most recent experiment of stealing someone’s sight. Or borrowing, even sharing, was more accurate. He had switched with her. Even with a man there, Ravno still connected with her not him. But he couldn’t control her, he couldn’t make the host do what he wanted her to. He could see what they see and feel what they feel but no way could his thoughts become actions become real.
Or maybe not yet, he told himself.
But now that he had progressed this far and could decide when the symbiosis began, but not necessarily when it ended, he wondered if he hadn’t reached the pinnacle.
This is mine but can’t be mine, Ravno distressed, it’s a creature I can only partially control. It’s beyond the heights of Vorra Mound, which leaves nothing…. He felt that he had made progress but he also wanted to stop or distract himself. He was afraid perhaps of failure, or of success.
After he returned the bicycle and trailer to the gardens at Vorra’s threshold, Ravno found himself again at the footbridge to cross Duat Canal. He stopped at the worn, tung-coated spruce logs and looked back at the mountain, full of greens and birdcalls. How quickly you climb the mountain, but how much more quickly do you come on down, he thought.
Ravno was so thoroughly absorbed in his creature status that he almost overlooked a boto passing underneath before he crossed the bridge. The last ribbons of conversation lagged in the air with the salt and smell of algae that grew at the base of the canal’s cordgrass. He just caught the ribbons, as if Temperance and her fairy-like energy boosted his grasping ear-hands, as they wrinkled and crinkled with this in a line, ‘…One moment there, the next moment gone. People don’t take things….’ The words melted with the paddles that dipped and pulled the boto, which cut the rising tide. What did it mean? People don’t take things—for granted? People don’t take things—from other people? Or simply, people don’t take things?
As he looked forward over the bridge to Phoyara, Ravno noticed the moon, so nearly full the meniscus was disappearing. It began to rise left of Notou Mound in the southern distance. He realized it was late afternoon and he had a batsu omhaal to get to.
Detailing the Wawasen year and population particulars
The frequency of branding ceremonies this year is unusual. There are eight thousand, five hundred and ninety seven people living in the Wawasen Archipelago. The number varies, waxing and waning like the moon amid Wawasen’s insulate skies, but it means that approximately eleven people are born and seven people die each year. Careful arithmetic concludes the Wawasen population would expand over time. There are years, however, with few births and many deaths, many births and no deaths, no births and no deaths, and on and on.
And so, despite the few annual births all along the marvelous dragon islands of Wawasen, and the fewer still that transgress the Group of Eleven’s population mandate of two children per family, the high frequency of brandings this year is unusual. In comparison, often there are no batsu omhaals at all the year through, and perhaps there’s one or two every three years or so—just enough to keep the people in order and avoid any further perpetration of the mandate.
One technicality that impacts the frequency is that Wawasen people follow lunar months. Nine lunar months of around twenty-nine days each makes for one year of around two hundred and sixty days, give or take three days. Every seven years makes one thousand, eight hundred twenty days, corresponding to just under five years, Gregorian count. The solstice happens every six months, so every third solstice is every second year, Wawasen count. Therefore, the amount of people that are born and die every year differs in the Wawasen frame of reference compared to the ancient frame of reference, say, four hundred and ninety-nine thousand, five hundred and seventy-one years ago, Wawasen count.
Considering the high frequency of batsu omhaals this year, those responsible for carrying out the necessary duties have to travel more often from the island of Bu, the largest island in the archipelago. Unless those infringing the rules happen to live on Bu, for then the traveling trio has only to hop between botos along stretching canals to arrive in the hosting city. As the largest island, Bu has the largest population and therefore the most cases of hyperbolic families—at least when the mandate was put into place. Twenty-nine years after launching the decree, Bu fell to the bottom of all islands with least perpetrations per seven-year period. Rightfully so under the watchful eye of current Prime Minister Varchapet, who resides on Theo Island just south of Bu.
