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whilst she ruminated. But with resolve she now raised them upward and focused on the road ahead. Ravno felt in her a renewed strength, as at that moment he focused down the road with her. He had switched with Aron, just for a second, and noticed, through his friend, the old woman leaning against the tree. He had then switched with her. Her strange power gave him confidence.
Ravno said to his friend, ‘Rain’s coming. It’s just down the street to your first. It’ll be here in a couple breaths.’
They waited. The woman walked away. The west wind diminished and they waited. The rain did not come.
‘Okay, so you convinced me with the apparition that passed us, with her little nose,’ Aron said, ‘but that rain trick was rather unimpressive, sorry. It did almost feel like the rain was coming though, I’ll give you that.’ Aron’s brow turned in, but imperceptibly, behind the black glassless glasses.
The old woman walked over the wet soil, down the avenue to Silas’s pack. Too bad it stopped, she thought. You never know when the rain will come or when it will go.
3/ mandiri kenaikan
The moon continues to hide her face on the third historia forum
Mr. Sunshine opened his large hands in a gesture of welcome to the forum group and said, ‘At the full moon we discussed muh-nee and profit. I realized later these things make no sense to you without understanding the ancient’s obsession with ownership before the Ada Era.’
‘Why was profit so negative in their time?’ Bapor the boto builder said. ‘Don’t we profit by eating or by getting to know someone else or by creating something substantial with our own hands?’ Her own rough hands opened to Mr. Sunshine in query.
‘Because profit was all-consuming for the ancient peoples,’ he said to her. ‘Profit became the meaning of life. The most heinous evils became simple numbers on a budget.’
Mr. Sunshine stood. He paced around the circle like a caged feline. He approached Bapor intently and spoke to her directly.
‘Profit was negative, Bapor, because they stopped at nothing to achieve it. They took life; they raped the earth. From our most reputable accounts, they didn’t seem to care about the rampant greed.’ The porter had turned again toward his own seat. He stopped in the middle of the seven and said, sadly, ‘All hail the most Holy Profit.’ He said the word in the ancient way, pro-fit, so the pun was lost on them all. It sounded funny to the group and felt weird on their lips. Ravno understood it as two foreign words: praw fit. It felt dirty on all their mouths and hands.
The moon elegantly waned a hemp-line more.
Back at his seat, the porter added, ‘Consider what they could’ve accomplished and invented if they weren’t stuck in profit. Communications, mobility, restoration of their bodies, and other basic functions like eating and waste management—the last of particular importance considering their numbers.’
‘You keep mentioning their numbers. How many of them were there?’
‘Millions.’ A gasp spun around the seated circle. Most doubted the possibility of that many people and where they would all go or what they would all eat.
‘Think about what they left behind and how long it’s lasted,’ Mr. Sunshine said. ‘It takes a mighty contagion to cause that devastation and impact.’
Aron snickered. Not at the thought of such numbers or grisly leftovers but because Ravno had switched with the man that sat beside the porter, and whispered to Aron, ‘Payu is looking at Bapor’s breasts. And anytime she moves, his eyes skitter away.’
They began a game where Ravno combed the circle at Aron’s bidding and told him what each person was looking at or how they were feeling.
‘Aadi was looking at you while you were looking at Payu. Yolotli is feeling unwell. Allete is watching the lark, like usual.’
‘I could’ve told you that one,’ Aron whispered back.
Mr. Sunshine’s point progressed, ‘But back to ownership, which is intricately tied to profit. Since they acquired their possessions and experiences through muh-nee, and were always in danger of falling victim to a bad deal—because of profit—they possessively kept everything they got their hands on. “This is what I own,” they said. “If you want it you’ll have to pay for it.”
‘The concept of ownership so infused their culture that they came to feel they owned other people. At one point they did literally buy and sell people. Ownership snuffed out their potential.’
After a brief but well considered pause, the porter said, ‘Much like a batsu omhaal snuffs out yours.’
