‘He was the color of blood, not the springing blood of the heart but the blood that stirs under an old wound that never really healed. A terrible light poured from him like sweat, and his roar started landslides flowing into one another. His horns were as pale as scars.
For one moment the unicorn faced him, frozen as a wave about to break. Then the light of her horn went out, and she turned and fled. The Red Bull bellowed again, and leaped down after her.
The unicorn had never been afraid of anything. She was immortal, but she could be killed: by a harpy, by a dragon or a chimera, by a stray arrow loosed at a squirrel. But dragons could only kill her—they could never make her forget what she was, or themselves forget that even dead she would still be more beautiful than they. The Red Bull did not know her, and yet she could feel that it was herself he sought, and no white mare.
Fear blew her dark then, and she ran away, while the Bull’s raging ignorance filled the sky and spilled over into the valley.
The trees lunged at her, and she veered wildly among them; she who had slipped so softly through eternity without bumping into anything. Behind her they were breaking like glass in the rush of the Red Bull. He roared once again, and a great branch clubbed her on the shoulder so hard that she staggered and fell.
She was up immediately, but now roots humped under her feet as she ran, and others burrowed as busily as moles to cut across the path. Vines struck at her like strangling snakes, creepers wove webs between the trees, dead boughs crashed all around her. She fell a second time.
The Bull’s hoofs on the earth boomed through her bones, and she cried out. She must have found some way out of the trees, for she was running on the hard, bald plain that lay beyond the prosperous pasturelands of Hagsgate.
Now she had room to race, and a unicorn is only loping when she leaves the hunter kicking his burst and sinking horse. She moved with the speed of life, winking from one body to another or running down a sword; swifter than anything burdened with legs or wings.
Yet without looking back, she knew that the Red Bull was gaining on her, coming like the moon, the sullen, swollen hunter’s moon. She could feel the shock of the livid horns in her side, as though he had already struck.
Ripe, sharp cornstalks leaned together to make a hedge at her breast, but she trampled them down. Silver wheatfields turned cold and gummy when the Bull breathed on them; they dragged at her legs like snow. Still she ran, bleating and defeated, hearing the butterfly’s icy chiming: “They passed down all the roads long ago, and the Red Bull ran close behind them.” He had killed them all.
Suddenly the Bull was facing her, as though he had been lifted like a chess piece, swooped through the air, and set down again to bar her way. He did not charge immediately, and she did not run.
He had been huge when she first fled him, but in the pursuit he had grown so vast that she could not imagine all of him. Now he seemed to curve with the curve of the bloodshot sky, his legs like great whirlwinds, his head rolling like the northern lights. His nostrils wrinkled and rumbled as he searched for her, and the unicorn realized that the Red Bull was blind.’
From ‘The last unicorn’ by Peter S. Beagle
This project below was a book I titled ‘Talli’s Rebellion’ I have no idea when I wrote it. All I know is I wrote about sixty percent of it in one quick spurt.
Then throughout the years I’ve returned to it and added to each section. It’s never changed I’ve just randomly added detail.
It’s a wee bit messy because I’ve reorganized the beginning several times and it has several different versions. Not on how it’s written but on how it’s organized.
I still don’t know how to organize the beginning and it’ll take a lot more tinkering to figure out.
The beginning and middle of the book have gotten longer and longer over the years but it has no ending.
And there is no ending in sight. So I have no idea how long it will take me to ever finish it.
Talli’s Rebellion is another one of my favorites.
But it’s a strange book. It’s a fantasy. I think.
It’s set in a fictional world (I think it’s a fictional place. It might end up being a fictional time) that has several different Gods.
Each God has its own era. So like, some gods have skyscrapers in their land and other gods set their time to medieval times or some Victorian era so on and so forth.
The gods are cruel and often war with each other.
Then there is the silent god that a very primitive people worship. The silent god is unlike the other gods in that he is silent and the only evidence that he exists is that the other gods will never disturb his land. But that could simply be because the lands are undesirable.
The story centers around a primitive girl that gets cast out into the more modern world.
It was fun to write because I liked the main character. She’s impulsive at all the wrong times and passive at all the wrong times so that she continually gets herself into more and more trouble. The goal is that at some point she’ll change just enough to get it right in the right moment.
It’s a pretty dark and sad book so it can be tough to write at times as well. But I will someday finish it.
Below it’s a bit disjointed because the beginning is still so jumbled and it will be until I figure out how to properly organize it.
