 
# Switch

### Copyright 2014 by Trevor Leyenhorst

### Smashwords Edition License Notes

### This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted, and shared, provided it appears without alteration and the reader is not charged to access it.

# Contents

Map of Lurruna

Chapter One: Penemua

Chapter Two: Sagra

Chapter Three: Mandiri Kenaikan

Chapter Four: Bhula Susthatara

Chapter Five: Mati

Chapter Six: Penemua Kembali

Chapter Seven: Santulita

Glossary

About the Author

# Map of Lurruna

##  
To those who have yet to be born

please forgive us for raping your future

# 1/ penemua

## A switch on the boto with the mysterious black crows

### 'Flowers and bees and beautiful weeds

### Cinnamon cardamom celery sours

### The sitka spruce and magnolias too

### More than enough on this island of ours.'

As she sang her nymphic rhyme, Temperance floated in front of her mat on dandelion dust and the wings of fairies. In her hand hung a yellow flower, crushed and wilted, that never stopped swinging like kelp in a current.

'Mat, quick, we don't want to miss the boto.' Her grin wore a smudge from an earlier meal and her heart wore a grin that the sun couldn't steal. Helena strode quickly behind her laughing daughter and loved how the world looked through her eyes. No batsu omhaals or Groups of Eleven or struggling to understand what her maite was thinking, just moon shovels in the sky and cherry blossoms between her toes. She followed Temperance into the boto at the end of the dock on the Duat Canal.

Temperance went straight to the passenger paddles that were left along the sides of the boto. She loved helping the fore and aft grebets as they rowed between stops through the ocean water canals. Helena stayed close behind to see the paddle didn't slip from her daughter's hands into the weak, salty tide. Just then an older man with wavy crow-black hair hurried down the stone steps to the dock and into the bow. Close behind him a young man sped the steps two and three at a time with his hair crushed and shooting to the right like ocean spray. He hopped into the stern and stood facing forward as the navita called the grebets to push off.

Helena saw that it was Ravno the moment he and his ocean spray crumpled to the deck. It was like his brain stopped and his legs followed suit. She momentarily forgot about Temperance and her dabbling paddle and dashed through the other passengers to get to her saudara.

'Ravno what's happened?' She grabbed his arm and rolled him to his back. His eyes were briefly caught in the distance then focused on her curls. The concern slid off his face and his small smile turned into a laugh. His raised brows highlighted his forehead crease—like a hinge where the top of his head could be opened and shut again.

'Well it's good to see you Hel, did you just get on? Where's that little rascal?' He looked over her shoulder but saw only curious scrutiny from people he recognized but did not know. He saw an older woman with a thick capa on thin shoulders and small pupils on a thick nose, a younger woman pronounced with rushes of black hair round lips of silk, and two older men that sat uncomfortably. But the people were nothing—Helena was almost nothing. Ravno focused on the man across the boto with crows in his hair, the man facing aft.

He's looking at me with a certain dartle of light in his eyes, Ravno thought. He couldn't believe it. The accidental switch first happened the beginning of the quarter of the new moon of bulaniru—six days prior with a different man on the path to the garden.

Ravno rose to his feet. He laughed off Helena's fussing hands but loved her mothering heart.

'I'm fine, honest. Let's keep this thing moving.' He motioned to the grebets who had stopped rowing with the upset on board. They dipped their oars in and pulled the boto forward.

Temperance noticed the change only then, so engulfed was she in the swirling and splashing of the sea on her paddle. She looked up and saw Ravno. She yelped her delight and scuttled to his side, still clutching the oar possessively.

'Are you going to help me paddle Ra? I'm getting better did you see how fast we were going?'

'Temperance, don't shorten his short name,' Helena said.

'It's fine Hel,' Ravno said. 'You're a strong grebet, Temper, I bet they'll want you on their crew soon. Did you see Jamal? He's the crew navita in the port quarter. I worked with him in transport for a while,' he added in a whisper, 'I'll put in a good word for you.' He took her outstretched second hand in his, and placed his first hand on his own heart.

'Cahaya, Temperance,' he greeted through his smile.

'Haya, Ravno,' she whispered back.

Helena knelt beside her daughter. 'It's your other hand, truffle. Put down the paddle and place your first in his and your second on your heart, like this.' Ravno took Helena's first hand and they acknowledged each other, the proper Wawasen way.

'What's the matter Rav, are you feeling okay?'

'I'm fine, seriously. I just ran to get here. I knew the boto'd be leaving around now. I must've tripped or something.'

'But you collapsed, like you fainted.' Helena let go of his hand and took a seat beside Temperance. Ravno sat on the other side of his niece. He adjusted his purple capa around his shoulders and asked if she wanted to sit on his lap. Her wavy black hair shook 'no' while she continued humming her song of cinnamon cardamom celery sours and played with the paddle on the deck with her feet. Ravno glanced up to find the man across the boto looking at him. As their eyes met, the man's gaze fell upon the water and watched the cordgrass and foxglove on the opposite bank.

Ravno recounted: I was riding backwards with him for a bit, I could see myself standing there—or, here. Then he looked at something on his wrist and then watched me fall, and I watched with him. I could feel that cold pinch.... Ravno's hand lingered on the back of his neck. He felt the contours and heard the crinkle of hair under his fingers.

'Ravno, really, you should go to the Ishi straight away. If you get off with us on the Sunberry we'll go with you.'

'Helena, I'm feeling perfectly fine. I don't want to mess up your plans with little Temper. Where are you going?'

Temperance piped in, 'We're going exploring and look for new flowers.' The sun still couldn't sap her grin off and the poor dandelion in her hand was on its last leg.

'Looking for flowers, truffle. We were going to take the Indago Arm down to Notou and take a look around.' Helena put her hand on Temperance and gently rubbed her back. 'But we can easily go with you to visit Vesta and make sure everything is all right.'

Ravno once again looked at the man and tried to define his expression. Does he know what happened? Ravno wondered. He's been eyeing me, with his round face and black stubble, like he knows I was in his head.

The man's nose widened as he inhaled the scents of the seawater and cedar and sweat and sunshine. He looked carefully at Ravno and glanced briefly at the pregnant woman and child beside the boy. He looked back down at the archaic watch on his wrist and smiled, thinking to himself how intriguing the day's session would be, as it always was starting with a new group and getting lost in the past.

'Will you come with us, Ravno?

'All right Helena, I'll go to the Ishi but don't worry, I'll go myself. I'm heading to Pelajaran right now and you're going to Notou so I'll go on my way back.'

'Oh, Pelajaran? What subject?'

'I'm joining the historia forum like Surya suggested. She's one of the girls I work with at the garden.'

Helena looked up at him after she planted a kiss on Temperance. 'Oh, then you'll be in the same place as Aron, one of Sebastian's friends from the pottery.' Sebastian and Helena were maite and maitatu, which made Ravno Sebastian's jodoh-saudara, or love-brother. 'Aron used to help around the grounds of the Ishi in this area so he knows exactly how to get there. Will you go with him then, Ravno, please?'

Ravno drew in a short breath of air through his mouth and exhaled through his nose. He needed Helena to quit talking so he could think more about this boto, about this man, and how he saw through his eyes. He had seen that thing on the man's wrist, when the man had looked down at it, like a clamp on a weak tomato plant's stem.

'Okay sure, Hel. I'll find Aron at the forum and ask him where to go.'

'Aron's such a kind boy, so I hear from Sebastian. I think he'll be pleased to go with you the whole way to Vesta.'

'All right, good, I'll go with Aron to the Ishi and make sure I'm not dying.' Ravno laughed at Helena's chagrin and fondly put his hand on her arm. The boto pulled up to the stop where Duat Canal meets the Sunberry Trench, intersecting the geographical center of the island. 'Bye Temper, take care of your mom and the littlest one, and I hope you find some new flowers.'

'Thanks Ra, don't forget to help them row for the next part. The grebets love when we help them.' Ravno laughed again as Temperance's little, running feet took her onto the spruce planks and up the black basalt stones and over the grassy bank. Since they would be taking the next boto down the Indago Arm, Helena called after her to wait on the dock. Temperance floated back to her mother, all the while humming her rhyme and swinging her yellow flower like a maestro bringing the opera round in fantastic swells of passion.

## What had happened with the man on the path to the garden

The beginning of the quarter, six days prior, Ravno had been on his way to the garden. The violet folds of his capa had swayed and bounced along his back, vivid in mid-morning sunlight. Rays reached forward on dew-peppered paths. It was the first phase of bulaniru, third month into the year and his new position as gardener with Kar and the others who worked Lurruna Island's loamy soil at the base of Vorra Mound.

As he walked, Ravno's focus slid thirteen hundred meters up to the flats of Vorra Mound. He knew the highest part of the caldera, the last hundred meters of rock that stabbed the sky, stood beyond what he could see and dropped morning shadows on the mountain lake. He pictured Surya and Muna somewhere along the way up the slope with papyrus bundles strapped to a carrying stick between them. To help understand the entirety of the gardener's realm in his first week of training, Ravno joined the seven-hour trek and shouldered a papyrus bundle himself to bring up to dry for seed. He usually kept to flat ground in the garden bed, maintaining the compost, and delivering produce on a bicycle and trailer to the mercato in nearby Phoyara. His pace quickened as he thought of all the early potatoes, beets, mescluns, collards and late kale that needed to be cycled to town within the quarter.

Where the path split in a clearing around bare brush, Ravno noticed a man walking back toward the canal. The man wore a tense ugliness on his face and a red capa on his back; he wasted no time and hardly absorbed the sights he passed. He walked with the same hasty pace as Ravno. The man brushed his young beard, his breath audible across the clearing. Crows called in high branches and sunk swiftly to join the murder that picked through dirt off the path ahead. And suddenly, with a cold pinch deep at the top of his spine, Ravno was walking back to the canal with the sun on his face and Vorra Mound behind him. He kept on for some paces, brow scrunching as thought slowly turned to icy command. Ravno glanced back and saw a flurry of purple as the man stumbled and fell with arms lazily swooping for support. Then Ravno was face in the leaves and hands in the grass, the crows startled and cawing. A clump of dandelions lay flattened just under his naked belly; the flowers fought to spring back up. And he sprung up and looked back to the man and his red capa: The red and the man, and the sun on the man's hand and his thick brow and eyes squinting back at Ravno.

Ravno pushed his bottom lip up and into his teeth, and raised his thumb in the air and shook it. In this way he tried to persuade the young man that he was all right. Ravno waggled his convincing thumb at the man, urging the dark stubble and bright-red capa back toward the canal.