Those who hadn’t gasped at the ‘millions’ figure did at this remark. A stunned silence crept through the clearing. Mr. Sunshine reflected with amusement that Wawasens were not nearly as open as they pretended to be, not nearly as democratic as they believed they were. Are we free to say what we think? he questioned them quietly, in his mind. Ideally, yes. Socially, no. The black bristles that crowded his cheeks, that grew thicker at the sides of his chin, drifted down with the corners of his mouth. His nostrils widened to accommodate stale scents of western hemlock, waxy notes of sitka spruce, red dirt, sun-dried stone, and all these kids who’ve grown and grown, the porter thought. Some are as old as me of course so they must recall days before the batsu omhaals. They must have some passion left for living as a child and saying what we think and infusing ourselves with each other and this earth. Or is it just me?
‘Seems Yolotli is feeling rather shocked,’ Ravno told Aron. ‘And Payu is watching Mister’s chin, really focused in on it.’
Aron hid his face and pretended to fiddle with his frames and nose. He cleared his throat.
The lecture continued.
‘It’s ironic that through their addiction to ownership they completely befuddled the whole picture,’ Mr. Sunshine said. ‘It’s like when you’re watching a sunrise and you feel you should be looking at the most vibrant part. You catch yourself daydreaming and not really looking at it, or looking at something incidental in the foreground, and realize that you feel you should be looking at the colorful bits. But what if the whole thing was vibrant and bright—then it wouldn’t be a sunrise at all, would it? The darkest parts are as integral as the brightest parts. Without each part complimenting the other, the whole picture is just not what you came to see at all.’
Mr. Sunshine found it progressively harder to articulate his intent. He wondered if his struggle derived from the irregular accumulation of clouds and sporadic rain for this time of year. But the subject pervaded his reflection as he paralleled humans, and campaigns, and power, and change. It is absolutely okay to be focused in on something in the foreground, and to not look at the colorful part. It’s all part of it, anyway. And the colorful part waxes and wanes even more than the moon.
The two men that whispered to each other distracted Mr. Sunshine momentarily. Their whispers fueled the reaches of his cognition as he scoffed, inwardly, at their lack of attention. He knew that when you’re being selfish you’re not just thinking about yourself, you’re thinking about other people in a different way. Otherwise it’d be easy to stop being selfish, he thought, you’d just have to think about the other person. Instead, you begin thinking about what the other person should be doing differently to cover your needs, to understand your concerns, to meet your expectations; you become selfish.
‘I think I’m done here for now. Carry on with your discussions.’ The porter turned and abruptly left the circle.
‘Payu’s looking at Bapor’s breasts again,’ Ravno said.
Aron and Ravno looked at each other and laughed. Some of the others tried to make sense of what the porter had alluded to near the end, or with the whole session. The two giggling fiends left the circle for the canal. Aadi watched Aron go and willed him to turn around. He didn’t. But she didn’t pursue him either, similar to how Allete never pursued the lark. Similar to how Payudara never went beyond a glance at Bapor. Similar to how the ancients never achieved true greatness or humility. Similar to how Ravno suspected that his dance was aimless and without any great consequence.
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From one side to the other side and how quickly he falls
The sky had furrows like the beach. Dusk hung in the crevasse of clouds and crooks of ash. Keba and Ravno stepped from the boto to the dock like a shadow of Dabi five days prior, when she had departed to Santulita. But instead of boarding an inter-island ride to the south, they scaled the basalt stones out of the canal and their feet milled the sand as they entered the para zona. The largest vents and hundreds of smaller ones that gave birth to the island’s inner congestion sat on this sandy outcrop of Lurruna’s western hem. If one wished to stay with the person with which one arrived, one tended to stay unusually close to one’s companion in this area. The steam swirled heavily and fro-frayed the tree leaves and grasses and hairs of one’s neck.
They faced one another at the great wooden water-filled pot. Ravno brought her first hand into the madrone basin and paused.
‘Is it too hot?’ he said.
She shook her already-wet hair and he rubbed the hemp residue from her hand. Vorra gardens drifted to the unseen bottom as Keba washed his hands too. The zona caretaker came to greet them and his intemerate aura welcomed them in.
To hang one’s skirt and capa on the loping tree-limb was almost useless because everything became wet in the para zona, whether on or off. But the freeing interaction of steam on