‘Quann was a general word that had many meanings. To the greater population the word Quann only described a mountain range that was rumored to be inhabited by a wild people.
Some took more interest in these wild mountain people and thought of the word Quann as a race. A breed of mysterious natives that had existed in the mountains since the beginning and never ventured out.
And there was another brand of people that saw the meaning to the word Quand in much simplier terms. So simple, they disregarded the people and the place the word decribed. There were merely irritating aspects of what the word Quann truly meant.
And those people had a very special motivation for viewing Quann as they did. For they were the only type of people that sought to travel to Quann.
To them the word Quann was the description of a barrier. A place no authority could follow. A sanctuary. And these were those that had use of a sanctuary. Those that had committed crimes they desperately did not wish-to-be punished for.
And such people were rare. As most had enough sense to not commit the crimes of which the punishment was so far worse than death that they need flee past the boarders of Quann.
And he was such a man that had stretched past the limits and offended a God.
…
Talli saw Naiya look to Saba. And she saw Saba’s fear reflected in Naiya, as though-Naiya was magnifying it. There was a sense in the air that something of terrible magnitude had occurred and the three girls stood frozen in that moment.
They stayed frozen even as the crowd started to move. As all exited their huts and made their way towards the center. But the girls stayed staring at each-other.
“It must-be a fire.” Said Naiya. “Do you think we’ll have to move?” She asked. Neither Talli nor Saba answered her.
Saba looked to the horizon as though searching for smoke. But somehow both Talli and Naiya knew it wasn’t what she was looking for.
Naiya was the first to wander forward. Talli followed her and Saba hung back a moment, like a rabbit catching wind of a predator and freezing every muscle as though to hide, only-venturing forward with the suggestibility of Talli’s look back. And the three girls ventured towards the backs of the crowd.
No girl was prepared for what they saw as their gaze through the backs of the crowd found its source. Nor was any man, woman or child, or boy too young to have gone on the earlier hunting party, or man too old to join the hunting party.
Whatever danger each of them had tried to imagine when they heard the horn, none had guessed correctly.
Even if they’d all-sensed it was something of a different gravity than they were used to facing. No mind had the capacity to let their imaginations wander that far into the unknown.
The threat had stepped out of another world. And he sat with his knees to the stone, the tendons on his neck stretching against his spine as his head hung so deep into his chest, it looked like he might’ve been unconscious.
He was instantly identifiable as something else. As something of too foreighn a nature to be from any clan within the confines of Quann. It were a few things that made this obvious.
Though none knew it consciously, it was his smell. On him, he had the smell of things that did not exist in the mountain regions. And it was his manner.
Even the way in which he slouched his knees into the stone, they could see the difference in him. That he was a man that was not one of them. That he had a desperation within him from the witnessing of horrors no man or woman of Quann could comprehend.
And the crowd felt the stirrings of hatred and fear to see something as him. Something that brought the burden of another land to them.
The hatred rolled in waves over the crowd, but it was the young boys who voiced it. They began to jeer and shout which fueled the rest of them into the use of the words from the old-language. The old language that was only used in profanity among the people of Quann.
The crowd pushed in on the three girls as it grew excited. Saba moved closer to Talli and Naiya moved closer to Saba in an effort to protect her. But Talli. Talli ducked through the jeering arms in a strange bout of aggression. She left Saba and Naiya behind, darted and even pushed her way through the crowd until she reached the edge.
The edge of the circle where he was in full view.
The first time she saw him, she was struck And even for the jeering spoken in old words around her, she knew they must be as awe struck. As thoroughly impressed and moved by what they saw.
There were a few things that were striking about the outsider that sat with his knees to the stone, how near death he looked, his black skin, far darker than both Naiya and her mother’s, the dried blood trailing down in drips on his white shirt from the deep cracks in his lips of a severe dehydration. Those were not the first things to notice.
Not what drew the eve.
It was his clothing that was most striking. Odd clothing. The people of the a clan wore goats wool embroidered with animal-skins that was tied on in many pieces. This outsider wore only a two pieces. One that covered his upper body and another that covered his lower. It was a dark charcoal color, similar to the dark rocks in the valley. But around his neck, he’d a sash-hanging loosely.
That sash around his neck was the first thing to notice. I It was what identified him as being from another world.
It was the color.
It was red.
A kind of vibrant orange to it, nearly like a red Tall had only ever seen in the low flames of a dying coal or in a sunrise made bloody from a distant fire.
