by Josi Russell
“Does she have to?” he asked, searching Meir’s face. “Can’t she live here, and we bring her to the Vault to study? Like school?”
It took Meir so long to speak that Zyn’dri feared she had offended him deeply.
When he finally did, his voice was unsure. “It is our tradition, our way, to bring the Avowed to the Vault to learn.”
Zyn’dri swallowed hard.
But Meir continued. “However, Earth has required of us many adaptations and has shown me many new ways. I know that living away from those you love has always been something you feared, Zyn’dri. I believe that coming to live in the Vault would be best for you, and that trying to study there and live here may impede your connection to the Allbeings.” His eyes were kind, “but I also believe that you have much to teach us. I do not want you to be unhappy in your study. If you desire, you may remain here and join the Avowed each day from morning devotions to evening devotions.”
Zyn’dri couldn’t help but smile. Walt and Sylvia were smiling, too, and the late afternoon sun had lit the room with a golden glow.
“The hour grows late,” Meir said. “I must return for devotions.” He paused, then continued. “Will you,” he waved a hand, “all of you, please join us tonight for our evening devotions? As the sun sets? At the Faithful geyser?”
Walt and Sylvia agreed, and Zyn’dri cast her bright smile at all of them, then remembered that her people didn’t do that. She smoothed her face into a Stracahn expression of tranquility, then tipped her chin up, slowly, and held it, as a symbol of joy that Meir would recognize and be comfortable with.
He bowed his head in response.
“Thank you,” she said, then tried out his formal title, “Vanquis.”
66
Walt stood with his wife beside Old Faithful and watched Zyn’dri approach in a long line of Avowed. She was newly adorned in blue robes, and Sylvia had braided her turquoise hair. Suddenly, she looked older and wiser. Walt squeezed Sylvia’s hand, and his wife smiled back at him. A small group of bison was making their way across the geyser basin, and Zyn’dri broke out of line to cross to them.
Walt felt Sylvia squeezing his hand in fear as Zyn’dri leaned into one, scratching its broad forehead.
“It’s him,” Walt murmured, “the blind bison.”
Zyn’dri patted the big animal and jogged back to the line. She slipped in as if nothing had happened. Zyn’dri walked with a casual stride that sometimes tripped up the serene Avowed around her, but Walt had no doubt she would soon learn the pace.
The bison wandered off toward the trees. The line of Avowed crossed the newly fallen snow slowly until they reached the wide circle of stone that was cleared bare from the heat beneath the geyser. Solemnly, with measured steps, they encircled the great geyser cone and then sat down on the warm ground to await its sunset eruption.
Seated in the circle between Sylvia and Zyn’dri, Walt didn’t feel as old as he was. A perfect silence and a deep calm settled over them as they gazed at the billowing steam rising from the earth.
From where he sat, Walt could also see columns of steam rising from Beehive Geyser, Grand Geyser, and the newest, Bison Geyser, created when a bison stepped through a patch of thin crust during Walt’s first year on the job.
He watched the intricate patterns of life, the tay’ren, swirling in the steam. The sight filled him with wonder, and with a sense of hope as he recognized the vast reach of these designs. Walt had thought he had learned everything he could about Yellowstone in his nearly forty years here. And now there was more to discover.
This was the code of life. Where human understanding ebbed and ended, this knowledge began. Jamal Laska had followed it back through the stone of Empyriad, through the water, through the magma, through the gasses of first life, to the heart of creation. Somehow, he had found the spark that lit the fire of life. Zyn’dri had presented his journals to Meir, whose reverence and awe at their contents illustrated their worth. Meir had said that there were tay’ren inside them that were new even to the Avowed.
Laska’s patterns, their valleys and peaks, their swirls and eddies, were everywhere. The more Walt looked, the more he saw them. When he looked at the seismic imaging of the magma chambers and channels that ran beneath the park, there they were. When he looked at the curl of a bison’s coat or the pattern of color change on an autumn hillside, there they were. They were in the archaea, the microscopic thermophilic bacteria that gave the thermal pools their striking colors. On every scale, in every structure, Walt saw them.
The geyser began to erupt, and Walt breathed the damp air as steam washed over him. Walt had lived in a world of divisions all his life. Lines had been drawn between people, erased, and drawn anew. He had seen barriers that kept people in and barriers that kept people out. But now he knew the truth. If he looked hard enough, everything was connected. The sunset glowed orange, and he saw the tay’ren in the bright stratus clouds on the horizon and in the jets of water that leaped in jubilant pulses from Old Faithful. Beneath it all, within them all, were woven the same patterns of life.
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About the Author
Josi Russell is the author of the Caretaker Chronicles and the Shadows of Empyriad series of science fiction novels, as well as numerous science fiction short stories.
Her science fiction novels explore familiar human relationships in unfamiliar contexts. She currently teaches creative writing and fiction courses as an Associate Professor of English for Utah State University Eastern. She lives in the alien landscape of the high desert American Southwest with her family and a giant tortoise named Caesar.
Josi is captivated by the fields of linguistics, mathematics, and medicine, by the vast unknown beyond our atmosphere, and by the whole adventure of being human.
https://josirussellwriting.com/
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