The man dropped his hand from his brow and, with a slight nod, resumed his march out of the clearing. The crows cut through strands of sun that cast down on Ravno's face as he stood staring until the trees consumed the red capa, and even after.

Ravno puzzled, I was walking, and then I was still walking but... not here.

He unintentionally mirrored the man's forehead with his own: Shaped with shock and alarm, layered with fear and confusion, laced with excitement but shrouded with a sting of shame.

He turned back to the garden, his thoughts reeling. Did the man give Ravno an example of what it was like to be walking the opposite way? But not walking that well, obviously.... Ravno grinned in the warming air that danced around his face. The purple capa fluttered through his brain. Did I switch us? Or did he, as some angry jest? The man was remarkable, with a definite presence, but Ravno was just a passer-by. Ravno wondered what had occurred and if the man was aware of it, too. Probably nothing happened, he realized. I fell, that's all. I've fallen before.

Presently, Ravno stood in the garden, first hand on the shovel and his second itching the back of his head. Kar stood with a questioning look on her face, one hand out and open, and a slight frown.

Ravno made the sign for 'sorry', the first sign he had learned. Through gestures he tried to explain to Kar that he had been walking, back there, and someone else had been too, and then he had fallen. He tried, unsuccessfully, to show the way his head had felt with the cold pinch. Kar watched his staccato retelling with some concern and asked, through signs, 'Do you have a headache now? I have some peppermint oil and you can take it easy today, or go home.'

Ravno flicked his calloused finger up to the sky and shook his head to make the sign for the second phrase he had learned, 'I don't understand'. Kar gestured putting oil on her fingers and rubbing her temples, then sighed and leaned back with a look of heavy relaxation, her two forefingers becoming like legs outstretched. She pointed at him with her brows raised questioningly.

'Oh, no, no, I....' He let go of the shovel and laughed. He shot both thumbs up in the air to assure Kar that he was indeed fit to work. As he wondered how he should start his day, Ravno pointed to the compost pile with one hand and to the bicycle with the other and turned his hands, shoulders and brows upward. Kar smiled and pointed to the compost pile.

'Thank you, take care of yourself.'

He grinned, missing the last part of her comment, and tugged the coarse shovel from the soil. Even as the hot organic smells escaped top pockets of dark compost and struck his senses, Ravno couldn't shake the colors, purple and red, that switched back and forth through his mind.

## The first historia forum, where Ravno meets Aron

After the boto left the center of the island, where Temperance and Helena disembarked, it cut south off the Sunberry Trench toward the Olive Fork Canal. It paused at Pelajaran to land a small group of other passengers with Ravno. He guessed this would happen and stuck behind them; at the moment he wanted to avoid stale conversation about which island he was born on or the Eleven's indiscretion. 'Oh you were born on Theo? Did you spend much time on Bu?' 'I've heard Midden is the lushest province, but you have to put up with the watchful Gara, Varchapet, and her little pet Chivors.' 'Oh he doesn't have much steam for all his romping around.' At which they'd all laugh good-heartedly. Ravno did notice the man with the tomato stem-clamp on his wrist walking with the group, and thought to catch up to discover whether the man was an accomplice to, or nescient of, his about-face in the boto.

But Ravno dawdled behind and inquired to himself whether the man actually had a similar experience when it happened. Could he see what I was seeing, when I was seeing through his eyes? He imagined how much more advanced the man must be, as he didn't faint or cause such a scene. Ravno was curious if he could get better—and what he would use it for. He wondered if the man read people's thoughts and whether he represented a secret force calling Ravno to action. Ravno was concerned that Kar wouldn't allow him to stop gardening so soon, if he had to join the covert organization. Or must he go about normally but with this secretive purpose?

These thoughts and more poured through his mind, streaming around tight bends and pooling in vagueness; they streamed around more canals and arms of his mind than stretched across Lurruna Island and among quicker mind-tides than lapped the island shores. Tiny shells of ideas grew and opened with gooey consequence and shattered along long lines of his mind-beach as the tide drew back. His tempest stilled only slightly when the Pelajaran forum porter stepped in the clearing and joined the circle of seats. Ravno, captain of the high seas, occupied one seat.

The porter stopped before his own seat, placed his second hand over his heart, and swept their faces with his eyes. The seven or so replied to his greeting in a scattered, 'Cahaya.'

'We are here to talk about historia. That's an enormous sea turtle of a topic to chase around the Pacific. One that hides its head sometimes and leaves you wondering if it's really a turtle at all or just some coral with sea cucumbers waving in the current.' The porter's stern, round face broke into a sunshiny smile. His stubble gathered in dark bunches that grooved from the shadows of his chin to his squinting eyes. 'The turtle will let you know with a powerful snap! what she truly is if you wrongly try to harvest her extremities, but of course historia isn't quite so obliging.' Others in the circle chuckled with him and settled in for the first in a series of forums meant to explore the passage of time until the present. Where the group would start in time was anyone's guess, soon to be revealed by the bubbly porter.

Ravno hardly chuckled at all as he focused on this turtle man; the same man indeed who had stood opposite him in the boto and who was possibly switching with each of them right then, jumping into their brains to see what they were thinking and pulling them all together in a chorus of discussion and exploration. What if the porter switched with someone else and Ravno switched with the porter at the same time, would Ravno see through the porter's eyes or through those through which the porter had switched?

Ravno shook his head and tried to focus as the porter finally introduced himself.

'...But please, call me Mr. Sunshine as others before you have done—Aldrik Minerva is too stiff for me. Now, let's consider the ancient peoples and how among the few things they gave us, besides life, were a lovely variety of seeds, for which we are admittedly eternally grateful, and the less-than-lovely mass of leftovers infecting our oceans, most intensely so just north of our dragon islands.' He motioned to a young man who wore a pair of curious, black, hollow spectacles over his eyes, and who sat across the circle from Ravno with his hand up.

'Yes, do you have a song or dance to share with the group?' Mr. Sunshine asked. The young man across the circle smiled with only his lips and tapped the black frames up with his pinky. Tap-tap.

'I'm hoping you can explain why things go missing sometimes and where they go and if it has always happened, like people say. Are the ancients somehow involved?' Tap-tap. Those who sat beside him looked quickly to Mr. Sunshine and hung on his every movement, the way the large apple of Mr. Sunshine's throat hung and moved on every word from the young man's mouth.

The porter's cheeks dropped as he opened his gaze. The stubbled grooves of his smile retreated. 'Yes, the casual disappearances are something of a knot in our time, aren't they? Hmm.' He breathed in discreetly. He swallowed and folded his large hands on his lap. 'Perhaps one to keep tied.' After a pause he said, 'But why not? We can start with that as we chase our turtle through the sea.' He recovered his grooves again and threw his hands in the air; he attempted to shake off the sudden feeling that shrouded him like Lurruna's thick, winter steam-fog as it slides into the forest. The silent questions of those in the forum crept into Mr. Sunshine's mind. Though it was the predominant thought among those in the circle, he knew better than to mention the Botorang. It was not the Wawasen way, of course, to say it outright. They probably also wondered why they didn't ever see the Botorang, or whether a purposeful but unreachable power lived in the ether. Mr. Sunshine wished they would relax—it was simply a factor of life. Maybe people in botos took what Wawasens made right from under their seats, or maybe not.

Mr. Sunshine shifted in his seat and addressed them with confidence, 'If you want to try understand the way of life before the Ada Era, with the ancient peoples hundreds of thousands of years ago, you need to try understand their beliefs in greater powers and supreme creatures.'

Ravno wondered what sort of creature sat before them today—what sort of creature he himself was becoming.

'It's tempting, when we don't understand something, to put a concept or a being we can relate to on the other side of it,' Mr. Sunshine said. 'Before the Ada Era there were all sorts of myths and fantastic stories trying to explain the things they didn't understand.'

'Don't we have that too, with our plays about how our islands were formed?' a woman in the circle asked.

'An important distinction we need to make, Aadi, is that even though our stories celebrate the milestones of our direct historia, we don't take ourselves too seriously. Like the bird that flies overhead and lays an egg that, upon hitting the surface of the water, erupts into the first volcano of our land and creates a fruitful island and archipelago thereupon. Do Wawasens believe this happened, with our plays depicting how fat the bird must've been to accommodate such an explosive egg?' Those sitting around the circle laughed knowingly with Mr. Sunshine as they saw the giant terns or other imagined birds in their minds, of plays and stories that had been around since the egg broke. 'Of course not, we know it has something to do with the earth's innards pouring up and making land, even though we don't understand the process completely.

'Whereas ancient peoples created similar stories as our bird, and sometimes much more fantastic, but held on to them as concrete and central truths,' Mr. Sunshine said. 'It's elemental to note this when discussing how they lived, when understanding their behavior. How they perceived themselves on this sphere hurtling through space and how they interacted with the land and water and other life. The ways they dealt with other people. The ways they saw beginnings and ends, how they viewed equality, how things were valued, and why they put so much time and effort into some things and didn't bother with other things.'

The thick black frames on the one young man's face leaned his body undecidedly forward, with a tap-tap, 'And what, can I ask, Mister, do the things they did or didn't do have to do with our casual disappearances, as you call them?'

Even Ravno laughed with the others and with Mr. Sunshine.

'Ha, yes, I was getting to that. Roundabout and eventual, if you're willing to stay with me, is how I'll grasp the slippery cucumbers or turtle legs, however you see them.' Mr. Sunshine cleared his throat and the stubble briefly crowded his dimples. 'We Wawasens could create an impossibly powerful Being that exists in some dimension we cannot see and who takes things, or makes things disappear, as it's due for being so powerful. Instead of just existing, like other creatures do, we could attempt to explain why and how we got here using this Being. We could even give it a name—The Just Cucumber, if you like—and on our own accord gather things like lupine, magnolia leaves, or young children and toss them down a volcano spout. We could dance and sing and try to appease this Being into a cordial relationship.'

At this point Mr. Sunshine stood because his animated hands no longer reached high enough with his body confined to a seated position.

'I could ask The Just Cucumber for advice on the next area of work I should try, about whether this person or that suits me as a maite or maitatu, or if I should stay todunasse. Or I could become servile and try everything to obtain its favor, as a sycophant. Many of the ancients wanted more than anything to join their great tutelary after they died—and that justified their entire existence! Almost as if the struggles of life on earth became too everyday and this gave them something to look forward to. They called it hope and wallowed in it.

'But the casual disappearances just happen, and perhaps someone or something is behind it all or perhaps not. It's unnecessary getting our capas all wrapped up around our necks worrying about it. Because there are enough flowers and bees and beautiful weeds for all of us aren't there?'

'There's even enough for The Just Cucumber to take.'