It was a red of a vibrancy that could only exist in fleeting moments in nature. An impossible color that made the rest of the world look black and white.
Suddenly the emotions rolling through the crowd came to a halt. They stilled and quieted they dropped the arms they’d been using to gesture, they dropped all their words and they even dropped all their emotions.
For the eldest priest had immerged. The man that held the highest authority within the Ya clan.
A man whose skin-had begun to gather and fold in on itself in flaps of skin around his jaw and hallowed into the eyes.
No man or woman in the village could claim as much sagging skin as he. There were-only two within the clan that were old enough to guess how old he might be. To remember a time-when he’d a face all his own, a face that still had all its distinguishable features, before it’d-been-morphed by age and one could only guess what he might’ve looked like, or what type of man he might’ve been before he had become the village’s oldest and wisest Priest and their village’s highest authority, second only to the Silent God himself.
He eased the crowd, for all felt the effects of an ultimate knowledge arriving that could guard them against all evils.
The outsider seemed to come to alert at the sudden silence, like a hunted rabbit that noticed the wind had changed. His head lifted up, his eyes focused and swiveled at his surrounding, taking in the crowd that had formed around him, he managed to stretch his cracked lips into-smile and bowed his head. “It seems Ive caused a ruckus.”
The priest took his steps towards the man.
“The people have been gathered here for you. Tell them, in your own words, why have you come here?”
“I’ve-heard your God is good, if he would have me, I would pledge to him.”
The priest took another step forward and his shadow engulfed the outsider leaving no part of him the sun could reach. “I repeat, what it is you want? Why have you come here? Explain it-to them.”
”I come here only to beg. for my life or for death. Whichever you’d be willing to give.”
“You seek: to live among us?” Asked the Priest.
“I seek refuge. In life or in death. “
“Then you ask that we would kill you? Or do you want a chance to live?”
The man’s heavy breathing became apparent.
“Do you want to live?”
And the outsider was left with no more words but yes or no and he said yes. His yes sent a deeper silence over the crowd.
The priest nodded and tapped his walking stick to the ground. Tapping it to his own
thoughts as he gathered them and settled himself moving his shadow off the outsider
“In the seasons when I started training for my priesthood, when I was only a boy in my eighth summer, these mountains were flooded with those like you. Outsider’s seeking refuge. The number of them rivaled the numbers in our clan. Our traditions for dealing with them are the
same as they were then, the same as they have been long before I was born. And they came and fell to their knees and every one of them, as you did, asked for lives here. They accepted the trials required to join under the silent god. That was a thunderous summer, when the clouds stayed in the sky and kept the lands grey. By the fourth day it rained, and as a young priest in-training, it was I who helped to check the bodies.”
The priest paused and the crowd hung on his words. transported to those grey skies and the cracks of thunder and lightning the Priest described next. “It is forbidden that I tell you of the ones that survived, if they were any. But I can tell you of burning the bodies.” Everyone’s-minds was lost the crackle of the fire fading into smoke as it drifted into the air and created more-
clouds.
All besides Talli whom kept her eyes and her mind on that outsider’s red cloth.
“I can also tell you of the ones that didn’t die during the trial but had been too far spent to live. I tended to them. Fed them broth and dressed their wounds, but it was a deep infection that had already set in. They shivered even by the fire, they were delirious and incoherent, ready for death. It was quite a thing to see, men that had already suffered so long for the chance to live, ready to give up when they’d already succeeded and had to recover.”
The outsider kept his face to the ground, the skinny red sash around his neck touching the stone.
“I have never seen another flood. But it still happens now and then, like it did today An outsider wonders up our mountain and seeks refuge. The ones that found what they were seeking, found a life here are not recorded. But they are few. Your chances here are low, very: low young man.”
The outsider still had his nose to the ground and the words he uttered could barely be heard. “We have our stories of Quann. But none imagine good odds.”
The priest nodded and readjusted himself out of his memories and looked down to the outsider. “Our tradition in dealing with these matters are very simple. We leave it to the Silent God. If he would have you, then you are Quann without debate. But we would leave it in his hands and the trial would be harsh. One of great suffering. “
“I would take what trials need be. “
The Priest nodded again to himself. Letting the wind that swept die down so that his wards might linger. “You would be tied to the tree near the river and if it rains before your death, we would know God accepts you. But if it does not rain, you will be left, all the way through into the winter and next summer and even if a drought swallows the land your body will not be-checked until it rains.”
