Grains of Faith in a Desert of Sand [Colombina]

[Eshatoh]

A.V. 510 Winter, the 88th

Eshatoh awoke, as he did many mornings, to the sound of wind-blown sand assaulting his cowhide tent. This was the day for him that most Chaktawe anticipated from their birth. Eshatoh just saw it as the last step he needed to take to get the full autonomy of an adult. After all, who needed the protection of a god or even a guardian spirit if you had been able to take care of yourself without help for the past seven years. No, the only real reason Eshatoh had chosen to proceed with this custom was so that nobody would be sent to track him down when he left.

The desert was a horrible place to live. Sand got into everything. Food was hard to come by. A drop of water was worth more than any amount of gold. With the limited resources, conflict was assured, and thus death was also. In a way, the desert had killed his parents.

Yes, the Eypharians had been an agent of that death, but in the end they were just protecting the little that the desert had granted them. No, it was most definitely the desert that had killed his parents. He wouldn’t let it harm him any more.

Many nights he had listened, entranced as the tribe’s Abaylas told stories of his people’s origin. They had come from a land so rich with water that people could live in one place and merely dine on the fruits of plants—plants crowded together so much that sometimes the ground wasn’t even visible. Most entrancing of all, though, were the stories involving the river. It was a concept Eshatoh’s mind couldn’t understand. He had seen sand flowing in giant drifts, but water was too precious to be wasted in such a manner. If Makutsi had been so generous to the Chaktawe so long ago, why had she withdrawn her hand? What could his people have done that was so terrible that she hadn’t restored the water after the Valterrian?

Those were the questions and thoughts that echoed through his consciousness every moment of every day. Those were the thoughts that spurred him to seek someplace better. And those were the thoughts that made him undertake the Searching in order to be free to seek.

So he rolled over and got up, throwing on his lower body garment. Then, he exited the tent, leaving all of his possessions behind. The Wayhali had been rather vague about what he was allowed to bring with him, so he decided to play it safe and just return to his tent if there was a need.

Surveying the forlorn clump of tents gathered around him in the center of the endless horizon, Eshatoh spotted the small gathering that would be involved in his banishment. Walking with appropriate ceremony and gravity, he approached them.

[Colombina]

Every tribe had its own prelude to the ritual of searching, reflecting the spirit of its leadership and people. The Kalanue ritual had a touch of mysticism and gravity, the Tatsuwaat ritual was one of brightness and enthusiasm and the Suli ritual emphasized the reward of individual effort.

What male members remained of Eshatoh's family were gathered in a circle, their backs to the center. Notable members of the tribe comprised the rest of the human enclosure. They wore dark pelts and black feathers, a sharp contrast to their mask like faces painted a bright white. Their eyes were closed, symbolically refusing to acknowledge the boy until he became a man.

The tent grounds were soundless and empty but for the circle that awaited Eshatoh. A profound solitude hung like a vapor.

At Eshatoh's approach, the circle parted allowing just enough space for him to enter.

Within the circle's mysterious center, the ground was strewn with lotus plucked from Ahnatep. Kneeling among the white and blush colored petals was Andoah, one of the tribe's most beautiful girls.
Her russet arms glowed despite the shade of the men surrounding them and her hair was unbound. It cascaded over her, concealing what her pale pelts and feathers did not. Eypharian jewels were hung at her temples and her dark eyes were sultry with kohl. She held on her lap a precious bowl of spring water.

When she spoke, it was obvious she was reciting the same words others in her position had a hundred times over. She had a full mouth that seemed capable of bestowing life with its touch.

"Remember us always. Remember what you protect and what you strive for. By strength and dedication, we are made full. By strength and dedication we are made blessed."
She raised the bowl towards Eshatoh, her hair parting to show more of her lovely form.
"Tell us what you seek, then drink to fullness."

Andoah waited for Eshatoh's answer, posed like a bronzed idol.

[Eshatoh]

As he approached, Eshatoh noted that the circle was comprised of notable members of the tribe and a large number of uncles and cousins who had already been through the ceremony. These were the men that had tried to adopt and offer him a home when the catastrophe had first struck. They represented all that was good in his life.

Solemnly, Eshatoh continued walking, not even pausing as the circle opened to allow him entry. Andoah, a particularly pretty girl, was kneeling in the center of the circle, holding a bowl of water, her eyes locked onto the boy entering the circle. Her eyes were the only ones that were open, but with the senses of a Chaktawe, the rest were far from blind even with their eyes closed.

Those kohl-lined black gems drilled Eshatoh’s eyes as the ritual words began to float through the air from Andoah’s lips. “Remember us always…”

How could he forget this god-forsaken sea of sand? It was life, and it was death. He wanted to leave it, but there was no way he could forget it.

