Part of the confusion, ironically, had been their overwhelming interconnectedness. How to find one’s place in it all? Why was the ancient’s constant drive for credit and notoriety so all-consuming? Was their thirst for fame and distinction just a symptom of their addiction to profit? When a population is so large, the idea that one must seen by everyone else has new implications.
Predictably, Mr. Sunshine stood. That is, his hands and arms flew upward and dragged his body with them.
He said, ‘All your eyes on me gives me a sense of achievement and fulfillment. But if most of you were ignoring me, or calling me out and bringing me down, how hard would I push to perpetuate the previous positive attention? Look at me!’ he said. ‘How do you get that attention when there are millions of people and the world has become so interconnected?’
Allete tore her eyes from the lark and asked, ‘Mister, how were they… In what ways—you say there were so many of them. How could they all be so connected?’
The forum porter smiled and took his seat. ‘Allete, they had magic to get around and to communicate. And yes, if you’re wondering, they also sold this magic.’ The six laughed with him. A heavy shadow circled his grin. ‘They could be here, and on Peninnah, and Sekitsui, and Bu, and all be in touch with one another in matters of moments.’
‘Did that wrist ornament help them? Was the magic kept in there?’
Mr. Sunshine’s hand went to his mouth shadow and his lips briefly closed on one finger.
‘You know, you’re right in a way, yes,’ he said. ‘Time helped them connect across the globe, though it was much more than that. But as I was saying, what if that demand for attention—which is a misconstrued attempt to confirm our identity, when taken to such lengths—becomes the target of many people? How can so many people become the focus of so many other people? It’s impossible and fruitless. It’s one reason for the ruin of nations.’
He explained that the game made people establish their worth and existence through social failure and inferred incompetence—conditions that were vaguely defined in the collective virtual mind. So if they couldn’t get everyone’s attention what happened along with their blighted self-worth? Fragmentation, disillusioned direction, mistrust, and destroyed relationships.
So many communities, so many people, and they all lived as though in plastic tubes that extended into the sky. They waddled around in their individual tubes and bonked against each other awkwardly. These divisions became commonplace. To fit in to community, one was expected to keep one’s distance. Once distant enough, neighbors became mysterious. It’s easier to lie-cheat-steal with someone whose consequences are unfamiliar.
The two new Wawasens that can’t yet stand on their knees
A bold stage of flat shale, set city-center in Phoyara, lingered patiently for Helena and her disobedient family. Sebastian received his deferentectomy; his vasa deferentia were cauterized and decommissioned. He stood beside Helena, Temperance, Laila and Amoretta. The tight-lipped Ishi from Bu wrestled unsuccessfully with the twins. He coddled and cooed to subdue their disquiet. Before long, grace swept through those gathered over bloodshot soil and patchy grass as Vesta moved to the platform to console Amoretta.
‘Your mat’s a strong woman and your ottsa’s a strong man,’ Vesta whispered to the girl she took. ‘And for you the community will do everything we can.’ The two Ishis, one from Lurruna and one from Bu, stood like pleasure and pain in the heart of a martyr, identical babies on their breasts. The Ammit and all his amplitude sweat impressively, with the branding billets firmly in his hands. The larger rod was fashioned in the same way as the one Ravno had stolen.
The late morning sun poured unexpected warmth into the insulate skies of Wawasen. Ravno, on his knees beside Keba, looked at the black-rimmed glassless glasses that were now a vignette around Jasmin’s world; the glasses admittedly looked better on Jasmin than they had on Aron. But no smile, neither tight lipped nor open savvy, found it’s way onto Ravno’s face while he looked at Helena, then Temperance, then Helena again. All at once the family of five appeared incredibly excessive on the rock.
The Kawani’s claws clutched the scrolls as she stepped forth to begin the batsu omhaal. Her head listed to her first enough for her eyes to catch Mek’s steady gaze. Poised and tall, a spruce among ferns, Mek stood while many others around him remained vigilant on their knees. The Kawani took strength from him as she continued the ceremony, chanting, ‘Pada sariana dari kaku sankasha.’
Helena hardly heard the words, hard-hearted and prescribed, but when the noh inscribed her children, half of her heart died. She barely noticed the people’s foreheads, pressed against the ground. She held Temperance tight and trembled, her hope shattered deep inside.