The outsider breathed heavy in his place as though his strength waned to such that it asked too much of his body to even stay bowed to the ground and he placed his hands to the stone to lessen the weight on his spine.
“No matter how near death you feel,” continued the Priest, “it may take you days yet to die. I’ve seen the centuries in the seconds. The crawl of time in their eyes as they waited to die. Suffering stretches time young man. That is the trial of the Silent God ”
The outsider coughed under too deep a breath.
“Death can bring about a lot of suffering, even for those not in the trials. The boars here are territorial and their tusks are sharp. They don’t often kill a man on their own. But the wounds are deep and infectious. We see no need to let them suffer, commonly we use the axe to send-them swiftly to the Silent God. We can offer you the same. A much swifter death, you need not take the trials.”
The outsider rolled his face up from the ground and to his Inees, bringing his head out of the Priest’s shadow into the sun, his head hanging as he wrestled with exhaustion. He looked up to the sky and surprised every spectator. He laughed. A chuckle from deep in his belly that grew in strength and volume until he coughed and choked on it.
He sputtered and then returned to the madness of laughing, and only fell silent when he dropped his head back down and fell back onto his hands. “Perhaps your God will be more willing to take my soul, if I take his trial. I only ask that you still bless me in death.”
The priest only nodded and the man was scooped up and taken away, dragged through the mountain desert towards the river where trees could be found.
The day passed slowly for Talli, hot and dry and though that wanderer was well out of her-sight, she saw him in her mind’s eye-as though he was laid before her, tied to-be-beaten by-that hot summer sun-and dry-summer month-and the slow-crawl of the day, which even she suffered under.
There wasn’t talk-of him, not-even silent whispers or chatter and if any-had-any-thoughts, they were kept well to themselves An opinion of him could not be formed, it was up to God. If it were to rain, he would be fully accepted and treated as equal with no thought or mention of his past life. If it didn’t rain and the man died, he would still be blessed and buried as a man of Quann with no mention of any past life.
And something in Talli rebelled to accept either. That red cloth was stark in her mind whether that man lived or died, it would be burned and forgotten.
Her father returned in the late afternoon with the other men and the older boys, from their hunting party. They returned dry, save for a few slow rabbits. It was yet another barren hunting trip that would mean the people of the Ya Clan would have little choice but to sacrifice one of-their beloved-goats. It-left her father in an already foul mood.
“It is-disrespectful Talli, to talk-of the stranger when he goes through the trials. Let the man face his death without whispering of him.”
Her father lied. He cared nothing for the respect of the outsider, he only had no interest. Talli was not one to ever argue with her father for she knew him too well. His black eyes were stern and focused upon his knife. He was hunched and his thick eyebrows were knitting together. His cheekbones were pointing out, a bit thinner than-usual, and his cheeks were puffing up and then hallowing out as he blew at the wood he was carving into a small flute.
Working on music, whether he played his instruments or crafted them, was how he took his entertainment and relaxation. After yet another dry hunting trip, he had likely spent the afternoon trek home only thinking of this moment. Of his time to work in his flute and as a-daughter she gave her father what was due. His time alone.
She tried to duck out silently, but he was also a kind man that was worried he’d been too dismissive of his daughter.
“You don’t want to take any lessons?” He asked her, keeping his eyes focused on the small sharp edge of his knife that was carefully shaving wood into dust.
“I want to collect berries before its dark.” She said. “For Sala.” She added.
“Hmm.” He said in response and then nodded, dropping his eye from his work and gave her a quick smile before turning back. He was relieved she didn’t want to stay and she too: smiled to herself, also relieved he didn’t want her to stay.
But she didn’t collect many berries. A few handfuls. Peering down the stream. It grew thicker just a short mile away, thick enough to support the growth of the trees. Those much bigger and much older than the sapplings that littered the creek.
That’s where the man was, with his red clothing. He was not far away. She squinted past the stream towards the collection of trees in the distance and imagined she could see the red in his cloth. Then she looked back to her berries that were a black with only slight hue of pink and when she smooshed them in her hands they were deep purple.
Nothing close to the red of that cloth.
She walked down the bank of the creek, back onto the stone pathways of the village following to its center where all the stone gathered into one massive slab that stretched into the deep overhang of a cave where the young apprentices to the priests were already starting the build-of a fire. And some of the wives had gathered to chat amongst themselves as they dragged flint knives between the skin and the muscle of those slow rabbits.