As the official designates of the Group of Eleven, the traveling trio makes the journey north from Bu in an inter-island boto. From Bu, the belly of the beast, they travel up the neck to the top of the spine, Sekitsui Island. From there, into the dragon’s brain of Lurruna, where the steam flows as steadily as human-made poisons did of ancient times. They stop on Lurruna, not continuing to Peninnah, the jaws of the beast, and join the batsu omhaal in Phoyara City—the city east of Vorra Mound and full of promise, integrity, and boto builders.
The batsu omhaal of Kar’s saudari and the children
The branding trio from the island of Bu arrived in the morning. The Ishi, who wore a dove-grey capa on his shoulders, the Ammit, a heavy-boned bald man who bore his branding billets, and the Kawani, a scrawny but obstinate girl with a hurricane of papyrus scrolls and other batsu omhaal paraphernalia that spilled from her arms.
The sterilization of the three male children and their ottsa took place over the time the sun traveled a fist-distance farther from the horizon. The coca corba, given to the boys to endure the deferentectomy, reduced the pain on their necks from the brands. Though Kar’s saudari, the mat of the family, had no surgery, the Ishi offered her some coca corba to help her through the burning process too. She gladly accepted the soupy substance, though not without resentment creased around her eyes.
Keba and Ravno joined the edge of a small group of onlookers in the center of a field on the southeast edge of Phoyara. The trio traditionally held batsu omhaals in the open, in or near the city of the offending party. Meadows, rocky outcrops, and sandy dunes were popular choices. This particular meadow on Lurruna lay downwind from several small steam vents east of the city. The mist kept the scene almost secluded, despite the site’s openness, as the wind raised nary a finger. The spruce and cedar and pine hung their branches in sad repose, almost concealed by the steam.
Kar’s saudari, Zus, stood in line beside her family with an unassuming fire at their backs. Beside her were her maite and their three sons. Those opposed to brandings and sterilization were gathered on their knees and faced, in their notion, the victims. Others just stood. The Group of Eleven’s designates, those who performed the surgeries and branding, had the opinion that the rest of Wawasens were the victims and as such invited witnesses indiscriminately. Keba dropped to her knees beside a man that had been at the Bhavata House and Ravno followed her lead. Ravno’s skirt almost brushed the grass blades of the ground, like sons straining to reconnect with their mothers. He felt unnatural on his knees, perceiving the world from a lower stance. Those who kneeled also kept their heads slightly acquiesced and Ravno was conscious of his brows and how bushy they must appear as he looked up past them.
The preparation of coca corba produced a salad-like smell that surrounded the meadow and rode around on sleeves of steam. Like feline’s fleas or bee’s pollen the scent traveled and trailed the island’s breath and touched Ravno’s nostrils. He widened them and breathed sharply inwards as he tried to identify the source.
‘It’s for the pain, that soup they give them,’ Keba said. Her quiet voice joined the smell on misty coattails. ‘Though it does nothing for the shame, or the feeling of inadequacy, or self-loathing….’
He hardly caught the last part of the final word as it came out of her lips; the word fractured and became inaudible at the end. Was it the authoritative way she pronounced each word, bathed in pathos, so descriptive and accurate in its own right, which made his throat clench below the base of his tongue? Or was it her lips, apart from everything else, and how they moved and touch
ed each other? Either way, he tried to gently clear his throat without disturbing the still atmosphere. Still, notwithstanding the eager flames, flowing steam sleeves, and nervous victim’s feet on trampled grass. Still, notwithstanding the small pulse between his legs as he imagined the lucky grass that tickled the insides of her thighs.
The Ammit placed the large and small creambush rods into the flames, flames that crawled eagerly at the hard wood but could not ignite it. Both nohs did, however, glow purple-red by the time they arranged everyone and the scrawny Kawani stated their purpose.
‘We are here together, as a community that lives in past, present and future, to solidify the commitment of this family in keeping with the Wawasen way of life,’ the Kawani said.
The Kawani kept her chin pointed over her scroll. She didn’t read from the characters embedded on the papyrus, every word also carefully embedded in her brain. Yet she still kept the scroll level with her breast, as a warrior holds a two-handed shield, and her crow’s-foot fingers gripped scroll ends impressively, if not obsessively.
‘Please observe the symbol inscribed to each participant’s person,’ she recited in
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