt moves up and down, sweat-slick.

His mind is not altogether his. When he opens his eyes, he’s surprised by where he is. Anatole’s head, where he lives, is jumbled; the world tilts for him. The folds of Nkemi’s headcloth disorient him, and he reaches with one freckled hand to touch her shoulder. His mouth is hidden, but there’s a sad smile written round his eyes, and he inclines his head.

A quarter-hour later, the wagon wheels are rolling underneath him. The air’s closer in the shade, and he’s not sure it makes his stomach any easier. Here, though, he can focus on taking one small sip after the other, timing the minutes between them. He rests his head and his back until the light is gold, and then bleeding into other colors, sparkling brilliant in the sand whisked by the winds. They’re strengthening. The dunes fill with color, and his mind winds him around to Serkaih.

He drifts off here, sweating but not dizzy, his mouth not dry. He lets his head loll back. It’s not, he argues, that he’s letting time sweep him away. That’ll happen someday, but not today. Like the banks of the Turga, like the rock somewhere far underneath all this sand, like Bash. He trusts himself to hold, patient, and make himself anew, even if he’s scattered in the process.