950. To Kwiatziemia, 3
(Temee)
S - Hold still.
We’re by a broken bridge across a stream. Some days of peaceful travelling have passed already, but it’s the first day in a while when the clouds dissipate and open for much brighter lights.
Not that I’m sure it really was important to her. The power in her can compensate any lack of luminosity for her eyes, but still...
I’m sitting there, keeping my frontal right eye open and as still as possible, while she stands in front of me, her hands holding my head or near my eye.
My sight seemed as normal as could be for me, but she wanted to check deeper nonetheless, again. She has already done all that needed to be done. Now she just tweaks the little details that wouldn’t bother me otherwise.
I feel the warming up inside my eye like a fever. I see some thin auras of bubbling colours around me for a moment.
Selya is smiling awkwardly, pulling back and lowering her hands. She’s trembling slightly.
S - No you’re free...
T - Thank you.
I blink. I stand up, towering above her when she’s right next to me.
We pack up and resume crossing this field of ruins. I think I do see things a little more cleanly and accurately actually.
I jump over the small gap left by the broken bridge there. Selya hesitates when comes her turn. The jump that was easy for me makes her a little uneasy.
I see how her dress and hair flutter slightly more, as if hesitant winds were rolling around her at her will or against it.
Selya is trying to keep her weight steady, in order for only her body to obey her will, and not her other-worldly power when comes the jump.
I smile and wave at her.
T - You can do it. It’s easy.
I know the challenge is truly in a very different perspective for her.
She runs a few steps to gain momentum, without getting too many dusts behaving oddly along her path, and she jumps swiftly.
Perhaps her body flew a little further ahead than a normal human may have jumped. But not too much.
She landed a little unsteadily, her dark or pale kind of wings fluttering along the way. She made it.
T - Good!
Selya smiles kindly below her white bangs. There are too many things we want to say, and not many that really need to be voiced out.
We clap our right hands as I pass next to her.
Onward we go, following the water.
~
The landscape is mostly forests, dead cities swallowed by the previous, and rivers.
Apparently the western mountains are new and changed the landscape entirely. I can see they look different from other mountains in the way they’re sharply carved, and also how we’ve crossed a few dry river-beds that were once well built and channelled.
At the same time, the change in the landscape has sprawled new rivers, making their ways between odd chasms, numerous lakes and new swamps and even other cities.
The maps I had for western Europe from Mescova were reliable.
The ones for central Europe are nearly useless now.
On the next evening we camped by a factory building that overlooks a flooded city.
It’s a wide lake with buildings and trees protruding all over. It’s eerie.
We look at the maps together, but she doesn’t know that much either unfortunately.
S - I’ve been taught geography and geology... But these Andes as Rose called them, I didn’t know of them. And I... I’ve never really left Mirabella before.
I smile wryly. I feel sympathy, since before I could meet her. And I guess there weren’t as many travelling merchants in these countries as they were in mine.
I bump her shoulder with mine, as if playing. It breaks her focus that was growing on some unpleasant memory.
Maybe we won’t be able to follow the historical roads, or rather rivers, down to the crossroad of continents and seas. But we will nevertheless find our way.
Before nightfall, we go our separate ways to see what we can find to eat around the area, to complement what we carry around in our rucksacks. I head closer to the waters with the thin javelin I use to fish. She went toward the muddy woods to forage for nuts and mushrooms.
I wait patiently just above the waters. They’re clean and calm, the river far from the corner where we will camp tonight.
I spot something moving. I arm myself, looking to identify what that was in that direction.
I glare at the water, an arm raised to strike but waiting to confirm what I’m aiming at before I attack.
The movements are not of peaceful fishes, and neither the shapes nor the shadows they cast match plump fishes. I stand there for a little while, trying to understand what are these underwater animal shapes and movements I’m looking at.
The water goes darker. The colour changes.
That scares me and I step back, now lowering my arm but feeling far more concerned. I know what darker oily colours tend to imply.
The surface of the water is not bubbling in a broth however, and the smell doesn’t change.
It’s not a budding monster?
A shape, round and soft looking, emerges slightly, just below my feet.
As I lower my gaze to look at it, it spits a volume of ink to my face. I’m stepping back, blinded and coughing the sepia ink in confusion.
What was that!
And instead of then attacking me, it just swam away...
~
At least that got some amused light on Selya’s face, trying to hold on her laugh, as she saw me returning with these oddly dark stains all over my face, hair and clothes.
She laughed. I didn’t know what these kind of lake animals were. And I wasn’t used to darker inks being benign biologically. I scrub my face with soap and a damp rag, but the stains remain.
Selya is pretty confident I have nothing to worry about.
European fauna is just weird... At least the trees in the forests and the older mountains don’t look too different.
S - How are the cities in the southern lands? And interesting landscapes?
T - It’s warmer I guess. The sky feels lower. There’s more clay and chalk in the buildings. It’s dustier.
Not a land really for me I want to say. But the altitude and the caves holding water can help.
T - The land of Tibesti, on the western end of the kingdom, has quite nice places. It has more varied flora, and unusual geological architectures. No cities however.
S - Tibesti? Where is that?
She looks surprised, it’s a name she never heard of before. Not that I knew of it either a few years ago.
I open a wider world map and show her where it is. She comes closer to look at it from my perspective and listen to my explanations.
Nokarlık’s kingdom is stretched thin like a few spreading veins or roads, isolated and ambitious but mostly barren.
Its three extreme frontiers are the sea, the Nile, and the Tibesti mountain range.
We haven’t found many remaining cities in the heart of this desolate landscape. I have more of a natural interest and affinity for the more mountainous parts of the landscape. So this frontier was more interesting, or liveable, for me.
T - With Wardah we chose to live on the Egyptian borderland however. Because it was more open to every other roads. It wasn’t as formal as when she sent us to help you, but we already were acting as her spokespersons or ambassadors in some ways.
From the queen, toward humankind. Selya shut her mouth and all emotions over her as she listened to me...
Right... I miss Wardah too you know...
But I choose and prefer to bump Selya’s shoulder.
~