'Ha, that's right. If that's where things are going, let them go; on we live and die and there's still enough for those that come after us, and the species we live with, if we act accordingly. Truly, that's perhaps the most important part of all this in regard to how their fantastic stories shaped the way they interacted with the earth and all that was on it: Before the Ada Era most people thought they were on the top of a hierarchy of living things, as if other species could merely vanish to no grievous effect on humans, or even that the other species were created specifically for our benefit. This was of course because they had a special connection with The Just Cucumber who granted them the right to give and take or hoard as they pleased. Or, at the very least, they decided it didn't matter because they had something greater and more fulfilling to look to after death. So The Just Crow is a better description, as that's who we'll be spending our eternities with.'

Mr. Sunshine paused for a breath and looked at the faces of the men and women seated around him. Some of them looked at the horned lark that darted across the ground as it briefly scoured the bare, red earth at the center of the circle. The lark flit up and over to the other side of the clearing. Some of their eyes and focus went with the lark. Some watched their own hands, and how their fingers made different shapes with each other. The porter analyzed their faces. He observed Aron flicking his glasses with his pinky and noticed the boy who had collapsed on the deck of the boto. That boy's been watching me with impressive diligence, Mr. Sunshine thought. A boy with some insight, I'd guess. One I'll have to keep my eye on.

More discussion followed about the idea of a powerful being in the center of one's life and their comments strayed away from casual disappearances. The young man with the bobbing pinky and black frames speculated whether Mr. Sunshine knew more about things going missing, but he kept his thoughts to himself. Ravno fantasized about the incredible agency this porter led, and himself as the newest recruit and what he might be expected to do. Was there initiation? How many others were part of it? Ravno imagined Kar, with her observational prowess, running around in the shadows and reporting to the porter what she saw. Or maybe Mr. Sunshine reports to her, which means Mr. Sunshine must know sign. Of course he must, most everyone does. And Ravno's mind-stream splashed on and on, but slowed to a degree when he noticed a change of tone in the circle with the porter's voice.

'I feel like we've gotten ahead of ourselves. What I hoped to start out with today was the old concept of time. You know, they used to divide sections of time into miniscule moments, closely following those divisions throughout the day, often using a device like this.' The porter faced the palm of his first hand toward them and showed the band around his wrist. The seated circle leaned toward Mr. Sunshine as iron to a magnet. The band had its own circle that sat on the inside of his wrist. He slipped it off and handed it to the woman who sat beside him. She looped her twiny fingers in it and tugged gently; the band became more like an oval, then a circle, then an oval again. The sun jumped into a burnished part of the band face and jumped back out. The sliced half-moon, nearly first quarter, sat in the sky and watched. The woman passed along the piece of time.

The porter said, 'Many people had these devices integrated into their daily lives to tell the time. It differed greatly from our own time estimation by the sun and the moon. Time changes, as we all know. It's slow in pain, fast in pleasure, it's daunting in anticipation, and it's never the same from day to day. But the ancients regulated it and, as a result of misunderstanding the mechanism, obsessed over it and were ruled by it.'

Ravno slipped the strange band over his first hand to mimic how Mr. Sunshine had worn it. He couldn't determine the original color through the sea stains. The material reminded him of things he'd seen floating in on the Kuroshio Current among the coconuts, kukui nuts, and bicycle parts, ranging the many colors of vegetables, all shapes—usually small sizes—and with typically inscrutable functions. Some, like a round disc, were tossed around in play. Others, like this band, were worn for the fun of it, with its smoky green and faded pink cast on a barely discernible base, granite grey. As he lifted his arm, Ravno peered at the band in such a way that he suddenly reeled with the morning's boto scene in his mind. The image he saw before him, besides the lighter arm skin, smaller palm, and different background was, in his view, exactly what he saw just before he snapped back to his own body and crumpled to the cedar planks in the boto. He saw the small, circular face with twelve notches, carved evenly around its edge, and a slight raise in the center, molded as one piece to the crusty but still malleable band. Ravno knew now that he had switched for sure and shortly reveled in this little timepiece. It doesn't tell me time, he thought, but only that the switch was mine. Ravno gave it to the woman who sat beside him and it went from hand to hand and one man asked, 'Does this work, in the way that it used to?'

'No, its intended purpose has long since run out,' the porter said.

'Why do you wear it?'

'I guess the same reason that Aron wears glassless glasses,' Mr. Sunshine replied, gesturing toward the young man mid-flick. 'And as a reminder of who we are now and what we used to be. But if this time-telling wrist band were to work and I were to follow it, perhaps I'd tell you it's now time to end our discussion.' He laughed with them as they all stood. He gathered his watch as he released them.

'Next time I'll see you will be the day before the full moon, around this time, give-or-take. We'll talk about another old fashioned peculiar system called muh-nee.' The porter pronounced the word money in the ancient English way. It caused some of them to nod unknowingly. Muh-nee.

Ravno approached the man with the empty black frames worn around his eyes, who Mr. Sunshine had called Aron.

'Cahaya, I'm Ravno.'

Aron took his offered hand and returned the greeting, with his second hand on his heart.

'Cahaya, I'm Aron.'

They stood hand in hand while Aron waited for Ravno to explain why he introduced himself. Because both his hands were busy, Aron didn't flick his frames while he looked at this forum fellow. Aron observed his large sympathetic eyes composed within long eyebrows, Ravno's dusty facial hair along his gentle jawbone, thin pink lips bunched in thought, and a twilight sky-like capa worn around shoulders and open to a flat toned chest. And he noticed Ravno's hair that cascaded from above his one ear, gathered about the top of his head in a cosmic array.

'My... Saudari.'

Ravno meant Helena and his forehead furrowed for his next remark, 'Uh, her... My jodoh-saudara is Sebastian. You know him, right?'

'Yes I know ol' Seb all right. You've got an adorable niece, I have to say, and it's a pleasure to meet you, Ravno.'

With a grin Ravno released his hand. 'I know, Temperance has the biggest smile in Wawasen—and her sunset eyes and the way she tilts her head.' He looked at her in his inward eye and his head shook slightly.

'Call me Rav. Helena said you're familiar with the Ishi of this area? Could you remind me how to get to her practice?'

'Yes, of course. Yes, familiar....' Aron was plunked in the past, where he had worked long and fulfilling days with Vesta. He had to consciously direct his attention back to his new acquaintance.

'I was her grounds assistant a while back and I can take you there.' Aron studied him for a moment. Tap-tap. 'Are you feeling okay, Ravno?' he said. He added, 'Sorry, it's not my place to ask.'

'No, it's fine, I'm fine, I'm just making sure my mothering saudari is happy.'

'Sure. It must be nice to have one. How is she doing now, must be coming along? It's just back up the Olive and along the Lurruna Branch a ways, then a bit through the bush and we'll be there in no time,' Aron said. 'Haven't seen Vesta in quite awhile.'

## Aron and Ravno's visit to the Ishi and who they meet there

Aron did most of the talking as they rode the canals to the west side of Notou Mound. Pelajaran lay to the east of the mound, the Ishi's cluster to the west. Ravno tried to see through Aron's eyes and frames. But whether the thick chatter—or thicker than usual steam from the west—fogged his entry, he could not sail through. The switch was an intangible accident he couldn't access, some step up or passageway he couldn't see. Similar to those rare night clouds that drag across the darkness and conceal the full moon. You can still tell the moon is there, but you can't see the actual circle. It's impossible.

And what if people need me to do this? Ravno despaired, I can't I can't, not even when I try.

Consciously unsure of how to keep his new companion occupied along their journey, Ravno sporadically uttered things like, 'Weird about what the porter said, about the ancients longing for something after death....'

But Aron always took it in step and would say, 'Yes, never thought of that before.' Aron added his point that the cut-up-pieces of your body would have to find their way back to each other so you could walk around and you'd look awful and there was nothing great or fulfilling about that.

They crossed the sandy running track that surrounded the Ishi's cluster and made for the hut in the middle. The small hot springs pool and balance beams were deserted, as was the worn papyrus matting. Even so, Aron cleared his throat as they walked around the hut to the opening.

An alert older woman with stately posture and bright eyes stood beside a platform made of earth. Her tightly tied hair revealed bold-winged brows on dusky skin. The kind gentleness emanating from her face enveloped Ravno when her hand extended to greet Aron.

'Cahaya, Aron.' Her voice was a silkworm's blanket.

'Cahaya, Vesta. Please, this is Ravno, my forum fellow and new friend.'

They greeted and her second hand rested on the thin, almost translucent, beach-brown capa over her heart.

'How are you doing, Ravno?' she asked deliberately.

He couldn't hold her weighty gaze and glanced to the potted plants and herbs at the base of the platform: mint and kale, tomatillos, garlic, lavender and the sage that he mistook as stevia. But the surging warmth from her muscular hand brought him back and he said apologetically, 'Yeah I seem to be in a fainting phase and Helena is worried.'

'Helena is his saudari,' Aron added, and smiled without his teeth.

Ravno said, in defence, 'I hope you'll see that I'm all right and there's nothing wrong.'

She laughed, but gently, like the dancing smell of crushed lavender blossoms. One riverette of hair swayed around a shoulder, the rest waterfalled down her back.

'Open your mouth halfway and look at those tomatillos,' she said. 'See how the papyrus-like skin is peeling back on the riper ones.' Her second hand swept from her breast and guided his hand out of the embrace. She stepped forward and brought her first hand to rest with fingertips inside his lips. She pressed the two fingers firmly behind the bottom lip, against his gums, and took a full cycle of breath. He could feel the exhale through her nostrils curl around her arm and grace his neck.

Her hand retreated from his mouth and the other ducked inside his capa, then slid up his side to rest in the deepest crease under his first arm. His arm obeyed her movements and timidly lifted to allow her entrance.

'Ravno, how do you get around from place to place?'

He licked his lips and swallowed. 'I, uh, mainly walk or cycle—sometimes run. It depends what I'm doing. If I'm delivering vegetables then I'll take the trailer, and sometimes I'll take a bicycle to the beach depending how quickly I get up that morning, to swim, and if there's enough bicycles around, and if the way is flat. You can call me Rav.'

'Do you prefer it?' Her eyes looked up to his eyes, though her face stayed softly sloped, like a child's on the brink of confession.

'Um, no. Whatever you like. Temperance calls me Ra.' His scalp pushed back with his ears as he laughed a bit awkwardly. Her two fingers that had been in his mouth came up and pressed against the top of his neck, just under the jaw. While she positioned the carotid pulse her second hand lightly withdrew from his armpit and rested on his shoulder. Again, the direction of her eyes followed her lashes up to nudge his soul and she told him to think about loading the trailer and mounting the bicycle. To his relief she looked down. He could barely see her lips move, as if she whispered secrets of the ancient world to his heart. 'One one, two one, two two, three two.' Her count continued while Aron walked out of the hut and into the sun; he had heard soft steps on the sand of the track and had gone to investigate. Vesta let her hand fall to catch Ravno's first arm and slid her hand to his wrist to pull it toward her.

