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@@ -138,3 +138,77 @@ Other details: the boats are made of oak. They're sailing fresh waster so they d the man makes portraits of people, darkroom on the ship. The woman is his daughter. She's 23, her younger sister is 17. They live with him, their brother lives with their mother on shore. + +The bit about diggers. + +The rejection of farming. Why would I be tied to this bit of land, and then destroy it to grow these plants. <tk god> grows her own plants. I can just each those. I can hunt, I can fish. I can go where the rice grows, I can go where the rushes are. I can go where the oaks drop their kernals, I can go where the nuts are. this is the connection between the world between <tk god> and us, to violate this, to try to turn the world to our hands, this is arrogance. this was the unraveling of the last peoples. They did not listen to what the land was telling them, they turned their back on what was offered and they said, no, i can do this better. They were wrong and <tk god> showed them that. + +Do you think that about Ma then? She plants. Is she a digger then? + +She does not plant." She saw a light of anger in her father's eyes. "She gathers. It is different. It is what we do. We gather. She stays ashore because she does not like boats. She is a person of the earth, but not a digger. + +What are you then? + +I am a person of the fire. + +Fire? Why do you live on the water then? + +Isn't that obvious? If I go ashore I burn everything up. Water is how I stay balanced. Your mother does not have that problem. + +What am I? + +You are a person of the water. + +What is Karrin? + +Also a person of the water. + +And X? + +X is a person of the air. Like you, he may go awy where, but unlike you he will be welcome. You might not always be welcome to people of the fire. + +Who says we are these things? + +Who says? + +Yes? + +No one. We are these things. + +What if we don't want to be these things? + +My dear, how could you want to be other than you are? You are water. I am fire. We cannot be otherwise. It is like you are a girl, I am a man. We cannot change these things, there is no reason to resist them. They just are. + +She said nothing, but stared off into the distance where the blue line of water met the blue line of sky. + +Sil sat in a troubled silence. "I think," he said at last, "this is something Fire cannot understand. I will seek council of the Water People on your behalf. See if this is known amoung them. If they can help you resolve thios." + +There is a council of the Water People?" + +Yes. When you are a few moons older you will go to them and learn what water has to teach. It will help you find your way. Not to spoil it, but the way of Water is to West. + +What is the way of Fire? + +South. + +Earth? + +North. + +Air? + +East. + +Her father shrugged. It is a wheel yes? I do not put too much into this, but maybe that is the nature of fire to see it this way, I do not know. What I know is that someone had to be each direction. I have never felt any pull to the south. If anything I feel a pull to the west. + +Water again. + +Hmm? Yes. I suppose you are right. + +He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He did not mention that water also flows downhill, always toward the sea. He did not know all the ceremoney of the Water People, but he'd seen enough of them to know that she would be a leader among them. He was good at sensing these things. I was his place to find them, the leaders. He had not expected to find them so close to himself though. He wondered though at the old teaching, that love grants clarity. What if there were leaders he did not sea simply because he did not know them well enough to love them and therefore not see what was in them, what if he lacked the clarity he had with his own children and that was why he say it now in her, but not in others who might be just as worthy as her. + + + +PFOA leads to fertility problems, increased risk of cancer and developmental delays in children. This has happened in the cities, where degeneracy leads eventually to their collapse and then plagues wipe them out. The people of this age do not go near them. The biggest of them are buried under water. only Milwaukee and chicago remain as a wasteland at the southern most terminus of lakeland. Something calls one of the man's children south, he sails them to the shores of abandoned milwaukee. + +don't drink the water here. Don't drink until you are well south. Carry this. He handed her two large bladders of water. This is how long you can stay. When this runs out, you have to leave. there is nothing to hunt, nothing alive. animcals avoid the place, the gods of old ruined it, smashed the arrogance of these people. but the arrogance lingers. people go in, and the arrogance infects them and they think they can do what they cannot do. They think they can stay here, drink and eat. And they can of course. Nothing happens right away. But they never have children. the grow old when they are still young. things begins to grow on them, in them, something eats them up from the inside and it is because of this place. |