sat defenseless in a cluster. The soil between his toes was cool as the surface of the moon, and the moon went beneath the horizon as the sun brought light to the morning. Another young man stooped in the gardens at the base of Vorra Mound, his mind split between the task at hand and the hands of his mind’s task. His focus alternated between picking cucumbers, whose green length signaled readiness, and picking apart the moments spent with his muse in a green capa, from the gathering place at the Bhavata House to steam-enclosed fields and hill-top lavvies. His mind had an appetence for the woman whose stern features sat under bunches of tousled hair, whose sun-soaked skin spread the length of her resolute being.
But Ravno’s joyful recollections of his moments with Keba and her sunflower eyes were interrupted as, suddenly, peppers sat in his hand, not cucumbers. He ran his fingers over a yellowish green one, larger than life. He determined it ready, plucked it from the stem with sharp shale, and placed it in the basket. But they were swifter hands with a quicker cut of the stone. With the faintly familiar cold pinch at the top of his spine, Muna served as his vessel through the pepper bed. Ravno held onto the switch with a fierce exactness; the proficiency startled him. Then he came back to his own vision and slowed movements, the same cucumber turning over and over in his dirty palms. Then he went back to Muna’s vision and inspected the chocolate-brown pepper with him, its dark hues somber in contrast to the golden yellow, its green stem cut with finesse. There he knelt, switching to and fro between his garden fellow and himself, encased in a morning-diffused realm of excitement and satisfaction. He wanted to yell or clap his hands—he could barely contain his emotions. To let his sight mingle with Muna’s as they worked the same earth was as easy as breathing. He could do it again and again.
And he did. Ravno took on Muna’s range of view to watch first-hand as he lifted the basket of peppers to the trailer. Ravno also watched through Kar’s eyes when she waved to him as he started out across the gardens to the city, and when she resumed her sorting of seeds; Ravno savored the success of riding the bicycle even as he switched with her. As a boto with curious onlookers glided ever closer, Ravno watched his own body wheeling the bicycle beside himself across the footbridge, handles in hand, trailer piled with vegetables in cedar baskets behind. When the grebet at starboard bow glanced back at a curious object in the water, Ravno glanced back with him, with a switch.
Ravno’s hosts included an older woman on the road, who watched her wizened friend enter west Phoyara; a child who browsed the half-moon vegetable tables with his ottsa, while Ravno unloaded the trailer; and finally the man, that same man as before on the path, but now in the city, his red capa rather dull in the noon sun, his pace slowed to a stooped, directionless traipse. Ravno peered through his half-closed eyelids at those plodding feet: left, let the dust settle, right, let the dust settle. The man’s head was heavy and Ravno could feel it. His breath was light but Ravno couldn’t feel that. Everything about the man was lowly and slow, as he trudged in his own despondency.
The man’s emotional mulch sorely affected Ravno, even after he switched back and found himself on the garden path to return the trailer. Kar questioned him about his trip and whether everything was okay, but Ravno quietly stirred the compost and kept to himself. He spread the renewed soil on beds of radish and squash near the cucumbers.
Kar wondered what was wrong with Ravno. She felt he was secluded and unaware, disconnected from the rest of Wawasen people. Kar turned back to focus on the seeds she had been counting.
Ravno considered the way in which the last switch had affected his own state of being. The man’s spirit had felt burdened and his shoulders were low under a lusterless, red capa. Ravno could tell that something had upset or hurt him. Ravno fantasized that he would happen to see through the offender’s eyes soon; he could help this man by telling him what to do or where to go to regain his morale.
Ravno also thought about how suddenly easy it was to switch. Would things change with Keba if he told her about his ability? He worried she would think him insane. Aron would surely appreciate a good chat about it, and Ravno craved Aron’s insight into why it was happening. Or perhaps he should tell Helena, with her steadfast head of curls.