'I'm... Not sure if my pulse is quite regular right at the moment,' he said.

She acknowledged him by an upward twitch at the corners of her mouth and continued her primeval mutterings, 'three three, four three,' and planted two fingers on his skin while she supported his wrist underneath. She brought his arm to his side when she completed the count of his breath and blood flow.

'Where do you swim in the mornings?' she asked him.

'Usually the east beaches, by Latomas.'

'And you live in Phoyara?'

'No, I live in Mara, but I work the Vorra garden and bring vegetables to the city,' he said, 'if people need more than what they're already growing in the packs. We could bring you some here too, if you like.'

Vesta gleamed at her patient. 'Oh we have plenty here, and we get more from the gardens at Notou. I thank you for your generosity.'

She walked over to a row of shelves in a dark portion of the hut and picked up a hemp cuff and a deep-red, wooden dowel made from polished arbutus branch. Ravno glanced around to see Aron's silhouette talking to a woman outside the entrance.

Vesta returned with her tools. 'Ravno, take off your skirt and lie here, if you don't mind.' Her hand motioned over the solid, dirt platform. Once on his back, she deftly placed her strong hand inside his thigh and read his femoral pulse on both sides. She lifted his first leg, which held the stronger of his two pulses, and wrapped the cuff where the thick muscles thinned, near the top. She let the leg rest. Then Vesta looped the dowel inside the material and wound it with one hand, tightening the hemp cuff, while she kept the other hand on his skin just below the binding. Ravno concentrated on the frond thatches above and looked through the central porthole in the ceiling at the frilly clouds breezing across a deepening cerulean sky. He reasoned that it must be getting on in the day and wondered where Aron lived.

Vesta stopped winding and held her hand against his thigh. As she slowly unwound, she murmured to herself like a hummingbird in the trees.

'Thank you Ravno, now please run around the oval, slowly for two laps and quickly for one or two. Then return here.' She left the cuff and dowel on the platform so he understood she meant to re-read everything after he ran. He met Aron and the woman outside.

'I'm going for a quick run around, Aron, I'll be back.'

Aron looked from him to the woman and told her, 'Then I guess it's your turn to see Vesta.'

He broke into a trot after Ravno. 'Wait-up. I may as well come with you.'

They didn't speak for the first lap, as they ran and took in their surroundings. Aron, still in his capa and skirt, remembered his days of keeping the grounds. Ravno, in just his cloth, tried to keep a steady, slower pace and thought of when he might switch with someone next. He couldn't seem to switch with Aron and he frightened to think of switching with the Ishi, with her lashes and bold face and piercing sight. It would be too intense.

Ravno and Aron rounded the hut for a second time, passing by the Ishi and the other woman who talked by the entrance. The woman wore a string of kukui nuts around her neck and touched them from time to time, though her first hand still held Vesta's hand from their greeting.

'Okay Aron, I'm going to pick up the pace. You do what you want.' Ravno pulled ahead to start a few quicker laps.

'Don't wait for me. Next lap I'll wait for you to come around—if you can catch me!' Though short of breath he laughed fully, and watched Ravno pass the hot pool, the beams, and round the mats. Then Ravno disappeared behind the hut and Aron knew he'd have to push to keep ahead, once Ravno got around.

Ravno focused. He found the groove of his soles as they hit the track and felt his toes flick sand against his calves. His arms moved freely without his violet capa. As he passed the hut a third time he picked the other woman as his next host. It would be obvious to him; he'd be able to see Vesta right there in front of him, or her, rather, and he'd just continue to run around and maybe faint—but more from Vesta's warmth. He decided to wait until he was behind the hut in case he got a face full of sand. He ran harder, without realizing, as he thought about the woman and the Ishi, about the hut and the entrance, and about the kukui nuts and Vesta's radiant eyes. His naked feet pattered the weathered sand. His hair didn't move much, and neither did his eyes. He stared straight ahead and expected to see Vesta in front of him at any moment, the Ishi in all her sublimity. His breath almost drowned out the noise of his feet that pounded the track and created distinct depressions. He didn't notice Aron running his heart out near the hut.

And then it happened. The cold pinch at the top of his spine. His brow scrunched as thought slowly turned to icy command. Ecstatic, he felt the symbiosis between her body and his. He could see through her field of vision but control his own body. He kept running, as if his bones knew what to do on their own, and he kept seeing through her eyes.

But it wasn't her eyes.... How could he explain the black vignette around the scene at the Ishi's hut? Why could he see both women?

He began to lose it. Time lost all sense. The particles of sand at his feet each had a choice of where they wanted to land. Should they hit his calf first then ricochet out? Perhaps they'd rocket up and drift down, lulling the air around them to a gentle state of remaining as it was. As it was, Ravno had switched with Aron. Aron had been looking at the women at the entrance of the hut—Jasmin and Vesta, the kukuis around Jasmin's neck, their hands in an almost liquid embrace that became borderless.

Ravno forgot to lift his foot high enough to make the next stride. His toes caught a small rise in the track and his knee buckled upward, throwing his balance past the edge of recovery. The scene by the hut vanished through the black frames and he saw the sandy track as it approached his face. He turned the other cheek and let his jaw dig into the ground. His body's momentum tumbled harum-scarum through the space that fortunately held nobody else.

When Aron caught up to him he had brushed most of the sand from his skin and was stretching his quadriceps.

'You all right, Rav?' Aron came to a full stop and rested, hands on knees, his breathing halted and uneven.

'Let's crush this last part, race me there.' Ravno jumped ahead and sprinted toward the hut. Aron pursued him with all he had left but came up short at the hut entrance. Acutely aware of Jasmin Sanjukta, Aron tried to catch his breath.

Vesta rechecked all the points of Ravno's vital signs. His chest heaved in and out and her hands and fingers worked their way around. Jasmin Sanjukta, the woman with the kukui strand, walked back the way she had come. Aron jogged after her. Sand stuck to the damp skin on the backs of his legs. Her colorfully patch-worked capa with sleeve fittings was clasped by the neck and just above the belly. A thick black diamond in a silver bracket lay on the top of her forehead where cat-black hair showered down each side. The necklace, a hemp string that held thirteen kukui nuts in line, lay coarsely majestic across her colorful patches. She turned and talked briefly with Aron then continued into the bush. In his eyes she was the bucket of gold at the end of a patchy, pastel rainbow.

Aron and Ravno sat in the boto going east on the Sunberry, nearing the Duat Canal.

'Aron, thanks for showing me to the Ishi's. She's quite an impressive person,' Ravno said. 'I can't understand how efficient and graceful and strong she is, all at the same time.'

Aron watched the starboard bow grebet. The grebet was a small boy and new on the canals. The boy leaned forward, arms extended, swooping paddle dripping sea water, raised arms, dipped blade pulling water, pushing, boto mobile, dripping sweat in the evening sun. But of course Aron wasn't really watching the starboard bow grebet.

He said, 'Yes, she is beautiful.'

'Has she been there forever?' Ravno asked. 'I think I remember seeing her when I was younger. I had some sort of skin thing on my feet and the Ishi in Phoyara couldn't do a thing about it.'

'Who, Vesta? Yup, she's been there forever.'

And that other woman. All at once Ravno thought of her, her necklace and patches and all the rest. He felt uneasy at the top of his stomach and obsessed about her in his mind. He thought of the things he didn't say every time he passed her, how he had hardly looked at her. He took the moments their eyes had met from his memory and stretched them out into novels of time. He narrowed his eyes and looked down to his hands. What was he thinking? She had been only that other woman standing in Vesta's shadow and now suddenly—and suddenly he saw it. He didn't think anything of her but it was obvious Aron did. He had seen her through Aron's eyes and ever since had felt a draw, an urge, or more like a dream-dust flittering of his heart to her.

'Aron, who was that other woman back there, in the colorful capa?'

Aron looked directly at Ravno for the first time on their trip back toward Phoyara.

'Jasmin Sanjukta. We haven't known each other long, Ravno, but I have to tell you how wonderful she is. Whenever I see her, which is rarely, I just can't get over it. I want to be closer to her. Jasmin Sanjukta. Jasminsanjukta. It's like you gently bite her bottom lip when you say her name.' Tap-tap. He looked out over the water, apparently clutching her in the keepsake drawers of his heart. Tap-tap.

'And did you hear her talk?' Aron said. 'It almost makes me forget about the thick lava of Vesta's voice immediately. What? What's so funny?'

Ravno could hardly suppress his growing grin but his hair stayed sprayed and ocean-like.

'I'm sorry; you're just all over this Jasmin Sanjukta. Yes, her name is a delight to say, the way it makes your tongue run around.'

Aron tilted his face suspiciously. 'Well you best keep your distance my fair fellow because I found her first.' He smiled almost big enough for his teeth to peek through.

'Oh is she a prize to be won? I wasn't aware.... You'll have to check and see if she prizes you too, I'm afraid.' Ravno spoke as if he pretended seriousness, even though he truly believed in what he said.

Aron's eyebrows popped up. 'I'll have you know she invited me to come along to a thing she's going to in a couple days. The Bhavata, or something.' He laughed. 'Of course I was having difficulty focusing on the details—though I was eating up every word.' He flicked his frames.

The Sunberry boto came to rest at the intersection of Duat. The two men got out, along with three other passengers, and waited for a boto to take them north to the city. As they continued up the main south-north vein that led across Lurruna, the two chatted buoyantly. After Aron confessed his love for Jasmin Sanjukta, Ravno felt a stronger affection for him, for when weaknesses are undressed, relationships strengthen. They talked about the historia forum that day and their own theories on vacant canal botos gone missing or even, though infrequently, little children that slipped through the spruce, as they say. Ravno asked about Aron's employment: Ishi grounds assistant, boto builder, and materials artisan in the pottery. Aron told Ravno about the morning he found his glassless glasses on the north beach in the Kuroshio drifts—the same morning he first saw Jasmin Sanjukta and her kukuis.

When they were silent for a time Ravno realized that he couldn't switch with women at all. The red capa on the path to the garden, Mr. Sunshine on the boto, and Aron at the Ishi's. He tried to see through Jasmin and all he got was Aron. He could've switched with anyone in the boto that day but it was the porter—and no doubt about that. He began to feel even more inept in his emerging skills and useless in the face of such power. With time he would improve. Or maybe with more visits to Vesta, he thought without demur.