Naiya’s mother greeted Talli, offering her to join.
Naiya had received her darker skin-from her mother, but her bold personality from her father who wasn’t far off and was laughing to himself after he’d stuck a sharp rock where his brother meant to sit and was watching him lower down closer to it.
“We’ve lots of roots.” Said Naiya’s mother. “Quelcheck has been cultivating the purple variety. They are sweet. We will-boil them with the bones and roast them tomorrow. We could use your help Talli,”
Talli held out the same basket she’d made in the morning. “I want to give my berries.”
Yoa!” Screamed the brother as his butt finally found the rock after many kind gestures from Naiya’s father that he should take a seat, he’d run the most after the rabbits after all and needed his rest. His younger brother howled in laughter and Naiya’s mother glanced at her husband and looked at him the same way she often looked at Naiya and shook her head.
She whispered something to the older women next to her and they snickered to each other. “What did you say Talli?”
“I have berries.” She repeated.
“I see you have-berries child, most of them are on your hands and your face.”
The women laughed at the purple stains that covered Tali’s hand and the smear round her chin and forehead in her nervous touching of her face.
Naiya’s mother calmed her laughter when she noticed Talli angling from them and-
looking down in shame. “We only tease Talli, off with you go do what you like” And Naiya’s mother smiled after Talli as she scampered away.
All the girls gathered for Sala’s painting. Most of the married women had stayed with cooking the food, but a few of them were far too attached to Sala to miss her painting.
They all sat around Sala and plucked petals from their collection. Some of them gathered round her arms, others gathered in front of her, and some gathered to her back. They used the sticky amber sap of the younger trees. Dabbing the different colored petals with the sap and-applying them to Sala’s skin.
Each girl made her own pattern. The rest worked to braid the whole of the flowers into Sala’s hair.
And Faia and Rai stroked her face and exclaimed how pretty she was as they smeared berry juice on her lips, cheeks and eyes.
Each girl presented Sala with a gift she’d made herself. Some gave loaves, some gave woven baskets, some gave the tools they’d fashioned, and some gave the meat they’d flaked and dried.
All gave her good her good wishes and a teasing of what her husband might be like.
Naiya’s mother, Kotuo wrapped a long strand of Sala’s silvery hair around one of the blue buds her daughter had collected. ” A pretty girl like you we can be sure it won’t be like Rikiki’s misfortune in having to accept Rotuk.” Kotuo’s best friend was a woman named Torcan: who had only sons. She slapped Kotuo on the wrist.
“Kotuo.” She said clicking her tongue.
Kotuo giggled and shook her head. “That man would be hard to lay with. He has the
personality of a beadle.”
“A beadle? Where on earth do you get that?”
“Look at him, you will see it. It’s in the eyes. All black and hollow like a beadle that can only think of the dung it rolls up the mountain” Tarcan slapped Kotuo’s wrist again with enough force that it made a sound. Kotuo withdrew her wrist in a shriek of laughter. “He looks of one-too, doesn’t he?” Torcan reached for Koto’s wrist again but she withdrew it and then returned her hand to the blue flower in Sala’s hair that was starting to bud. “You can be sure Sala, you will find a man that is easy to lay with. Perhaps he will be like Talli’s father. Your mother was a beauty Talli. Pity such a man won’t remarry.”
Tarcan slapped Kotuo again but this time reached for the back of her head and Kotuo fell into stifled giggles.
Yet Talli turned her eyes down at the talk. Their talk irritated her and their inclusion of her in the talk irritated her even further. She wanted no part in conversation. She wanted her mind free to wander. Free to imagine how a red cloth might be made. The freedom to think of it while it still existed.
“Perhaps like that outsider.” The woman that had spoken was Kori, a women new to their clan, she’d come only last summer and married Naiya’s uncle. She had no children yet and her personality was far more bubbly than the women of the Ya clan were yet used to.
They tried to be delicate in their handling of her inappropriateness. “You best hush Kori. We are not meant speak of that.” Said Torcan, always the one willing to step up and be the correcting voice. She herself had from the N clan. A formidable clan that braved the higher altitudes of the mountain.
“I’ve never seen such dark skin.” continued Kori. Whom took no offense, or notice, of the corrections she was given-by the Ya women. “I thought he was a beauty. And you saw how-he laughed, what man so near death can laugh? If he is taken to the clan maybe he can take you Sala.”
