Life Goes On in Fall 515 AV

[Ornea]

...

Life Goes On in Fall 515 AV
Timestamp: During Fall 515 AV
Location: Wind Reach

DAY 17, SNOWRACER


The children had red hair like herself and all other Inarta, and they shared the other typical looks of the people as well. To a stranger visiting the city they would most likely come off as impossible to see anything unique in. But to Ornea they were her two only children, and the most unique people in the whole world.

When they were of age, she had left them to be taken care of by others and trained by strangers, like all other Inarta children when they came of age and became yasi. This didn’t mean she had forgotten them. But now when she stood here in the snow with the wooden sledge they had pulled up to the top of the snowy slope, she watched them with a sinking feeling in her chest. They were laughing expectantly, and they were having fun on this rare family outing with their mother. Everything was just fine, except for her feeling that something invisible had been lost.

They had told her about the things they had accomplished while she was away in Lhavit. They were full of stories about all sorts of things and seemed perfectly happy. And she listened and she smiled and praised them. But she knew, deep inside, that she had missed out on all those small daily things that was their life. She hadn’t shared it, and they were slowly drifting apart, which Ornea noticed although her daughter and son might not be aware of it yet.

It had snowed. Those who had time and found it fun had went out to play. She could see people on their way down the snowy slopes that were perfect for sledging. There were laughs, some screams, sprays of snow in the fresh air. Everything looked so calm and beautiful and it seemed nearly surreal that the earth was still alive and upset under it’s pale, cold cover. Ornea watched all this, and then she shot a glance at Mount Skyinarta. Their home, their city, seemed built on top of an impending disaster. It was insane to stay there. But it was as it always is with people, they suppressed this insight and they stayed, dancing on the edge of danger despite knowing the threat.

“What is it mom?” said her son, noticing her serious facial expression, the visible consequence of the worry that had seized her. “Aren’t you coming?”

His voice was eager, and the girl joined in; they had pulled the sleigh to the right position and were ready to go. Their cheeks were red due to a combination of cold and physical effort. Ornea dismissed the thoughts of magma and landslides, smiled and nodded, and joined them on the sledge. She sat at the back, the children in front of her. As soon as she had jumped on, the children kicked the sledge into motion and they went down the slope.

It wasn’t super steep, but it was steeper than she recalled from other winters with the children. They were a little bit bigger and braver now, her kids, and they had wanted a more advanced slope than before. Yet another sign of the change. She had obliged as she didn’t want them to find it boring to be with her.

The sleigh gained speed. It was steered in a meandering way for added fun and it rocked more and more violently, while the children laughed and screamed. Ornea held on and moved her body in accord with the movements of the sleigh. Snow sprayed up into her face. The speed kept increasing all the time, and the movements of the sledge felt increasingly dangerous and exiting, in particular when it turned. She noticed that they were going at relatively higher speed than the other people, as the passed by several other sledges, nearly crushing into them.

This started to worry her. Things she had heard Edward Lucis speak about back in Lhavit came to her mind. Something about the laws of movement, weight, and speed. There had been a lot of gadgeteering talk in the time when she had worked for the old man. She had understood only parts and snippets, but some of where things she remembered. Now when she was on the sledge and she had practice to relate to, she finally understood what Edward had meant when he had said that the power of speed would increase with the weight.

Always these “powers” these abstract and intangible, invisible powers. In her opinion gadgeteering was as mysterious as magic, sometimes. Now she could feel these mysterious invisible powers with her body, pulling the sledge downwards, tearig at her in the bends of their course like they wanted to fling her away to the side.

Wilder and wilder it went, and the screams became more than the laughs. They were going too fast, faster than the children had expected, faster than she had understood it would be. And the weight that increased the speed was herself. It took only fraction of a tick from this thought to the moment when she let go of the child in front of her and allowed the invisible “powers” to toss her to the side, off of the sleigh. They sent her rolling in the snow, while the sleigh continued downwards without her. She tumbled down the slope, like in short series of loopsided awkward somersaults that covered her in snow from head to foot. But soon she managed to stop and sit up. Wiping her face and brushing off some of the snow from her katinu, she looked after the sledge with her children as it continued downwards, hopefully somewhat slower and safer now, freed from her own weight.