'Ravno.'

'Yeah, what's the breeze?'

Aron pinky-flicked his frames and shifted on the sugar pine bench. 'Jasmin did mention that you could come along to this Bhavata thing, if you're free.' And they settled the details.

## Ravno documents his curious adventures

Ravno decided to record the switches when he returned to his pack. His attempt to make progress started with recording progress. He found some papyrus rolled and tucked in the space where he slept, and a small aureate patinaed well of crushed-walnut-shell kurumi ink. He set out a list:

Cokha

Lehen—Capa kokkino capa morea

Bigar—Boto di saya ini dan Mister

Hirugar—Daen Ishi dan rimu kuro Aron sebaliknya

Which meant:

Switch

First—Red capa violet capa

Second—In the boto with Mister

Third—On the Ishi's oval through Aron's black frames

He set down the ink-stained halibut bone beside the well and stared at the list. He didn't want to make the record too obvious in case someone else found it. But even if they did, who could imagine he meant he could see what those other people saw?

Ravno worried that people might be afraid of him or put something or someone on the other side, like Mr. Sunshine had mentioned. They would see him as some sort of creature and ask him to leave the island, though Ravno doubted that outcome. He could go to another island, in that case. But would they banish him from the archipelago? Besides the batsu omhaals, Wawasens were magnanimous. Though, Ravno had only recently begun to learn about the ancient peoples—had they been even more forgiving?

## A meeting at the Bhavata House and the person Ravno sees there

A day into the first quarter of bulaniru Ravno met up with Aron on the Duat Canal. They planned to head north to the Teratas Canal, cut east across the island to the sea, and walk the difference to the Bhavata House. Though the house sat just north of the east-side beaches, which Ravno frequented on his maritime mornings, he decided to meet Aron and take the long way around. The early hours offered birds, grebets and maintenance people as company. Ravno ate his radicchio and eulachon, simmered in seaweed and dill, which he had prepared in his half-sleep before he had left.

The grebets' morning-fresh sprightliness whisked them along Teratas Canal. Despite the dramatic angle the sun imposed on the sitka spruce and western hemlocks, Aron characteristically maintained his level of foolery with a sporadic tap-tap as he posed all manner of ideas and questions to his new friend. Ravno worked on his morning meal with zeal and only now and again added an, 'uh-huh,' 'oh really?' or 'hmm, not sure.' One time he looked up, alarmed after he sensed that Aron had been scrutinizing him for a moment. He wondered if perhaps Aron knew about the switch at the oval, or more absurdly if he was switching with Ravno right at that moment. But Aron hadn't been scrutinizing or switching and broke his own trance as he tap-tapped his frames and chuckled softly.

'It's crazy how defensive we get when we spend good time making something and someone else asks what it's for,' Aron said, 'as in questioning it's effectiveness, you know? It hurts when the person proves your logic wrong. It's maddening and we start saying all sorts of things to protect our pride that we regret almost immediately.' Aron pictured in his mind a powerful wind taking Vesta's roof from her hut and exposing all the details inside. He scoffed tightly through his nose.

'Why do we do that, Rav? What do we achieve? Our pride is even worse off after the interaction is over. And it's unsaid but you both know it, if you have enough sense to look past your indignation.' Another scoop of the morning mash muffled Ravno's 'hmm' and the boto sliced on through the salty waters of the canal.

They hadn't left soon enough, or perhaps the grebets weren't as sprightly as they seemed, for they arrived after the group finished yoga outside the Bhavata House. Small pockets of people stood around papyrus matting that hadn't yet received it's blessing of morning sun. The aroma of cinnamon and sage sat calmly on Ravno's palate. Men and woman donned their capas and some retrieved skirts that had been left along the side of the house. One woman turned around as she re-clasped her asparagus green capa; Ravno stood facing his muse from the beach three months ago. Her sweat flattened the atmosphere of her hair and mixed with the cinnamon and sage. His mouth dropped open. Fortunately he had to swallow, and that closed it back up again. It's a nice morning for a swim, he thought.

'Cahaya, I'm Keba.' Her hand was hot.

'Cahaya, I'm Ravno. But call me Rav.'

She smiled at his large nervous eyes and warmly squeezed his hand.

'Call me K,' she said.

Ravno's blood fired under his skirt and he was frustrated with himself for it. This girl intrigued him. Her shoulders stood firm and confident and her eyes shone like sunflowers, but the warmth of her hand and the nearness of her body made his body react so quickly. To control his penis from becoming too alert, and to keep his face composed, he ended the hot embrace of their hands much sooner than he preferred.

Meanwhile, Aron found Jasmin Sanjukta standing by a tall woman in a tight-necked black capa and black cargo skirt. The woman's black hair parted distinctly and hung neatly and behaved on the one side, but ran up and over like midnight jungle weeds on the other. She held herself in a stern, militant way, despite the love in her eyes under thin black brows. Jasmin Sanjukta untwined the fingers of their hands so she could greet Aron.

'This is my maitatu, Dabi, who gives guidance and inspiration to the Bhavata. I'm so happy you came this morning, Aron.'

The taller woman, Dabi, stretched out her first hand. As Aron brought his hand forward, he noticed a tail-like scar that ran down from the part in her hair. Or was it a vein? It hung as a water trail on a raised paddle hangs, at the edge, when the droplet of sea it carried careens back to the canal. Dabi's water trail did not have a droplet, in spite of the light perspiration near her hairline, but ended abruptly just above her brow. Then her eye under the brow was the droplet that plunked into the ocean of woman that stood with her hand locked over his.

Did she say maitatu? Aron thought.

'Cahaya, Aron. It's a pleasure to have you here.'

'Cahaya, Dabi. Thanks for having me, or, us. Sorry, we missed yoga, I think we miscalculated the length of the Teratas from Duat.'

'It's no matter,' Dabi said. 'You're here now and you'll come earlier next time, if you like. Now, let's move to the theatre out front.'

The group, thirteen altogether, made their way from the north side of the house, in the little clearing where the mats lay, to the less treed beach side. Benches and stones were arranged as seats in a Wawasen circle. Two children leapt about in the salty ocean like fish in a net. As Dabi stood up and signed to the group, Ravno leaned over to Keba.

'K, can you tell me what she's saying?'

She looked at him in surprise but slid closer to quietly interpret what was being signed.

Dabi's hands moved solemnly. 'We're a small group but we have heart and we are connected to our Mat, the earth on which our feet are planted,' she signed. 'We are connected to each other. Each one of you here forms the collective reason why we gather.'

Both her hands came to rest briefly on her belly and she breathed deeply, in then out, her hands rising then falling. She patiently sought the eyes of every one of them, then resumed.

'If my father was a third child he would have been sterilized, along with his siblings and parents, and I would not have been born. And, thanks to the Eleven's coarse and bygone approach to human relations, if the father of one of you sitting here was the third child he would have been sterilized and you would not be here either. For that I would be incomplete and this island and this earth would be missing your jibana.'

Keba wasn't able to include everything of the monologue, unaccustomed to putting concepts from sign into spoken words. Though, she felt grateful for the concentration; it helped mask some of the heavy cramps of her cycle and her concern about Ravno's sign language illiteracy. She wondered where he had been all his life. But she did convey most of the points so Ravno understood why they gathered and had a more complete experience of this woman who stood in the circle. Dabi's arms and face and signing space transformed the commonplace. Her scar just sat there, a dangling string of kelp. Or was it a vein?

An abrupt southern breeze swept across the beach. The behaved part of Dabi's hair, which was leeward, held its ground, but her jungle weeds danced about atop her head.

Dabi continued, 'And worse, my saudari, even if your father was the first or second child, but had a third sibling, he would still have been sterilized. The Eleven, with their batsu omhaals and deferentectomies, extinguish the potential life held within all the male children. They disrespect the child's ability to be conscientious in their own family choices. Yes, we do agree with keeping a reasonable cap on the amount of people within our archipelago, in order to foster the greatest health among us all. We also believe that, through education, we can make these wise decisions—two kids has proven over the years to be sustainable.' Dabi looked around the circle in earnest. 'But it's an average: some have two, some three, some none. What if the second child happens to be twins, making it three? What if someone has children in a third or fourth relationship? How do we lay such absolute punishment on such a delicate matter that has such a hazy circumscription? We cannot so strictly define what a family will be until it is. It's insensitive, unpractical, inhumane, and barbaric—at least the way the Group of Eleven executes it.'

Ravno wondered if Dabi had any better ideas about how to control the amount of people that were born each year. He reflected that without Keba leaning with her fierce sage hair that sometimes brushed his ocean spray, and her hand like cinnamon that dusted his knee—when it pressed now and again to emphasize a point—he would have slipped away to find his own beach. It was still early and he might catch a raccoon scampering around an ocean rock with mussel breath and tide-soaked breeches and belly. Keba could join him. They could play the surf together.... He tried to concentrate on the words, not the bodies. But the way she mirrored a salient Dabi-point by stressing her hand upon his leg made him think she was more inclined to Dabi's philosophy than to his own. Keba reinforced this thought when she invited him to join her in three days to witness a batsu omhaal. She wanted him there so he could truly appreciate the Bhavata and its goals by viewing, first hand, the atrocities of public punishment. Ravno had viewed one ceremony long ago when he was just a snapper and too young to remember. He couldn't refuse another opportunity to connect with her so he said yes and they parted.

Aron chatted less on the ride home. Ravno looked at him.

'Jasmin and Dabi are together,' Aron said with a sulk when he sensed the inquiry.

'Oh. So she doesn't prize you after all. That is definitely unfortunate.'

Aron looked at Ravno with hurt in his eyes. 'You think this is funny?'

'I'm sorry, no, it's just that things seemed to be happening so quickly and you were just saying her name and biting her lip and so suddenly she's unattainable.' Ravno squished his lips into a thin line. 'That is quite unfortunate, I'm not kidding.' The crease in his forehead affirmed his sincerity, though the ocean spray mocked it. 'But, the way these things go, it's life at its best don't you think?'

Aron flicked his black frames almost constantly as the navita instructed the grebets to move away from this or that stop, west along Teratas and south down Duat Canal. Aron knew Ravno was right, tap-tap, that if each person gets exactly what he or she wants, life loses its appeal. The two young men sat in silence, each of their minds busy with the woman that could complete their jibana. Each man was stuck in a small pool of fear without the courage to mop it up and be done with it.

# 2/ sagra

## Ravno's experiences continue in the mercato

Some days before the next historia forum and bulaniru's full moon, in the late morning when the waxing gibbous wasn't yet visible floating through Wawasen's insulate skies, Ravno discovered he could in fact see through women's eyes too—a note he planned to document in his progress report. The halibut bone lay expectantly, walnut blood dried to its point.

