Patchwork Universe

Karl Groever · Posted: Wed May 26, 2004 12:25 am Post subject: Rends in the Fabric

Amidst the blinding sereness of desert, the oddest of figures was waiting. A City dweller, he seemed, but one gone nomad; mudaysh who spoke the tongue as well as any that were native.
Here, he had been sat nine days now, hunched, and staring levely into the dunes as they were swept this way and that by a breeze, gone stultifying.
Nine days, and in all that time, he had said nothing, save only to mutter hurried words, on occassion, to Lagasati Himself, the Fount of That Which is Known. The ageing headman, it had been, who oversaw the sacrifices nine days past; two horses, laid side down within man- hollowed declivity, their neck muscles torn, their life's blood drained. An audacious offering, indeed, and one which the City man had waited alongside all this time. Lagasti Himself had stayed beside him, also, whilst others of the Banirat had come and gone, conveying occasional message, and sometimes food on the pair's behalf.
And then, without warning, the City man had recieved the sign that he waited for.
'There,!' he called to the Fount Himself, scrambling to his feet, and raising three fingers towards the western horizon. And, there, indeed, the portent was. It emerged slowly at first; a nearly invisible flicker upon the horizon, sensed somehow more within the stomach than the eyes, and then it began to widen and to grow. The City man urged the others around him frantically backwards from the spur overlooking the horse sacrifices, and they began to hurry away.
Quickly, the flicker enfolded outwards, from a silvered core, became translucent as it spread, and seemed, within an eye's blink, to have eneveloped a substantial part of sky, desert, and sacrificial hollow. As this happened, the temperature sensibly dropped, a faint smell as of oil burning was carried on the breeze. As the Tsaythi began to halt in their running, and stoped to look, senses dazzled, at what had occurred behind them, they came to realise that the process itself appeared to have burnt itself out within a matter of moments. The 'enveloping' had proceeded increadibly quickly, and then stopped dead. Eyes could no longer fasten quite securely upon the patch of horizon 'overlaid' before them, for, although all looked much as it had done, for the nine days past, for, perhaps, time without counting - it seemed, almost imperceptibly, as if a film had been spread, quilt - like, over the landscape nestling beneath.
So unnerved had the spectators been by this that they did not at first notice the City man moving forward, once again, towards the edge of the outcrop. Once they did so, some shouted at him to come back away. He shook his head, shouted once 'Safe!', and was soon at the edge of the crag.
Here. he gave a grim smile, looked outward and downward into the declivity before him, and saw what he had hoped to see. Beneath him, contained now within the 'filmic' barrier, he could see the horse sacrifices- or what was left of them. For now, the two dead horses were mere bones; skeletons mostly buried in the yellow sand, one curiously dislocated, missing the skull. The City man shook his head, cursed under his breath, and beckoned Lagasti Himself over to join him. 'No harm will come...it's as we expected,' he insisted to his companion.
It took only two more hours of watching before the City man and the Fount were privileged to see the enveloping 'film' retreat as quickly as it had emerged, flowing back into itself, disappearing over the horzion. Those who accompanied them were once again awestruck at the remarkable sight. City man pointed out to Lagasti Himself the proof of what they seeking which lay again within the sacrifice hollow beneath their feet. The horses were whole again, blood thickly clotted about necks and nostrils, flies clustering about them in the sultry air.