Silently she watched and hoped for the best. She listened to their laughs and shouts, continuing without her now, until the sleigh went around a bend of the white slope, disappeared out of sight and was gone.

...

[Ornea]

...

Day 20, THESE SHOES WERE MADE FOR WALKING

It was market day and Ornea was looking to prepare for the winter.

The first snow had already come to Wind Reach and a few days earlier she had been on a rare outing with her two children. That day she had realized she could use new snowshoes. She didn’t know that had happened to the old ones. Her memories of that winter two years ago in year 513 AV were unclear and muddled. She had been so affected by the overgiving after the reimancy overuse in the avalance that many things from that period of time were just like a dreamlike blur to her.

As always when her thoughts touched upon the space where a big chunk of past reality had become a vague and questionable thing, she winced inwardly and shied away. There was no way back. The only way was forward, whatever this would mean.

Then was then and now is now she thought to herself. Then was then and now is now. In her thoughts she repeated the words, like a verdict over old sins, like a memorial of what had been, like a prayer in the hopes of a better future.

And hadn’t she come a long way from the dizzy state she had been in nearly two years earlier? Her time in Lhavit had done her good. It had given her new impressions and other things to think of. She would perhaps be able to cope with life in Wind Reach pretty well by now. She hoped so. Lhavit had it’s benefits, but Mount SkyInarta was her home.

Anyways, it was time to shop. After pushing a few insignificant chiet who had been there before her, Ornea advanced to the front of the queue in front of the snowshoe stall, and had a look at the wares.

She let her gaze roam over the whole assortment to get an overview. The snow shoes in the stall were of different sizes and shapes, and catered to most tastes and needs of the intended users. They were all big broad and flat as duck feet, and they were all woven of twigs, but while some of them were of the very simple quality meant for deks, there were also a lot of more decent snow shoes for chiet, good snow shoes for avora and some exquisite looking snowshoes that were possibly meant for avora too.

In Lhavit people had been a bit weird and she had never really understood why they found it proper to downplayed their standing by going for simpler outfits and gear the higher their standing was. If someone in Lhavit looked like a dek it could mean the opposite. It had made her feel unsure of people’s caste, not that they had castes in Lhavit. But she had wished they had. The vagueness of the social system there had been a challenge and she had never felt totally sure of what to don. But now there was no doubt. Castes made everything much simpler. She was avora and she wanted to look like an avora of course.

“I’d like to have a look at those”. She pointed at a really exquisite pair of snowshoes. They were elegant, as far as snowshoes can ever be elegant. The twigs were a deep redbrown color and looked somewhat glossy. Black leather soles were fastened in them where the user ought to put their feet. Braided straps of leather in three colors topped this off, cream white, light golden brown and cupper red.

The seller picked another pair of snoeshoes though. Those weren’t bad, but they weren’t like the one Ornea had pointed at. Smiling a nervous smile, the seller tried to hand them to Ornea. “These are of really good quality and definitely right for a person of your high standing as avora” she said in a pleading tone.

The seller was a chiet, this was obvious. It was only to look at her clothing. Chiet. As Ornea’s was of higher rank she felt entitled to get annoyed and did nothing to conceal it. “Not those. I meant the other pair, the ones with the read twigs and black leather soles” she said. She pointed at her intended purchase again.

The chiet seemed uncomfortable but Ornea didn’t care. She was higher rank and she wanted the seller to obey her orders and just do as she was told, without making this kind of time consuming mistakes. In Lhavit the sellers had been eager to be of service. Whatever she had pointed at had been fetched for her at once, and they had been happy to do it. Softspoken and pleasant they had smiled and let her buy what she saw fit.

But the chiet in the stall wasn’t just a chiet, she was also Inarta. And like all Inarta, regardless of their caste, she was blunt. “Those are for endals” she said in a final and stubborn tone. “I am sorry, but I cannot sell endal gear to an avora.”

What? Again? It wasn’t the first time chiet sellers had insulted Ornea based on their opinions about the caste system. The memories from that day in the end of summer when she had been shopping soap and other things for the mandatory collective rain bath came alive and added to the annoyment she felt.