He was among the tables in the Phoyara mercato, an open food market for those in the city that lacked supplies from their own pack gardens. A few people milled about and he noticed Kar conversing with a friend a few half-moon vegetable tables away. Ravno thought it strange she was not at the garden. As he set aside the red leaf amaranth and kolibri kohlrabi, which sat as proudly purple as his personal purple capa, Ravno gripped the wooden edge of the table with soil-stained hands and focused on Kar. He wasn't looking at Kar and her friend but his mind was. His eyes fixed on the flat meristems of the kohlrabi on the table; the shoots hunted upward like cherry tree branches. He looked as if he were considering where to place the next vegetables from the trailer. He almost lost control when the feeling of ice spread at the back of his head and covered what seemed to be a larger area at the top of his spine.

He wanted to watch himself instead—did he shiver or shake or look at all fake? Was there a bluish glaze on his eyes like a skin-shedding snake?

Ravno emerged from his momentary relapse and found the step up again. He mentally took that step and switched with Kar to see her companion past her signing hands. He could see her friend's face of concern and his hands of compassion.

Ravno tried to sign through her, from the few signs he knew. He tried to make her say, My name is Ravno, with the ME and the NAME and the R and the A, like a mimicking game.

Then Kar, and all her being, punched through Ravno, and all his thoughts, and he physically shook with all her emotion. He felt her anguish. He saw her hands and the way her eye gaze went this way and that, and he saw the characters of her narrative. But he didn't understand her signs when she angrily protested the decision to brand them, her sweet saudari's little children, and her jodoh-saudara and his big heart, crushed with his modest family into a statistical knot. Just one more deviant who couldn't follow the rules. Ravno also didn't comprehend as she yearned to protect her nephews and questioned the equity of crushing future, blameless lives. Kar envisioned the Ammit with the brand in his hand, behind the two older children—seven and not yet three—perhaps still crying from the sterilization process that very morning. The newborn, in his first weeks of life, dealt the brutal hand of justice through a tilt-shift lens. Ravno couldn't see the meaning in Kar's hands and face—he couldn't see her face at all, in truth—but he experienced it in her emotion. Not as though he read her thoughts, because then he would understand these things she said. He could only read her feelings as he looked through her eyes, tears misting, now flooding, now pouring down her face. He knew she would cry before she started, as her essence punched through his own. Ravno could hardly see the man in front of him, in front of her, through her lakes of despair.

Again he stood by the kolibri kohlrabi, which was still purple and reaching. His fingers and bloodless knuckles still clutched the table, his feet still firmly set in the earth. Ravno breathed out weightily. His sudden fatigue prevented him from looking up to see Kar from his own eyes as she slowly departed with her friend, his hand on her shoulder. Ravno took the mustard and radishes from the trailer and put them on the table.

Ravno brought the bicycle back toward Duat. He wove along the road between ash and elm, through the city centre where the great shale platform bides its time, and past the disfigured pacific red cedar. His ramshackle rims rode roughly past resident packs and carved snake trails into the dirt. A few people peppered the path and a feline darted into the underbrush. He towed his bare, black-dusted trailer and thought about the most recent experiment of stealing someone's sight. Or borrowing, even sharing, was more accurate. He had switched with her. Even with a man there, Ravno still connected with her not him. But he couldn't control her, he couldn't make the host do what he wanted her to. He could see what they see and feel what they feel but no way could his thoughts become actions become real.

Or maybe not yet, he told himself.

But now that he had progressed this far and could decide when the symbiosis began, but not necessarily when it ended, he wondered if he hadn't reached the pinnacle.

This is mine but can't be mine, Ravno distressed, it's a creature I can only partially control. It's beyond the heights of Vorra Mound, which leaves nothing.... He felt that he had made progress but he also wanted to stop or distract himself. He was afraid perhaps of failure, or of success.

After he returned the bicycle and trailer to the gardens at Vorra's threshold, Ravno found himself again at the footbridge to cross Duat Canal. He stopped at the worn, tung-coated spruce logs and looked back at the mountain, full of greens and birdcalls. How quickly you climb the mountain, but how much more quickly do you come on down, he thought.

Ravno was so thoroughly absorbed in his creature status that he almost overlooked a boto passing underneath before he crossed the bridge. The last ribbons of conversation lagged in the air with the salt and smell of algae that grew at the base of the canal's cordgrass. He just caught the ribbons, as if Temperance and her fairy-like energy boosted his grasping ear-hands, as they wrinkled and crinkled with this in a line, '...One moment there, the next moment gone. People don't take things....' The words melted with the paddles that dipped and pulled the boto, which cut the rising tide. What did it mean? People don't take things—for granted? People don't take things—from other people? Or simply, people don't take things?

As he looked forward over the bridge to Phoyara, Ravno noticed the moon, so nearly full the meniscus was disappearing. It began to rise left of Notou Mound in the southern distance. He realized it was late afternoon and he had a batsu omhaal to get to.

## Detailing the Wawasen year and population particulars

The frequency of branding ceremonies this year is unusual. There are eight thousand, five hundred and ninety seven people living in the Wawasen Archipelago. The number varies, waxing and waning like the moon amid Wawasen's insulate skies, but it means that approximately eleven people are born and seven people die each year. Careful arithmetic concludes the Wawasen population would expand over time. There are years, however, with few births and many deaths, many births and no deaths, no births and no deaths, and on and on.

And so, despite the few annual births all along the marvelous dragon islands of Wawasen, and the fewer still that transgress the Group of Eleven's population mandate of two children per family, the high frequency of brandings this year is unusual. In comparison, often there are no batsu omhaals at all the year through, and perhaps there's one or two every three years or so—just enough to keep the people in order and avoid any further perpetration of the mandate.

One technicality that impacts the frequency is that Wawasen people follow lunar months. Nine lunar months of around twenty-nine days each makes for one year of around two hundred and sixty days, give or take three days. Every seven years makes one thousand, eight hundred twenty days, corresponding to just under five years, Gregorian count. The solstice happens every six months, so every third solstice is every second year, Wawasen count. Therefore, the amount of people that are born and die every year differs in the Wawasen frame of reference compared to the ancient frame of reference, say, four hundred and ninety-nine thousand, five hundred and seventy-one years ago, Wawasen count.

Considering the high frequency of batsu omhaals this year, those responsible for carrying out the necessary duties have to travel more often from the island of Bu, the largest island in the archipelago. Unless those infringing the rules happen to live on Bu, for then the traveling trio has only to hop between botos along stretching canals to arrive in the hosting city. As the largest island, Bu has the largest population and therefore the most cases of hyperbolic families—at least when the mandate was put into place. Twenty-nine years after launching the decree, Bu fell to the bottom of all islands with least perpetrations per seven-year period. Rightfully so under the watchful eye of current Prime Minister Varchapet, who resides on Theo Island just south of Bu.

As the official designates of the Group of Eleven, the traveling trio makes the journey north from Bu in an inter-island boto. From Bu, the belly of the beast, they travel up the neck to the top of the spine, Sekitsui Island. From there, into the dragon's brain of Lurruna, where the steam flows as steadily as human-made poisons did of ancient times. They stop on Lurruna, not continuing to Peninnah, the jaws of the beast, and join the batsu omhaal in Phoyara City—the city east of Vorra Mound and full of promise, integrity, and boto builders.

## The batsu omhaal of Kar's saudari and the children

The branding trio from the island of Bu arrived in the morning. The Ishi, who wore a dove-grey capa on his shoulders, the Ammit, a heavy-boned bald man who bore his branding billets, and the Kawani, a scrawny but obstinate girl with a hurricane of papyrus scrolls and other batsu omhaal paraphernalia that spilled from her arms.

The sterilization of the three male children and their ottsa took place over the time the sun traveled a fist-distance farther from the horizon. The coca corba, given to the boys to endure the deferentectomy, reduced the pain on their necks from the brands. Though Kar's saudari, the mat of the family, had no surgery, the Ishi offered her some coca corba to help her through the burning process too. She gladly accepted the soupy substance, though not without resentment creased around her eyes.

Keba and Ravno joined the edge of a small group of onlookers in the center of a field on the southeast edge of Phoyara. The trio traditionally held batsu omhaals in the open, in or near the city of the offending party. Meadows, rocky outcrops, and sandy dunes were popular choices. This particular meadow on Lurruna lay downwind from several small steam vents east of the city. The mist kept the scene almost secluded, despite the site's openness, as the wind raised nary a finger. The spruce and cedar and pine hung their branches in sad repose, almost concealed by the steam.

Kar's saudari, Zus, stood in line beside her family with an unassuming fire at their backs. Beside her were her maite and their three sons. Those opposed to brandings and sterilization were gathered on their knees and faced, in their notion, the victims. Others just stood. The Group of Eleven's designates, those who performed the surgeries and branding, had the opinion that the rest of Wawasens were the victims and as such invited witnesses indiscriminately. Keba dropped to her knees beside a man that had been at the Bhavata House and Ravno followed her lead. Ravno's skirt almost brushed the grass blades of the ground, like sons straining to reconnect with their mothers. He felt unnatural on his knees, perceiving the world from a lower stance. Those who kneeled also kept their heads slightly acquiesced and Ravno was conscious of his brows and how bushy they must appear as he looked up past them.

The preparation of coca corba produced a salad-like smell that surrounded the meadow and rode around on sleeves of steam. Like feline's fleas or bee's pollen the scent traveled and trailed the island's breath and touched Ravno's nostrils. He widened them and breathed sharply inwards as he tried to identify the source.

'It's for the pain, that soup they give them,' Keba said. Her quiet voice joined the smell on misty coattails. 'Though it does nothing for the shame, or the feeling of inadequacy, or self-loathing....'

He hardly caught the last part of the final word as it came out of her lips; the word fractured and became inaudible at the end. Was it the authoritative way she pronounced each word, bathed in pathos, so descriptive and accurate in its own right, which made his throat clench below the base of his tongue? Or was it her lips, apart from everything else, and how they moved and touched each other? Either way, he tried to gently clear his throat without disturbing the still atmosphere. Still, notwithstanding the eager flames, flowing steam sleeves, and nervous victim's feet on trampled grass. Still, notwithstanding the small pulse between his legs as he imagined the lucky grass that tickled the insides of her thighs.

The Ammit placed the large and small creambush rods into the flames, flames that crawled eagerly at the hard wood but could not ignite it. Both nohs did, however, glow purple-red by the time they arranged everyone and the scrawny Kawani stated their purpose.