The letter at the Bhavata House
On the first day of the waning gibbous, the moon substance trickles away into the universe and creates all the stars that shine and fill the night horizon. The fragments aren’t brave enough to show themselves at daybreak but the diminishing moon stays high and bright through the night, and even as the first light begins to show. Then the moon makes way for the burning disc touching gold on teary cordgrass of Lurruna canals. The tears sparkle as they try to jump into early passing botos before the sun steals them away, like imitations of moon dust or love’s brush. If only they could release themselves sooner from the loping flanks, slide down to the low tide and grab a passing paddle or float out to the sea. But stubborn drops of morning dew stand proudly along the plants, a line of miniature reflections that show grebets and their paddles, squabbling gulls, and two young men in the stern of a boto. Then, slowly, the proud reflections allow themselves to be eaten by the heat of the sun.
Again they arrived late at the Bhavata House. Ravno still grazed on his seaweed, rice, and salmon, and Aron still forged tales to illustrate the concepts of his latest fancy. They did come in time to join the group in shavasana and picked a spot on the fringe of glistening bodies, where skirts and capas lay in neat piles. Ravno placed the almost empty half-coconut husk and eating sticks on his pile of violet folds. He lay and let his limbs rest on the fibrous matting. The warm morning air hushed the fir and cedar branches overhead and danced the sunlight halfway down the trunks. The redwood bark and the mud that coated the circular house rendered the line between domestic and wild slightly indistinguishable. With his eyes shut, Ravno unfurled his bunched hands and relaxed each finger with his palms upward. His jaw and shoulders sunk toward the earth; his mouth and brow released their tension. Only the spot where his head made contact with the ground stayed active. Despite the warmth from the earth’s star, and from within his body, this part stayed icy cold. He felt a sudden pinch like a bee sting. Who could tell that he switched right then with Patanjali, whom he lay beside? Then he switched with a woman he hadn’t yet met but who also had closed eyes. He did not see with their eyes, which were closed and looked inside themselves, but saw with their jibana, and so entered an even fuller pranayama.
But then he switched with Aron, whose eyes were neither closed nor looking inside himself as he gazed at the bulging cumulus in the atmosphere. In the clouds Aron saw Jasmin Sanjukta’s tumbling hair. Ravno caught his breath as his brows scrunched and his own eyes popped open to see those same clouds—no hair. He smiled and let his attention travel over toes, feet, fingers, hands, legs, groin, stomach, arms, chest, shoulders, ears, and face, and slowly he rolled over his bent knees and up to a seated position. He looked over to watch Patanjali’s belly balloon and deflate in sync with the sound of small waves on the shore.
The group slowly came to rise and don capas and skirts. They entered the Bhavata House where Jasmin Sanjukta prepared tea by the central fire. She placed two hot rocks from the fire in a leather bag of water and spearmint leaves and tied the bag closed to sit and simmer. As it came to flavor, she scooped the liquid into small madrone cups. She handed the full cups to those who entered the house.
They gathered only for gathering’s sake with no meeting or particular discussion planned. Aron heard the story of the most recent batsu omhaal from Keba and Ravno and sipped his tea and tap-tapped his frames. They sat in a small circle to one side of the room. Clusters of people around the three spoke or signed about developments in the city and the implications of living among fractured islands with one Group of Eleven and other such veins of thought.
Aron looked to Keba, ‘What do you think, did they plan to have a third and just bear the punishment, or was it an accident?’
Keba looked up from the two saturated min
t leaves that clung to the rim of her rough wooden cup.
‘To be honest I hadn’t thought… it may’ve been intentional. But do you really think they’d let that happen to their children?’ she asked.
‘It does seem improbable, forcing that on them,’ Aron said. ‘But isn’t it just the same how we decide to teach our kids about this but not that, or even that they’re born at all? We determine their lives without questioning it. We just think a thing is the right way to do it and suddenly the kid doesn’t know how to swim or hasn’t a clue about herbs. Or they’re raised on Lurruna but could’ve been born on Peninnah.’ Aron brought his lips to a sideways bunch. His gaze fell to his friends’ knees and ricocheted about in contemplation.
Ravno looked past both of them to Dabi who stood alone in a cluttered corner with a sheet of papyrus in hand. As he read with her, unable to look back to the beginning of the letter but forced to follow the trail of her eyes, he saw these words in dark kurumi ink, elegant around the edges but with a shrewd exactitude:
‘…tame Santulita ni kite dan menyertai kami koko sebaliknya. Di
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