She was going to intimidate that chiet of course. What else could she do. An avora couldn’t let a chiet take command. “As you said, I’m avora. And I believe this means my judgement is superior to yours, as you are only a mere chiet. You seem ignorant! The red snow shoes are clearly right for avora. They are beautiful and artistic and meant for those of us who are talented crafters and can appreciate them for the artwork they are! Endal gear isn’t meant to look artistic. It’s meant to look solid, powerful and impressive ... like the black snowshoes over there! “

She pointed at a pair of snowshoes woven of black twigs, enforced with an elaborate copper thread border around the outer perimeter, and with soles and straps of black leather. “Those are no doubt meant for endals. Not that I expect a chiet like you to be able to be able to see it, but the shape and the choice of material is perfect for an endal. The black color emanates power, the consequent use of black for all the details speaks of consistence and strenght of mind, no nonsense there. And the border of cupper is definitely making them more expensive than average and perfect for a person of high standing and prowess, and endal.”

She made a short pause to let her words sink in, while she watched the now visibly nervous chiet seller. Ha! She would like to see that chiet try to answer this. Or more correctly, she would like to see that chiet give her the red snowshoes and stop debating with her betters.

At this point the shopping was interrupted by another voice. “It seems like the black ones there could be what I’m looking for. Fetch them for me. “ There was no please at the end of the sentence. The man who had arrived was endal. There was no need for him to waste unecessary politeness on a chiet. Ornea moved out of his way of course, as she didn’t want to insult an endal by making him having to push away people who didn’t know their peck order. And so the endal took her place at the front of the queue like it was a natural thing, which it also was, in Wind Reach.

The chiet in the stall obeyed immediately, brought him the black snowshoes and told him the price. It was fairly high, pretty amazingly high actually, as it wouldn’t be any prestige in it for an endal to buy cheap gear anybody could afford. Ornea was secretly baffled to hear the price, to be honest. Would he really buy them when they were this outrageously expensive?

“As the avora here can testify to with her superior knowledge about what the gear expresses these snowshoes are perfect for an endal” said the seller in a very straightforward, hearty and Inartan tone. “The design and the color emanate power and strengh, consequence and willpower. There’s nothing weak with those snowshoes and the metal border emphasizes it in a both elegant and no nonsense way that excludes all debate. These snowshoes were made for an endal walking on the snow. They are impressive, no less. Only for people who can afford this kind of higher quality gear of course. There’s only one single pair of them. They are totally unique.”

Ornea studied the face of the now so subservient chiet seller and tried to figure out if the price was real or if the seller was attempting to make a tremendously good deal. The seller’s face didn’t reveal anything though. It wore the blank expression of a chiet facing people of higher caste. Ornea could hardly deny her own words, which had now turned into sales speech aimed at the endal.

The man didn’t comment on the price. Ornea wasn’t surprised. It would have been embarrassing for him to seem like he was hesitating to pay that much. But as the seller had referred to Ornea, and she was still standing there waiting for it to be her turn again, the endal looked gave Ornea a once over. He ignored the chiet seller, and asked Ornea if she found the price appropriate for him to pay.

“I wouldn’t say it’s too expensive for a man of your high standing” Ornea said. “The questions is if those snowshoes are to your personal taste. What you personally like is more important than anything this chiet is telling you. If you like them well enough, the price may be appropriate for you. Otherwise not. You are the one best suited to decide. Whatever you think right, is right. Not that I think you are a man who would buy something you don’t consider good enough for you. ”

The endal smiled briefly and nodded in obvious agreement. “For being only an avora you seem to think pretty well” he said. Although this appreciation was as condescending as it sounded, he seemed to feel benevolent. He turned back to the seller. “ I’ll take these. And the red ones over there too, for the avora here, those with the multicolored and ... artistic ... fastenings.”

Without objections the chiet fetched the red snowshoes Ornea had wanted to buy. She mentioned a price not as outrageously high as for the black pair, but still high. Ornea definitely found it way too high this time. Way above what an avora could be expected to want to pay. But it wasn’t her buying them anymore. The endal paid for his two expensive purchases without showing any sign of being bothered. Then he handed the red snowshoes to Ornea. “A small gift in return for your good advice” he said loftily when she thanked him politely.