'We are here together, as a community that lives in past, present and future, to solidify the commitment of this family in keeping with the Wawasen way of life,' the Kawani said.

The Kawani kept her chin pointed over her scroll. She didn't read from the characters embedded on the papyrus, every word also carefully embedded in her brain. Yet she still kept the scroll level with her breast, as a warrior holds a two-handed shield, and her crow's-foot fingers gripped scroll ends impressively, if not obsessively.

'Please observe the symbol inscribed to each participant's person,' she recited in imperious Wawasen. 'It not only denotes infertility, as the mother still fertile also bares it conspicuously, but it also acts as a summons to those not iniquitous to remember the future and how every being depends on every other being, both now and forever.'

At this point the Ammit placed his second hand on the mat's shoulder and brought her to her knees. He took the largest branding billet in his first hand, from the prancing fire behind the line of perpetrators. Zus's eyes were directed at her saudari, though she didn't look directly at her. Zus looked at the space between and the space that came after her. That is, she looked inside herself and felt the blood flee from her heart. It ran and looped around and around until each capillary of her face lit with the life substance and her neck throbbed with the beat of it. Her knees pocked the wet earth like the knees of some of those who faced her. Her knees didn't tremble like she had expected, but were lifeless and felt separate. She completely forgot about her hands, which hung like wilted plants in need of water. The Ammit's hand, however, burned hot against her shoulder.

Ravno quickly followed her gaze to where it rested on Kar. Kar knelt opposite and as close to the line of victims as the ceremony allowed, her face flat and controlled and emotionless save her chin, which shivered in the mist.

The Ammit pressed the glowing symbol against Zus's neck and the skin cells screamed and spat and the small hairs burnt and joined the increasingly stuffy air that lazed around the meadow. The Kawani, stern but slim in stature, leaned close to the fresh wound and pronounced, 'No ini kayama!'

A fair mark! Zus dropped her eyes to the ground. She stayed thus even as her maite, her crime-partner, her lover was branded in turn.

'No ini kayama.'

Keba instinctively took Ravno's hand as the Ammit placed his own, old hand on the shoulder of the oldest boy. The boy squirmed but his whimper dissolved in his stomach as he came to his knees. The wet air made the smaller creambush rod cry with sizzles and pops as it came from the fire. It cried until it marred the young skin of the three-year-old, who knelt as tall as he could and held his older saudara's hand tightly. The Ishi from Bu, his torso almost invisible behind his grey capa in the thick air, held the newborn son, unswaddled and drunk on coca corba. The only part of batsu omhaals that troubled the Ishi was the incrimination of such a young creature unable to hold himself erect on his own knees. Even so, the Ishi held the infant tightly and positioned him for the Ammit to firmly brand in the appropriate place. Though others were already crying, branded and unbranded alike, the baby was the first to be heard above swimming streams of air. This prompted the Kawani, after a final inspection, to trumpet, even more loudly, 'No ini kayama!'

At this, the fifth pronouncement, those witnesses on their knees crumpled their bodies forward, foreheads falling against folded arms, in support and compassion for the branded. Those who were ambivalent about the branding simply stood and squinted through the fog. Onlookers were curious about the new wounds and how much pain they caused, though some turned on toes to head back to the city, the main attraction over. Those who approved the Eleven's approach stood proudly and solemnly, grateful of the designates and of the Eleven's unerring wisdom. They stared disapprovingly at the ottsa.

Feet stacked with colorful plastic bangles crossed through Ravno's upside-down field of vision. His forehead lay against his arms; his arms pressed into the grass. After a moment he slowly ventured up out of his position. He saw Jasmin Sanjukta dab kukui nut oil from an archaic glass phial on the wounds of the branded family who sat in a circle around the fire, gazes lost in pulsing embers. The Eleven's trio had disappeared into the steam and were nowhere to be seen. Kar sat beside her saudari in the circle, their intertwined hands clutched together vehemently.

Ravno rose to his feet as Jasmin Sanjukta finished tending to the youngest son. The newborn lay in his ottsa's arms, his dewy face finally quiet after a feed from the breast of Zus. Keba fell into Ravno's embrace and they stood encircled in fresh bouts of steam. The coca corba salad smell washed away and left only a wet-burnt aroma, like day-old dark incense. Though he held her with caring arms, Ravno's mind wondered what all the dramatic excitement was about. Didn't this family knowingly have too many children? They could have been voluntarily sterilized after the first or second—or even before—like so many others, and avoided their children's branding. It was their own undoing, a nonsensical act followed by a sensible one. The batsu omhaal re-taught communal responsibility. Didn't the Kawani make it clear? 'Nu motsu gia panta, kaku vie bezona kaku vie.' Every being depends on every other being, both now and forever. Only the family couldn't see it—as if their eyes were sewn shut.

Jasmin Sanjukta removed the line of kukuis from her neck and carefully separated one nut from the strand. She lit the oil of it on fire and placed it in the mat's hand. The smoke poured about the mat's face before she handed it to her saudari, Kar, who tenderly helped the second boy hold it and pass it to the eldest. Zus now held the infant while her maite held the burning nut. The nut came down to a soft glow and, before extinguishing it, the ottsa handed it back to Jasmin Sanjukta who tossed it into the fire. Her necklace now held twelve kukui's but would be reduced to eleven by the last quarter of the same moon.

'Isn't it absurd?' Keba said. 'That this is actually happening today, in our time?' Keba and Ravno were walking west to Mara and the setting sun with a southward detour past the lavvy. Keba looked imploringly at her friend's large, sympathetic eyes. Her lips had lost their color, intensifying the green and yellow and black that outlined her shrunken pupils. It wasn't hatred Ravno saw in her eyes but a resilience or hardening, or the absence of something.

'I guess it seems odd using a hot brand on such young kids.'

'Odd? Rav, those children, all three of them, were sterilized before we got there, along with their ottsa, and then branded in public with their mat, poor woman. I can't think of a worse thing we could do in this situation besides executing them. Even that would be more desirable for the victims, at least.'

'I wouldn't like to be executed,' Ravno said. He watched the dark soil of the path pass under his feet; a tree root here, or bedewed fern there, reached in from a darkening forest. The slow-filling moon rose high in the sky. He sniffed in, brows partially gathered.

'Maybe it's best if nobody comes?' he said. 'Then it wouldn't be public and they could—'

'Ravno we're not there to poke and pry but sing if we need to, or cry. Those are people. You and I could easily be the ones kneeling with the Ammit's calluses grinding our shoulders.' She talked faster with every word. 'I've heard he clenches his hand just before bringing the noh against their neck, like he gets some sick enjoyment out of crushing them.' She lashed the words out as if she directly reprimanded the Ammit himself.

Ravno sensed the need to be ever-present in the discussion and find what he truly felt about her comments, and what he felt about the guilt that creeped through some layer within. But he obsessed over the phrase, 'If it were you and I,' and procreating with her. Before now he had never planned on having any children. He had previously considered committing to somebody, content as a pair, but suddenly the thought of her nursing their child at her breast overtook his senses. Though in retrospect, when he mulled the scene over, as he lay on his back in the cool of the night, he wasn't sure if it was just the making of the children that he found overwhelming. The thought of tearing open her green capa and bringing their nakedness together in a frenzy of hazy reds and orangey pinks....

'And did you see the second boy on his knees, taking the brand bravely like his mat?'

'I thought Zus looked very sad,' Ravno said without much conviction, though he said what he felt.

'Why are you so apathetic about it, like you couldn't care less?' She stopped and held him there with her eyes.

'I guess, I don't know.... It's the first batsu omhaal I've been to and I don't know what to think. There's just so much to think about.'

They climbed to the top of the hill where the lavvy sat between rows of magnolia trees that overlooked an aphotic ocean. Ravno gathered his skirt around his waist and faced west. He squatted just past the point where the trench was last filled and untied the cloth that looped between his legs. Keba found another trench and similarly squatted. She could dimly see Vorra Mound's needle stitching the sky's eye shut.

Ravno called from his trench, 'K, I forgot to grab a petal and can't reach any, can you pass me one when you're finished?'

'Why don't you just rinse instead?'

'I prefer the magnolia. I'm old fashioned that way.'

After she replaced the magnolia petal and lili moss that sat in her cloth, to catch her blood, Keba brought a petal over to Ravno who still squatted with his skirt-gathered.

'Still at it?' she asked with a surface level grin on her cheeks.

'I've always taken longer and it gives me time to recalibrate, anyway. Thank you.' He took the magnolia petal from her. Keba went back to cover her waste with dirt to expose the newest part of the trench for the next patron. As she walked past the largest magnolia she saw Notou Mound, backlit by the moon. Set on the hill, the ocean breeze and sweet scent of the trees made the lavvy's aroma more than bearable, though not necessarily pleasant.

When Ravno finished, they both walked to the base of the hill and rinsed their hands in a dark creek that ran its last legs to a nearby canal. They kneaded fistfuls of sand between hands to clean the soil from their fingernails and palms. Keba walked Ravno to his pack in Mara then looped back up to where her and her saudara lived in Phoyara City. Most of those in the communal building were asleep or near it, her own saudara's frame rose and fell with the rhythms of slumber. The moon's branded face was visible through the open wall and tree branches, and wispy clouds flowed in front of the stars. She sighed out heavily as she lay on her bunk; concern lay in her heart. Each face of the family, with their cauterized tubes of life and marked necks, was branded in her mind. Ravno's face, with his different views, gentle eyes and soft blackened ears, was branded in her heart. How to quench the Ammit's fire? How to dodge Amorino's arrows?

'Dream sweetly, my saudara.' Her mind drifted from the day's events and sought vainly for her parents and their third child, wherever they might be.

## The second historia forum and the ancient system of muh-nee

All was well on Lurruna, depending who you asked. A certain family of five huddled in an exhausted, dusty pack in Phoyara City—all was not well for them. A young woman's saudara shook off sweet sleep later than he expected, but to no great consequence—all was perfectly fine for him. And seven others, fine or not fine, carried on with their day as the day preceding the full moon carried on with or without them. Once those seven settled at Pelajaran, Mr. Sunshine launched into what he called the Issue of Payment for Work and the ancient System of Money.

'The ancient values were strange indeed,' Mr. Sunshine began. 'Muh-nee topped the list by many accounts as the highest form of value. They invented muh-nee to keep, compare, or trade power. They made muh-nee out of papyrus and suddenly that papyrus, which only recently kept a list, could buy or sell a country.' The porter knew he had already lost the interest of some around the circle. He tried to redirect the important discussion around tangible concepts.