A tern, ugly in its grey frayed feathers, shrieked high overhead, oddly inland. The sound, along with the wavering whooshes of the fire, fell over the people like midday rain. But rain did not drop on Lurruna, only sweat from the Ammit, as he carefully inspected his creambush rods for cleanliness, dripped to the ground beside the platform; and droplets of grief darkened the shale in front of Sebastian’s folded legs, and some oil escaped Jasmin Sanjukta’s vial when she opened it to pour the healing ointment on the twins’ first wounds.
Ravno stood and surveyed the family, now so small and restrained in a circle around the fire. He recalled the raw insides he had felt in the victim of the batsu omhaal in the northern headlands. He distinctly remembered his own feeble heart after the branding at the Bhavata House. These torments were tied up, like hemp knots, in the magnified creases of Helena’s face. Though her arms strongly held her twin daughters at her breasts, the rest of her body sat almost as Aron’s had on Vorra’s crown—lifeless. Ravno climbed the rock stage and sat down across from Helena and the twins. He locked eyes with her through the wavering heat of the embers. Her emotion transferred to his face and it tumbled off of his chin. He removed his capa and threw it in the fire. At first, his capa muffled the heat as a balm around the blaze. Then the hemp caught and flames ravaged the capa. Firelight flickered on the faces of Helena’s family and shone most remarkably on the first side of Ravno’s neck. No ini kayama.
Helena passed Laila to Sebastian and Amoretta to Temperance. At first Helena watched Ravno’s capa disintegrate in the flames. Then she turned her head up to question him with her empty eyes. Only then did she see his mark, no ini kayama. Her eyes, so recently barren, blazed up like novae. The twin stars in her universe of curls pulled Ravno toward her, like Mercury gaining on Venus around the sun. In their young and unstable solar system they collided in a fury.
‘Ravno…. How—why?’
‘I’m here with you, Helena.’
The Kawani had lingered, setting unease in the Ammit’s warm blood. When Ravno removed his violet capa, her trained eyes found the noh. She turned and fled to hide her shock. As the trio and witnesses dispersed, the waxing crescent began to rise behind a vaporous screen.
Ravno trembled in Helena’s arms at the might of the switch that had prepared him for this day. Though he considered it a significant accomplishment, Helena’s family still cowered, branded and morose around the fire.
As they held each other, Ravno said, ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t do more.’
Helena tightened her arms around her saudara’s shoulders. ‘You’ve done all you can alone, Ravno,’ she said. ‘Think of the possibilities now that we’re together.’
No longer only in the water
At the end of the first quarter, when the first side of the moon feathered almost imperceptibly, Ravno and Silas cruised along the Duat Canal and farther across the Teratas. They discussed the ecosystem of living beings—plants, animals, humans, minerals—on their way to the Bhavata House. Silas shared that he had lost his daughter when bulaniru’s new moon had hung as a ghost in the sky. She slipped through the spruce, as they say. His kashimat, the old woman, was helping him slowly build his confidence and transfer his focus to the tangible life around him.
 
; The two men left the boto at the end of the canal and walked the last length along the coast to the meeting place. Tetora joined them among the trees, though they were unaware of his presence. Tetora followed them; his body shifted and darted with tranquility, like Allete’s eyes on a lark. He watched, not for the first time, as the group gathered for yoga, their bodies like eulachon laid out on the block. Tetora could not see the moment when Ravno, upon entering the round redwood hut, suggested an individual approach on the matter of regulation, rather than prescribe a general fix.
‘Everyone is so different,’ Ravno said, ‘how can universal and unbending control be successful?’
While the Bhavata group met inside, Tetora considered exposing himself to those in the house. Would he and Ravno continue their bond in solidarity, even during the day? He wondered how Shisen would react to that union and how the Bhavata would react to Chichi’s obvious dissimilarity. He decided to stay in the trees, but his thoughts became the catalyst for a new interaction between Wawasens and the Botorang—a restoration that would happen in time.
Switch
Dayspring started with clouds that formed like the placenta of birthing blackfish, as it streams into the sea and billows about. The clouds accumulated into