Without further preludes he put his arm under hers and started walking away with her like they were friends and had agreed on spending some time together. And she guessed that as he was an endal, whatever he thought must be right. He wouldn’t consider company that wasn’t good enough for him, so likely she ought to feel honored that he wanted to try out new snowshoes together.

...

[Ornea]

...

DAY 21, ONE MORE BATH

“Zith.”

Ornea knew the man was right. This threat was real. There had been zith sigthings and going for a bath in Lake Shivias could be dangerous. Regaredless of this, a lot of people had already left and were on their way to the lake. Some were perhaps already bathing happily and getting clean and comfortable, which was a luxury in Wind Reach these days.

“Do you really think ...” she started.

The endal interrupted her. “Yeah. People are stupid to take the risk just for a bath. If it was about hunting for food it would be justified, but not for a bath. “ He was pulling on his gloves.

“You are right of course. But bad hygiene could lead to diseases if it continues like this. We are all living in dirt, like animals in a neglected stable. It’s getting insufferable.”

Arjen didn’t answer. She watched him for a moment, not pushing her opinion. It wasn’t smart to nag at an endal. And although she had learnt to know this one a bit since their first meeting at the snowshoes stall the day before, she didn’t really know much more about him than his name, his looks and other facts that were easy to observe without really knowing a person. There was no reason to debate and risk to get endal orders to not join the bathers at the lake.

“I have to be on my way” he said in a matter of fact tone, ignoring what she had said like he assumed the topic had been closed for good. He was already at the door. Ornea made a polite nod and smile while he opened the door went out and left. The sound of his fast and decisive steps faded out as he walked down the tunnel outside. Ornea didn’t know where he was going or what his plans for the day were. She didn’t care either. It had been a temporary acquaintance, it seemed. Being Inarta she wasn’t bothered. She had met this endal, Arjen and now he was gone again, and that was that. From the moment he disappeared out of sight and hearing, she didn’t think of him anymore. But she recalled the more important topic she had on mind; a bath.

*

After the reaction she had got when she had mentioned a trip to the lake Ornea wasn’t keen of speaking with more people about it. She could have asked her longtime good friend and endal Ruian if they could go there on eagle. But unlike her temporary acquaintance with the snowshoes - what’s his name, she’d already forgotten - Ruian was likely to care. And he knew her. He was likely to guess that if she wasn’t clearly forbidden to go, she would go. She could imagine him saying she wasn’t allowed, due to the risk of zith attacks, and he wasn’t going to lose her to those winged scum now when she had finally been sensible and returned to the city where she belonged, so on and so on.

She spent some time planning and preparing. A towel and some toiletries went into her backpack, and so did her new red snowshoes. She donned her Katinu and her boots and took the shortbow and some arrows. It didn’t hurt to be armed, she thought to herself. And then she shook her head at herself. Stupid. Like she and her shortbow would stand a chance against zith. It wasn’t going to work and reluctantly she decided to not go if she couldn’t find company. She needed a group to go with. But how ... she decided to go to the gates and hang around there in the hopes of finding some random people to join.

*

A bell later she was walking on the beaten track towards Lake Shivias, with a small group of chiet and a big group of yasi. The chiet had immediately accepted that she joined them, and she had seen their glances at the shortbow she held. They hadn’t said anything about it, but they were armed too, as were the older yasi. It wasn’t for being avora and higher rank she had been welcomed. It was for getting one more grown up person who would be able to use a weapon if they were attacked. Ornea’s fighting power was in fact very limited, but nobody had asked about her prowess and she hadn't offered any details.

After a while they reached the lake and nobody had attacked them. It seemed a bit stupid now with all the worry and extra caution during the walk there.

*

Ornea wasn’t a great swimmer, but she went out into the water like the others. She stayed where she was able to stand on the bottom of the lake, and dash forward while she moved her arms in the water just like swimming, although just for one or at most two times before she had to put her feet down again.
It was lovely to finally get clean.

This feeling was worth anything. Anything.