“Remember what you protect and what you strive for…”

Protect? He didn’t protect much at all save the memory of his parents. Those memories he clung to and protected with every fiber of his soul. But that couldn’t be what the ceremony spoke of, could it? Strive for, on the other hand, was why he had undertaken this thing in the first place. He needed freedom from this waterless prison.

“By strength and dedication, we are made full. By strength and dedication, we are made blessed…”

The first saying he was familiar with. It was a mainstay of a Chaktawe child’s education. If one didn’t keep on strongly hunting food until he was victorious, how could he hope to eat? The second sentence, on the other hand, had the feeling of something passed down through the generations—perhaps from the gods themselves. He was strong, wasn’t he? Was he not dedicated? It might not be to the purpose the rest of the tribe had put their dedication, but he was dedicated, wasn’t he?

“Tell us what you think, then drink to fullness.” Andoah now stared at him more intensely than he felt he had ever been examined before. Through his fingers he felt a tension in the air unlike any other in his life. Instinctively, Eshatoh knew that his next words would shape the man he would become, whether he willed them to or not.

Should he lie or give them truth? Would they even let him proceed if they knew what was truly in his heart? He stood there paralyzed for at least five seconds, and then let out a ragged breath. The words came out as if torn from him. “I seek… water. I seek… escape… from the cruel land around us.”

He hung his head, ashamed but still resolute in his intentions. Then he looked up. The water was still held out for him, and Andoah was studying him, a slightly curious expression on her face. Hesitantly, he reached out and took the bowl and then tipped it back, draining the whole thing without wasting a drop.

Then he stood there, waiting. Was this all there was to the ceremony?

[Colombina]

Andoah's large black eyes slowly blinked. Her judgment or lack thereof was mute, lost in the ritual. She was a symbol, no longer an individual figure able to articulate opinion.

Her open hands reclaimed the now empty bowl. Eshatoh had her in sharp focus as she spoke.
"There is power in the journey."

She began to hum and outer voices joined her, blending together without distinction like smoke. Her face, lovely as the moon began to blur, the edges of Eshatoh's vision turning watery. His feet began to dance under him as his legs seemed to leak his bones. His last recollection was Andoah's face in a blue halo, and the grit of sand on his cheek.

~*~

Eshatoh's neck was pulsing hot pain, cramped from his awkward resting position. He blinked at the midday light.
Gone was the ritual, the tents, Andoah's face. The voracious desert encircled him in heat and silence. Above him the sky was painfully clear and a searing blue. His possessions had been stripped from him, but for a loincloth. In his hand was his weapon of choice.

When he sat up, Eshatoh would find that he did not recognize the horizon or the dunes. This was not where they last camped. The caravan trails to Ahnatep were nowhere to be seen.

The painful twist of muscles in his neck was not his only pain. His arm stung and a gash on his bicep was sticky with half dry blood.

This was the great coming of age? Stranded like a foolish traveller after meeting with bandits? The gods and guardians must have a cruel sense of humor under all the mysticism to be pleased with his pain.

[Eshatoh]

After drinking the water, everything went still. Andoah and the men in the circle stood as still as statues, watching, waiting for what they knew was to come. And then whatever potion was in the water hit his blood, and Eshatoh suddenly felt lightheaded. Against his will, his feet began dancing across the sand in strange circles, a stumbling crazy dance. Still the other participants in the ceremony stayed still, watching. The last thing Eshatoh remembered as he fell to the ground was Andoah’s solemn face, her eyes staring straight ahead.

***

When Eshatoh, awoke, he immediately wished that he hadn’t. A searing pain raced up his left arm from a gash that he had somehow gotten, and the muscles in his neck were more tangled Desert Spider’s weaving. To top it all off, the terrain he lay on looked completely unfamiliar, and no landmarks rose above the desert for as far as the eye could see. The only bright spot was the fact that they had at least left him his long hunting knife with which he might be able to kill game if worst came to worst.

Slowly, he sat up, wincing at the pain as he straightened out his neck. Thinking over the situation, he began slowly to laugh. He had undertaken this ceremony to escape the desert and it had put him in a situation where he was more in danger of dying from the desert than ever before. Someone had a keen sense of irony, and, instead of growing angry, Eshatoh chose instead just to laugh along with whatever god had seen fit to put him in this situation. The laughter had a hopeless note to it as it echoed maniacally across the desert vista, but still slightly under the influence of the drug in the water, Eshatoh didn’t care.

