906. To southern sun, 1
(Amna)
Decades later, I was making my return journey back the way I came. It felt a little surreal as usual.
The land of bridges and abandoned fortresses has changed over time. I doubt I’ll be able to find again the one where Eschran lies.
Peculiar forests of what look like giant algae grow over the mountains. Byzantium ruins decay beside Turkish sky scrapers now. The Bosporus straight has been reduced to a stream like you’d see in prairie fields.
I simply walked across it, avoiding sinking in the patches of mud around.
The last city should be a little further.
My bones are old, but I still have everything I need to go.
It’s small but I still have a golden apple somewhere in my bag. I stick to the roads most visited anyway, if I can avoid meeting a monster it will always be better.
Times sure have changed.
Well...
I’ll bid my time and head south as they suggested. Mushio and Selya had the right ideas.
So I’ll make my way to see for myself what remains of our history and my family.
I still have a very long way to go, to eventually reach Solaris.
For now I’m planning to make my turn around Cilicia and head south through Syria. Hopefully in Egypt I’ll stumble upon the red sea channel. When I’ll find it, I’ll follow the western coastal road heading south again.
And that will still be merely the first half of my journey.
That makes me smile. Because I have all the time in the world anyway.
My walking stick opens the way, and I walk calmly as if hiking peacefully.
The next key point is Mescova.
~
I reached the outskirts of a mostly abandoned city. The dry river beds really are numerous around here. The land is turning dusty and arid.
But it’s not abandoned entirely. The roads are cleared and some campfires are visible.
I even found someone sleeping in a house nearby that plaza.
There was the smell of a long journey on one’s own lingering around. Not pleasant but very human.
The old man woke up. He wasn’t looking as robust as me through his age, but still fit to travel.
He looked Asian and confused at first when he noticed me beside.
By the features and colours of his face, I would guess he has Japanese origins more than Chinese.
Another long journey traveller perhaps, he is waking up and looking confused.
A - Good morning... Gokigenyou?
- ... A survivor...
A - Ah. There are many survivors here and there. I think there’s a city nearby even. Are you looking for it as well?
- I guess... It’s been a while since I last met someone...
A - I’m Amna.
- Hm... Cute name.
We’re a little too old to be bashful, but he had a grin on his untidy face, and I smiled back. I was amused as well.
I put my bag down and sat on a bench behind while he was rising and dressing himself, going on his morning routine nonchalantly.
This city was deserted, but likely not the one I aimed for currently. As for him I wondered.
We ate some soup together, discussing the obvious.
A - Are you heading for Mescova as well?
- Never heard of it. I’m heading to the kingdom. The eastern side of the continent is probably all dead by now.
A - The kingdom? I see. You heard the words of Eschran Aïsshea pulling you this way as well.
- No... I did hear this name along the time through the steppes, I think. The northern god may bring an age of peace and safety for what we hear, but it’s not that hope that brought me. It’s the southern call of the kingdom of flowers and bliss that attracted me.
I felt uneasy listening to him. He heard two messianic calling, like religions, and chose the southern one.
I’ve been in a way a follower of the northern Aïsshea and its promise of future safety. And now I begin to discover there has been another prophet all this way.
There must have been others like Eschran and her children.
To make sense of the world, and sow the seeds of another culture of it.
It’s starting again...
History is starting again.
A - Can you tell me more about this southern prophet I haven’t heard of?
- It’s word wasn’t a prophecy. It was an invitation to rebuild a prosperous land and kingdom together.
Someone is building a new kingdom, above the ashes of the old world. For fuck sake... Things never change. Even today, human ambition prevails. I don’t want to hear that king’s name. I don’t want to get involved.
I sighed.
I don’t believe in gods but I believed in Eschran’s hope for the future. Now that a kingdom is being gathered, I feel like all hope to eventually reach a peaceful utopia is already lost. Cultures under political or religious banners will collide again. Humans even on the brink of extinction will go to war, to the last of them.
Until nothing but one remains. Unicity, even over ruins of what was great before and never to be achieved again.
A king has decided somewhere it’s better to rule over ruins and decay than to unite everyone toward something greater in the north.
I’m feeling shitty now.
I stand up, planning to take my leave before I hear more supremacist bad news I want to forget with the old world.
- Our visions aren’t merely delirium of diseased brains, aren’t they sadly?
A - No... I wouldn’t have worded it better. Men will be men.
- I can tell you’re looking for something else than the promised land I’m aiming for. Is it that other light even further away?
A - ... What is it that you’ve seen my friend? What else have you heard?
The satisfied man now well set came outside under the sun with me. He looked around and pointed at a generally southward direction.
- I can’t quite see them anymore from here, but I’ve been wondering about them as well. It’s just that unlike the kingdom or the northern god, they haven’t transmitted any word or thought. This other glow was visibly more south when I was far in the East from here. Now it’s somewhere behind the kingdom.
A - Other glows?
- Well yes. They are both glows. The source in the far north, and the other one far more distant. Floating underground but visible when the planet is hollow.
He began giggling to himself.
I feel like I’m meeting Eschran all over again.
Decades have past, and another one has turned mad under the sun, but with words from which I can sieve something possibly real.
- Somewhere over the frozen desert in the north, and another one somewhere over a barren landscape in the south.
A - You saw another source? Was it the same size and power?
- No... I think it was weaker, but also... Shinning so much more brightly. Like an oscillating pulsar. These lights, do you know what they promise as omens Amna?
A - They’re visions of another era to come, and changes still to unfold... What I hope, is the word of Aïsshea. That they mean hope, survival and freedom. Not servitude and feudality...
I’d hate to see a new kingdom rising and ruling with a renewed iron fist over the remnants of humanity.
But it’s not a fight I want to take. I’ll step aside, and continue my route southward.
All I want to do now is check on that last city, before slowly making my way southward to Solaris.
Around where maybe another thing akin to the source exists coincidentally.
I’m growing a little concerned maybe now.
But we continue to chat, and we’ll tag along together for the while we can travel together.
To the next city and toward the kingdom he speaks so fondly of. His promised land.
He wasn’t heading this way to flee from a legendary storm that may someday rupture from the Artic, but to get closer to that mesmerizing glow and call he can see more clearly than me.
I hope I won’t live old enough to see a war between these two for mediterranean dominion...
Once I reach Antarctica, whatever remains, I’ll probably settle somewhere there, far enough away from them all.
~