*

Later, they started to walk back home. Once again they looked around cautiously all the time and the zith threat felt real again. There was a shadow in the bushes and without thinking consciously about it her mind made an automatic conclusion and made Ornea see what she half expected to see. To her the shadow became the zith they had been watching out for, and she reacted accordingly.

Unreasonable fear seized her and made her forget all sense and caution. Before she knew it she had already started to draw on the djed, pulling it from inside herself, from her body and her life. She thought of stopping it, but the thought of grilling the winged being was stronger and made her go on against her better judgement. She let the res stream out from her palms, and shaped it into balls. Already feeling nauseated and dizzy and not thinking clearly anymore she let the balls grow and in her head migraine started to throb like a hammer. Sensations like flashes of light disturbed her sight as she ignited the balls of res and threw them.

Her knees were bending. The next thing she knew was that she was on her knees in the snow, feeling like she wanted to vomit, but unable to do it. There was a birdlike cackling laugh, and after a tick of curious surprise she realized; it was her's.

Looking at the bushes she saw nothing but shadows. Her gaze was clouded and her eyes were hot and burning. Somebody started to wipe her face with a damp towel and as her vision cleared up a bit she saw the red stains spreading on the cloth. Blood. She was able to focus well enough to know what this signified. Overgiving.

They told her there was no zith in sight.

She had been fooled by her own perception and was bleeding in vain.

The chiet pulled her to her feet, and supporting her so she could walk they moved on. Ornea knew vaguely that she must keep on putting one feet in front of the other. She felt terrible, but she heard people tell her to move on and so moved on. Eventually she felt better, and was able to walk without support. But she was exhausted and the whole rest of the walk back to Mount SkyInarta was something she would later only recall as a blurred dream.

Her mind was a mess. It was bathing in the aftermath of overgiving. But her body was clean, very clean.

...

[Ornea]

...

Day 34 THE HARD WAY BACK


She was the eternal optimist. She always figured things would work out somehow, and thought she would have good luck. This was a whisper sweeter than magic to Ornea’s mind.

She had believed the day would be sunny, but it was not. She had believed the snowy ground would be cold and firm, but it was hot.

The ground was flooded. She had found her way back to Mount SkyInarta just to find the path blocked by water. It was evening after a day of failed hunting. Emptyhanded and tired, the bow strapped on her back, she looked at all the sudden water and didn’t understand a thing. Where did it come from? How could this even happen, this time of the year?

A spring tide in fall. In all her life, she had never experienced this odd kind of weather before.

Ornea was on foot so she hadn’t gone particularly far from the city. There were a lot of zith around these days, hearsay had it. She wasn’t keen on meeting monsters and become their dinner. But Ornea figured the zith wouldn’t dare to show themselves too near Mount SkyInarta in broad daylight. Zith could fly. But so could wind eagles, and being Inarta and proud of her own she assumed a wind eagle was way better at it than a hairy zith. Wind eagles were superior. She drew the conclusion that potential zith would avoid the risk to be seen and attacked by endals on Wind Eagles.

If they weren’t stupid of course. An unpleasant thought. Intelligent and highly logical beings would do what made sense. But stupidity was unpredictable. Stupid people could do the most absurd things in their incompetence, and lack of insight about it. Their stupidity made them irrational and thus they could be more dangerous as nobody with common sense was prepared for their decisions. It wasn’t like she wished those disgusting zith would be smart, but she sort of hoped they wouldn’t be too stupid either. But, if they actually were stupid as stupid came and a swarm of them would against all sense come flying to Mount SkyInarta ?

The thought made her see a picture in her mind of bold admirable huge beautiful wind eagles fighting a fierce and glorious battle, against a swarm of the abominable beings. The question arose: would the wind eagles and their Inarta be victorious if this really happened, or would the bat-winged monsters be too many? How many were they, those zith people were speaking about? Only a few had been sighted, as far as she knew, but they could be more couldn’t they? Perhaps. Nonetheless she was unable to imagine them winning over the eagles. She even imagined herself sitting behind an endal on the back of a wind eagle, bow in hand, shooting an arrow at a clipped monster and then watching in triumph as it started falling down, screaming.

She wasn’t normally that violent. But she could make an exception for zith !