So he laughed and kept on laughing until a thought occurred to him. Not only was he in danger to the desert, but he was alone—more alone than he had ever been before. He didn’t stop to notice this because of how dangerous it was. No, he regarded it as an opportunity. Why wait until after the ceremony to leave the tribe when he could just go now and have everybody think him dead. It was a startling idea and one Eshatoh hadn’t considered until now. To be sure, the deception was distasteful, but the reward of freedom was surely worth the price.

Just like that, his mind was made up. He would leave the desert without ever saying goodbye to his tribe or completing the Searching. Which way had the stories said more fertile land were? Ah yes, to the north were those endless oases of green. But which way was north? Eshatoh shaded his eyes and looked toward the blistering sky. The sun was at its peak, so he couldn’t tell anything from it.

He would just have to wait. In the meantime, he looked for a spot of shade. He had no intention of wasting any more of his body’s waters in sweat to keep cool. In the desert, a man could die from that.

[Colombina]

Eshatoh walked over dunes, pursuing the scarce shade. The sand hissed as he disturbed it, there was no other sound. Three miles towards he knew not where, the sand relented to stonier earth. Red and gold stones lined a wide riverbed, dust had swallowed the line of the bed's coming and going. What remained was a stunted chunk of a once full stream.
That full stream was the land his ancestors knew. A fertile, rocky place that bore fruit and soaked up long spring rains. It was a land where water made a sound greater than a trickle.

A prickly acacia tree stood alone, casting lacy shadows on the parched stream bed. It was the only shade for miles. And just as luck would have it, it was already taken. A young human with dark hair to his shoulders and tawny skin was leaning against the short trunk. He was sleeping peacefully until Eshatoh arrived.

One of the young man's eyes opened to inspect what had stumbled upon him. With a sigh he closed it again. When Eshatoh failed to go away, the young man roused himself a little. He stretched his arms, flexed his feet.

"I don't have anything worth stealing, if that's what you're after," he groggily announced.

The young man looked around, searching for hidden shapes in the sand.
"Where's the rest of you? Your sort never travels alone."
He grinned, showing white teeth and pronounced canines.
"Unless you're on the run." The man leaned back against the tree, the grin livening his eyes, "Ruffle some feathers back at home?"

[Eshatoh]

Eshatoh trod across the endlessly unvarying landscape with the slow, groundeating walk that the Chaktawe used so well. With each step, the sand made an almost inaudible hiss as it settled into place, but aside from that there was no sound. In this virtual silence his thoughts had time to wander along the familiar trails worn through his mind. It was becoming an all too familar state.


He thought long on his mother and father, and what they would say about his present course. He thought about the gods of his people and whether they even meant enough to him to alter his course at all. It was all unhealthy-- the same rut he had followed for many years now, and he knew that there was very little real chance that he wouold actually decide to alter his course after all this time. It didn't matter; Eshatoh's mind continued to petulantly follow the same course.

Meanwhile, his feet charted a course completely of their own. He continued walking in a somewhat straight line towards who knew what, and then the scenery began to slowly, subtly change. The ground slowly changed from the burning hot snad into cracked and parched earth slightly cooler under his padded feet. And then the levelness of the ground changed, too. As the sand became dirt and rocks, the dunes also became sharper until they were along the lines of small rocky hills. Standing atop one of these was when he spotted the the thin shallow dip in the land off to his left.

Intrigued by the to him exotic scenery, Eshatoh was slowly pulled out of his reverie. Slowly, his desire for shade pulled his path to the left until he was standing over the shallow dip. In it was exactly what he was looking for: A scraggly acacia tree. Underneath sat a young man with his eyes closed-- apparently sleeping. None of this interested Eshatoh at the moment, though. What he did find intriguing was the dip in the land itself, for the instant he had seen it from up close he had known what it was: A dry streambed.

Something fairly normal for most people, for the desert-born Chaktawe the sight was positively riveting. This was where Makutsi's blessing had once run through the land, bringing life to all that it touched, but this was also a place from which the goddess had withdrawn her hand in the current days.

So enamoured with the scenery was Eshatoh that he stood motionless and slack-jawed as the man spoke to him, not even hearing the man's words or realizing he spoke. For a long moment the silence stretched after he finished speaking and then Eshatoh met the man's eyes as he turned to walk up the streambed. Unthinkingly he flashed a smile, lost in his own thoughts.

The details of his plan were beginning to fall together. First, he would follow this streambed for a while. Dimly he recalled somebody once telling him that water could sometimes still be found in them if one looked well enough. He probably should have payed more attention when people were talking back then, but it was too late now. After finding water --or not-- he would return to the tree and share the shade with the man. He probably should have tried to get the measure of that one and see how dangerous he was. He was probably very dangerous, Eshatoh decided, for his kind to be wandering the desert alone was extremely unusual. But then, shade was shade and not a gift to be taken lightly.