“That is forbidden talk.” Said Torcan, her tone much harsher and much less forgiving.
Talli turned her eyes up to-Kori, she was a short olive skinned woman. With more meat-on her body than the woman of the Ya clan. Talli studied the woman closer than she ever had. Grateful for the expression of her thoughts. It seemed the other women did have their thoughts
on the man from outside of Quann, however forbidden, that they didn’t vaice.
Kori met Talli’s eye and smiled in that manner the Ya woman were also unaccustomed to, the way Naiya often smiled, with so much teeth. “See, Talli agrees with me.”
“I said that is forbidden talk and it’s quite enough now.”
The sky was orange by the time the flesh was being flaked off into bowls of grains that had-been boiled in bone broth and it was topped with marrow and spiey flavored roots. The women tended to the distribution of the bowls while the men passed out hot drinks of fermented berries.
Her father was among the men, he’d only just emerged from their hut, having spent all the hours of the afternoon crafting his flute and was joining Naiya’s father in pranks upon their hunting party.
She heard her father laughing as they succeeded in getting Rotuk’s oldest son, whom had only just to join the hunting parties that spring, to try a spicy plant Kotuo had been cultivating and he had hurled over coughing and sputtering it off his tongue.
Her father caught her eye and smiled. His smile was infectious when he was so happy and it made her forget her obsession for a moment.
But when he looked back to Rotuk’s son to slap him so hard on the back that he stumbled under it, he had left her to her thoughts, her obsession returned and the rebellion in her thumped against its cage.
After the feast, it was time to start the breaking of Sala’s beads.
First the woman washed the flowers from her in hot water that had been painstakingly collected and boiled over low coals throughout the day.
When she was washed and cleaned, she was wrapped in a one piece robe made entirely from the wool of white mother goats.
Sala had chosen the meadow and they carried their torches through the dark, down the same path the girls had walked in the morning and all fell silent as Sala walked up the rocks. The same area Naiya and Talli had played in.
A-girl’s breaking of the beads was painful. Most were moved to tears and it was done in the dark of the night to give them the privacy to cry and to mourn. Though it was over quickly, Sala-held out her wrist, she had chosen Saba to-be the breaker.
The poor young girl, whose hair was silver even in the half moonlight shook like a dried leaf in a stern autumn breeze as she-pulled the knife out.
She put the knife to her sister’s wrist and slid it between the twine. Pulling it upward-and gliding it, until the twine of the bracelet severed and the beads fell into her palm. The sob-escaped Saba as she dropped the beads into her sister hands.
Though it was not becoming to a-woman to cry so violently as to make noise, the clan all cried with it. Even the men turned their heads down and tilted the torches from their faces to hide the few tears that had escaped.
The pain of the breaking of the beads could be likened to the slaughter of a goat one had become particularly fond of. Each girl was given one bead for one summer. At their first summer the girls were merely allowed to select from a handful of pebbles, that one pebble was then fastened to their wrist with twine made from young bark.
A stone was added each summer. By their fourth summer, the girls were encouraged to carefully select their stones and taught how to polish them. How to engrave them and drill them.
The breaking of their beads, was to break them from their clan and ready their spirits to join a new clan. Many felt the loss of the beads that had been so carefully tied to their wrists all their lives like the loss of something living. Or like the loss of an appendage, so many had taken to-fiddling with it on their wrists, that losing the beads was as physical as it were emotional.
And-each girl was allowed to choose where she wished to drop her beads. As many-would guess, Sala had chosen the meadows. She stood at the edge of that high rock, the high part of the terrain where the beads could drop and roll into the meadow, perhaps never found again.-
Some young girls did try to find the beads of others and use ther in the bracelets of their own.
She stood on the ledge and let them all drop. She could keep not one.
They scraped against the rocks and rolled into the jagged abyss of the dark grass against a starry sky.
Saba shook-harder for sobs, for the sister she would lose in a couple moons and-perhaps never see again. But Sala did not move. If she cried no one knew.
All felt the pain of the loss.
All besides Talli.
Whose mind was uninterested and impatient. She tried a few times, to feel the proper sorrow, but her mind and emotions rebelled in what she was meant to feel and turned instead to what she wished to feel.
Her mind stayed instead on those flashes of imaginings that outsider’s cloth had inspired.
It stayed on her wild imaginations of what the outside world might be like and that curiosity fed the rebellion in her that had been lying dormant.
Jess lanai 