Worried, and with her reimancy gaffe not so many days ago fresh in her memory, she looked around. She searched the snow with her gaze as far as she was able, but saw no traces of hidden monsters. It was ridiculous of her ... she had been out all the day and nothing had happened, and only some ticks ago she had concluded the ugly beasts would not dare to be near Mount SkyInarta in broad daylight. It was meaningless to become nervous now. She only had to find a way to get to the other side of the water. It would for sure not be so hard. Then she would just get on the other side of the flooded area and walk home calmly. It was a pretty short distance to walk. At least for Inarta standards; she was used to physical hardships and didn’t think of it as especially taxing.

In lack of better ideas she started to follow the stream upwards. She hoped vaguely that the water came from more than one source. In case the water was divided up in several smaller streams on the higher ground, it would be easier to deal with this. She could then try to find a way over one smaller stream at the time.

It was tough to run into this kind of unexpected obstacle when she already was cold and tired and just wanted to go home. But she was Inarta. She clenched her teeth and kept walking on at good pace. She would endure, simply. Endurance, she had learnt, was pretty much about not fighting the feeling of discomfort you couldn’t do anything about. Instead she ought to embrace it and accept it as something natural. She supported the acceptance by thinking of how this was how it was for the wild animals, all the time. If the animals were able to take it, she was able to do it too. She wasn’t going to be won over by bears, wolfs and skygoats.

In particular not by goats. She sent a quick thought to the okomo goats of Lhavit. These creatures who were thought so holy by the Lhavitians had been absolutely everywhere and it had been ill-adviced to try to shoo them away. As a consequences the shining city of skyglass had sported a not inconsiderable amount of goat dung on it’s beautiful oversized streets and plazas and sometimes inside the pompous buildings too. The city had of course smelled accordingly. A seldom mentioned fact, but goats do smell, and goat dung smells more. The Lhavitian’s had seemed to not care. Maybe they didn’t notice the stench because it had been in the air from their first breath. But Ornea had noticed it, and found it quite repulsive. Those goats had been said to be mounts meant to carry people, but as she recalled it they had never been around when they really were needed. Only when they and their dung was in the way. In Lhavit she had had to respect goats though, and let them win if they were stubborn. But she wasn’t going to lose against goats here in Wind Reach. No way. She kept thinking of this as she plowed on. It took her attention off of how tired she felt.

A lot later, she came to where the water was coming from. It had taken longer time than she had estimated and the sun was a bit lower on the sky now. She investigated the terrain in front of her with her gaze, and what she saw wasn’t promising. The stream really did come from several places. So far so good. But the ground between the streams nearby looked wet, muddy and slippery. It actually didn’t look like this would be as easy as she had hoped.

There was one more problem. It had looked foggy at a distance and she had supposed that was all. But once she came nearer to the fog she had realized it was ... steam. It was steam, freezing to fine icy mist in the cold air. The haze dispersed and refracted the now dark golden sunlight of the evening and made it look like golden veils of fog fluttering over the ground. Amazed and stunned, she stood and watched the silent phenomena. It looked surreal and mysterious.

A chill went up her spine when she wondered if what she saw was in fact as unreal as it could seem. She feared it was just her own overgiving injured mind trolling her. It could be a lingering after effect of the reimancy incident some days before. As this thought struck her she wanted to pray that she wasn’t losing the mental stability she had gained during her year in Lhavit, but she felt unsure if any deity would hear and care.

“Ivak ...” she managed, in an unusually thin and brittle voice. It was hardly more than a whisper.

She took off the glove of her right hand, squatted and touched the water. It felt real. It was real. It wasn’t a fabrication of an overgiving affected mind, but a natural phenomena. Relieved, she stood up again and started to scan the ground once more, in order to find the best route over to the other side.

There was no meaning with planning this for long time though. Ornea had noticed the position of the sun. I would be sundown in a while, and although she felt sure zith would not dare to come here in broad daylight it might be another thing to fly close to Mount SkyInarta in the shelter of dusk or darkness. Time was getting crucial. The first small streams right in front of her, as far as she was able to see, were actually not that small, so she thought it would work out to walk over the foggy area. She might get her boots wet, but hopefully it would be limited to the boots. She should be good.