[Colombina]

As Eshatoh gaped at the rocky valley, the young man watched with a puzzled look. He suddenly gave a trebling whistle to get the Chaktawe's attention.

"Hey, you speak common?"

The man slid out from under the tree. He stretched his arms and twisted to crack his back. He squinted at the resolute face of Syna, then peered around the edges of the landscape. Satisfied no more followed the Chaktawe, he returned to his shade.

As Eshatoh began to forage for water, the stranger looked on curiously. The Chaktawe was likely the first human like soul he'd seen in a while, so everything the Chaktawe did drew his attention.

"What are you trying to do?" he asked, not really expecting much of a response from the solemn desert-dweller.
When Eshatoh moved out of sight, the man followed. The Chaktawe's habits were his latest diversion.
"Are you looking for water? I thought your sort didn't need much."
He chuckled, "I also thought your sort was supposed to be good at this."

So far, Eshatoh's search had been fruitless. It was frustrating to know something must be nourishing the scrub and trees but it was beyond his ken to find it.

[Eshatoh]

A shrill whistle shrieked into Eshatoh's ears. Biting his lip, he spun around to face the source of the sound. It wasn't even all that loud, but against the backdrop of the desert's silence, the whistle was deafening.

Standing there innocently, with a puzzled expression plastered across his face was the boy that Eshatoh had ignored earlier. "Hey, you speak common?" he asked. Dumbfounded, Eshatoh stood there speechless. With a single question this young man had destroyed the entire atmosphere of quiet and meditation that had been building around Eshatoh since he had woken up.

So he was left there saying dumbly, "Uhhh..." Mindlessly, he began to kick at a rock, halfheartedly searching for water. Now that his trance-like state had been broken, it occurred to him, that water probably wouldn't be necessary for the time it would take for him to leave the desert. In fact, the whole thing had probably been a subconscious effort to avoid conversation with the stranger. So he looked up and started to take a step back towards the young man but lost his courage before even putting his foot down and spun around, stumbling and almost falling in the process.

Instead of going back, he continued walking along the gully, haphazardly kicking at rocks, hoping that the man would either lose interest and leave, or fall through a random hole in the ground. He really didn't feel much like talking at the moment, not that he ever did, although there had been that one night with the Nuit. On this day, though, his desires were going to be left unmet.

This guy, it seemed, was a hardcore chatterer. "What are you trying to do? Are you looking for water? I thought your sort didn't need much. I also thought your sort was supposed to be good at this."

Through the first two questions, Eshatoh gritted his teeth and tried to put up with it, but the third was too much. At the best of times, he wasn't a people person, and he was supposed to be completely alone on the searching. The fact that he had given it up was irrelevant, so finally he turned around, his face shot through with blood. "Shut up, ok! Go away!" He turned away angrily and glared at the sky, which instantly reminded him of a piece of information he needed. Well there was no harm in asking. Apologetically, he turned back to the man and said, "You wouldn't happen to know which way is north, would you?"

[Colombina]

"Chatterer" didn't even begin to describe the stranger's love for sound, be it his voice or the world's. He hummed a bit of a song occasionally and tilted his ear towards the crackling and hissing sounds of wind and small animals moving through the ravine. To a reserved Chaktawe, his behavior was almost unnatural.

Eshatoh's outburst made the man's eye's widen, and mouth open a little. Quick as the temper came, it was gone and Eshatoh was plaintively asking for the way north.

The man grinned and commented, "You've got finesse, my young friend."
He didn't hold a grudge, though. The Chaktawe's behavior was entertaining, like watching a boy fumble through his first hunt.
"If you can get the knot out of your loincloth, I'll show you north and water too."
The man scratched his head and looked to the sky, slowly rotating.
"Aha!" he announced, set on a new direction.

Briskly, he began to lead the way.
"Going north, hm? North to the Redstones or north to Cyphrus? It has been a long while since I visited anywhere too far north. I like the desert, it is honest."

Not needing encouragement, the man continued.
"The cities, the regions of men, many of them are not as honest as here. Here, you see the peril as it comes, be it man or animal. True desert people, not those coddled city Eypharians, fight for food, water, homes, honest things. In the far north and the cities they fight for prestige, for pleasure, for gain."

The man was staring at something far away for a moment, perhaps memory.
"Excess can bring as much sorrow as decrease."
He broke his gaze to glance to Eshatoh, "Your people are good people. I like them."

In the distance was another dip in the land, guarded by a cluster of acacia trees. The man pointed and said.
"We will ask for water there."