So she bent her knees slightly, focused on the other side of the first narrow stream, and pushed away at the ground as she jumped. She barely made it. She jumped over next small stream and managed to not fall when she landed on slippery ground. And now she was inside the shimmering golden haze. She found her sight more dimmed by it than she had expected; she could hardly see clearly more than a step in front of her. A definite drawback for a woman who would have to jump like goat over stream after stream she could’t see the other side of. But it was still better than trying downstream. Besides, she was running out of time and there was no other option than continuing forward.

She tried to jump over a somewhat wider streak of water, but the haze made it hard to judge the distance correctly and she only nearly made it to the other side this time. Water seeped into her left boot. She dismissed the unpleasant sensation as part of the hardships an Inarta needs to be prepared to endure. A few streams and daring jumps later, both her boots were soaking wet and made a squishing sound when she walked. Everything was horrid. She suppressed a feeling of pure hate for the ethereal beauty of the clipped fog she walked in.

And then she came to the source of the fog. Or one of it’s sources; the fog made it impossible for her to see if this was the only one, or it there were more. There was an irregular line over the ground, a line of heat. A volcanic fissure, although Ornea didn’t know this was the name of what she had dectected. It started to the left of her, somewhat beneath her on the slope. It was narrow and no lava was in sight, but there was heat, that special heat from the underground which Ornea associated with practical and efficient furnaces and glass ovens, and the pleasant temperature inside Mount SkyInarta. This sight wasn’t pleasant though. She was under the impression she witnessed a very slowly opening wound in the earth itself. The heat inside earth was moving closer to the surface.

The silence felt like the deafening sound of a gong. After a few ticks she got that it was actually the pounding of her own heart she heard. Her worries about zith seemed laughable now. Zith was nothing against this. The earth itself threatened to burst and let out it’s red hot floating core. This was what people so often spoke about in Mount SkyInarta these days. The volcano under their feet. The magma. The very real threat of instantaneous extinction one of those days.

There was no battle between wind eagles and volcano to dream about. Only a nightmare about the end of the Inarta nation. She recalled how they had stood chanting the gods name that day in year 512 AV. Ivak, Ivak, Ivak. Much good it seemed to have done them! All the things they’d had to deal with afterwards ... and now this. But the Valintar must have an emergency plan, she thought. If the worst happened they must have prepared an evacuation. Yes. She could see it now, evacuation by wind eagles ... but where they could go, she didn’t know.

The haze was going red around her. It was sunset. This made her move again. She jumped on. When she came out at the other side of the many small streams she was sweating after all the jumping she had done. She started to walk downwards . Now when she had bypassed the obstacle and the way back to the city was free, all she could think of was to get indoors before nightfall.

She walked so fast that she was half running, also running for real once in a while. Not paying attention to the ground in her hurry, she slipped and fell. She got to her feet again, shaken by the sudden fall, but relieved that she had landed softly in some remaining snow outside of the warmer parts of the ground. She dusted the white powder off her katinu. Breathing hard, she stood still a bit in order to compose herself, while she looked out over the landscape on the other side of the flood, scanning it with her gaze. The sun had went down below the horizon but the sky was still half-light, softly violet and grey. She looked back and saw the fog behind her, looking silvery now. A gust of vind moved her hair over her face and she pushed it away with her gloved hand.

Ornea continued forward to the city and would soon reach the Sinikas gates. The sky was changing from twilight to dusk. She walked faster, only stopping for a tick when she heard a bird call far away. Automatically, she looked in the direction the sound had come from. And there, from a group of tress, far way, a black shadow took to the air. As she watched, suddenly frozen in terror, unsure what she saw, it flew away and disappeared out of sight.

She tried to tell herself it had been a bird. It didn’t calm her down. She told herself that whatever it had been, it hadn’t seen her, or if it had, it wouldn’t come for her. It had went away and wouldn’t come back. Everything would be fine. She figured this would work out and she would have good luck. Whispering this sweet reassurance to herself, repeating it, desperately wanting to believe in it, she ran without stopping or looking back, until she reached the gates and went in.

...