'Instead of sharing knowledge they tended to sell knowledge. So depending on the motivations of who bought what, "knowledge as commodity" ruled over "knowledge for community." Because pricing was based on time spent and demand for the product, some people could only afford up to a certain quality, so there became a tiered system of excellent, to good, to bad quality—and the junk and waste that came with it.'

Ravno observed Mister's hair of crows and wondered how he kept them all in line there above his head, as the porter again stood to bolster his point and let his hands loose to the sky. 'Compare this with the entry-level products made by those who are still learning their work in our own system,' Mr. Sunshine said, 'which is to be expected. We forgive them and laugh with them about their mistakes and use what we can and reuse what we can't. But the ancient's system also came to rely on the act of people buying. It became the natural rhythm of things, and so product design adapted to its provisions of mass quantity with inferior quality.'

'Why would they build something with inferior quality?' Yolotli asked.

'First of all, it cost less to build,' he said, 'securing more of a profit right away. Secondly, once the product broke, the people had to buy a replacement.'

Mr. Sunshine turned to a woman he knew built botos farther south on the Olive Fork canal.

'Can you imagine, Bapor, designing a boto to come apart at the seams and necessitate the navita to get a new one from you? The navita's time spent rowing, which, in the old system, translated into this muh-nee, would be spent on her new boto and force her to spend more time rowing. It would encourage you to spend more time designing just when the seams fall apart. This erroneous partnership relied on everyone to keep buying—to keep spending their time. And, to add to the irony, since people needed muh-nee so badly,' Mr. Sunshine shook his head sadly, 'they worked hard for the majority of their lives to save enough to be paid and not work when they were older. The old were promised a paradise though their bodies often failed them before they reached the apparent reward. It's comparable to the afterlife of some belief systems and the way they were instructed to plod on with the promise of something greater. Remember how we discussed, in the first quarter, people's hope of spending time with The Just Cucumber?'

'I've been looking for it but I can't find it anywhere!' Tap-tap.

'Right, keep looking Aron. Some ancients advise for you to start looking within yourself.'

Those around the circle laughed as Aron held his capa open with both hands and peered searchingly down at his chest.

Mr. Sunshine continued his oratory. 'They put a price on everything: Things they made, like botos, deeds they did, like deliveries, objects like minerals and rocks, but particularly minerals—even water.'

Payudara couldn't believe that. 'Ha! How could they gather muh-nee for water? It's all over the place.'

'Well, if people valued it, or even if they didn't, they charged for it,' Mr. Sunshine said. 'Even people became objects on the budget....'

Ravno blinked purposefully, pressed his eyelids down and rolled his eyeballs back. Was it just the new words he found boring and demotivating, terms of old that hardly applied to the present? He questioned Surya and Muna's obsession with these discussions and the way they convinced him to attend. Even so, it humored him to see the porter's expression impacted by the very words he spoke and the way he lost control of his arms throughout the lecture.

'The richest had to make the biggest sacrifice with systemic change because they owned the most—and they were also the ones with the biggest influence—and so no change happened.' Mr. Sunshine looked past his shoulder to find his seat and let his limbs rest, momentarily.

'To understand their dedication to profit, consider this: People all across their infinite world owned properties in other lands but didn't use the properties themselves. They rented them out to others and collected the muh-nee. It all makes sense from an investment and economic perspective, but not for the interests of fostering community, growth, and connection—but we'll talk about community another time.'

As he stood to his feet once more, Mr. Sunshine described the excuses for big companies to stall reformation. They came up with sub systems like poison offset paybacks and hollow environmentally focused strategies. He explained that this invoked people to put up with the system for longer, prolonging the profit. The companies became experts in convincing people of a need for new products and fostered the product-dependence soon after. Rather than pooling resources and specialized knowledge, competitors beat out someone else who had a great idea to share. Since the ideas encroached the profit margin, the competing contributions were squashed like berries on a summer path.

'There was an exploit called prostitution,' Mr. Sunshine said.

Ravno stopped listening and thought more about the significance of switching. He worried that there had been two days without activity since Kar in the mercato. Had the moon set on his time as an undefined, mythic creature that people would be unable to relate to? Or did the elusive sacred step remain, but behind a cloud of his own uncertainty? Again, how could it be used? He became frustrated with the question marks echoing around his skull and wished he could simply use the skill and forget all the banter. As his attention returned to the group, he found the same tenacious topic at hand.

'Companies identified the weaknesses of their potential customers to prey on them ruthlessly. They called it marketing. They tore indiscriminately at people's consciences, vanities, and fears, snatching away whatever people had to give. Trust diminished as the promise of goods often differed greatly from the actual goods acquired.' Mr. Sunshine looked at them gravely and said, 'Remember, this disgusting behavior is not at all surprising in their context, with their sickness. Their sickness was profit.'

Mr. Sunshine let that thought germinate in the minds of the seven. He continued quietly, 'Doubtless, they could never believe that we exist without a muh-nee exchange system, as it was so vital to their everyday life. They could surely not comprehend our commonality and deep-seated community from surviving the Ada Era. They did have their own instances of enduring mass trauma, but they forgot all about their commonalities and went ahead hating anyways. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll talk about this in the next moon.'

With that he turned swiftly and walked out of the circle. The cohort sat motionless under his lingering words. By the next moon Mr. Sunshine had meant the end of the next month, bulanau, and the new moon that would usher in bulanost. He left so quickly he forgot to give a hint of the more imminent topic of relationships in the next session.

## Switching is not sacred

Muna crouched in a cluster of plants. His hands palpitated, picked and packed peppers in woven red cedar baskets to put on the trailer for Ravno to bring to the city. His round face and freckled nose was poised in the sun as a basset hound confronting the hunted; the poor peppers sat defenseless in a cluster. The soil between his toes was cool as the surface of the moon, and the moon went beneath the horizon as the sun brought light to the morning. Another young man stooped in the gardens at the base of Vorra Mound, his mind split between the task at hand and the hands of his mind's task. His focus alternated between picking cucumbers, whose green length signaled readiness, and picking apart the moments spent with his muse in a green capa, from the gathering place at the Bhavata House to steam-enclosed fields and hill-top lavvies. His mind had an appetence for the woman whose stern features sat under bunches of tousled hair, whose sun-soaked skin spread the length of her resolute being.

But Ravno's joyful recollections of his moments with Keba and her sunflower eyes were interrupted as, suddenly, peppers sat in his hand, not cucumbers. He ran his fingers over a yellowish green one, larger than life. He determined it ready, plucked it from the stem with sharp shale, and placed it in the basket. But they were swifter hands with a quicker cut of the stone. With the faintly familiar cold pinch at the top of his spine, Muna served as his vessel through the pepper bed. Ravno held onto the switch with a fierce exactness; the proficiency startled him. Then he came back to his own vision and slowed movements, the same cucumber turning over and over in his dirty palms. Then he went back to Muna's vision and inspected the chocolate-brown pepper with him, its dark hues somber in contrast to the golden yellow, its green stem cut with finesse. There he knelt, switching to and fro between his garden fellow and himself, encased in a morning-diffused realm of excitement and satisfaction. He wanted to yell or clap his hands—he could barely contain his emotions. To let his sight mingle with Muna's as they worked the same earth was as easy as breathing. He could do it again and again.

And he did. Ravno took on Muna's range of view to watch first-hand as he lifted the basket of peppers to the trailer. Ravno also watched through Kar's eyes when she waved to him as he started out across the gardens to the city, and when she resumed her sorting of seeds; Ravno savored the success of riding the bicycle even as he switched with her. As a boto with curious onlookers glided ever closer, Ravno watched his own body wheeling the bicycle beside himself across the footbridge, handles in hand, trailer piled with vegetables in cedar baskets behind. When the grebet at starboard bow glanced back at a curious object in the water, Ravno glanced back with him, with a switch.

Ravno's hosts included an older woman on the road, who watched her wizened friend enter west Phoyara; a child who browsed the half-moon vegetable tables with his ottsa, while Ravno unloaded the trailer; and finally the man, that same man as before on the path, but now in the city, his red capa rather dull in the noon sun, his pace slowed to a stooped, directionless traipse. Ravno peered through his half-closed eyelids at those plodding feet: left, let the dust settle, right, let the dust settle. The man's head was heavy and Ravno could feel it. His breath was light but Ravno couldn't feel that. Everything about the man was lowly and slow, as he trudged in his own despondency.

The man's emotional mulch sorely affected Ravno, even after he switched back and found himself on the garden path to return the trailer. Kar questioned him about his trip and whether everything was okay, but Ravno quietly stirred the compost and kept to himself. He spread the renewed soil on beds of radish and squash near the cucumbers.

Kar wondered what was wrong with Ravno. She felt he was secluded and unaware, disconnected from the rest of Wawasen people. Kar turned back to focus on the seeds she had been counting.

Ravno considered the way in which the last switch had affected his own state of being. The man's spirit had felt burdened and his shoulders were low under a lusterless, red capa. Ravno could tell that something had upset or hurt him. Ravno fantasized that he would happen to see through the offender's eyes soon; he could help this man by telling him what to do or where to go to regain his morale.

Ravno also thought about how suddenly easy it was to switch. Would things change with Keba if he told her about his ability? He worried she would think him insane. Aron would surely appreciate a good chat about it, and Ravno craved Aron's insight into why it was happening. Or perhaps he should tell Helena, with her steadfast head of curls.

## The letter at the Bhavata House

On the first day of the waning gibbous, the moon substance trickles away into the universe and creates all the stars that shine and fill the night horizon. The fragments aren't brave enough to show themselves at daybreak but the diminishing moon stays high and bright through the night, and even as the first light begins to show. Then the moon makes way for the burning disc touching gold on teary cordgrass of Lurruna canals. The tears sparkle as they try to jump into early passing botos before the sun steals them away, like imitations of moon dust or love's brush. If only they could release themselves sooner from the loping flanks, slide down to the low tide and grab a passing paddle or float out to the sea. But stubborn drops of morning dew stand proudly along the plants, a line of miniature reflections that show grebets and their paddles, squabbling gulls, and two young men in the stern of a boto. Then, slowly, the proud reflections allow themselves to be eaten by the heat of the sun.

Again they arrived late at the Bhavata House. Ravno still grazed on his seaweed, rice, and salmon, and Aron still forged tales to illustrate the concepts of his latest fancy. They did come in time to join the group in shavasana and picked a spot on the fringe of glistening bodies, where skirts and capas lay in neat piles. Ravno placed the almost empty half-coconut husk and eating sticks on his pile of violet folds. He lay and let his limbs rest on the fibrous matting. The warm morning air hushed the fir and cedar branches overhead and danced the sunlight halfway down the trunks. The redwood bark and the mud that coated the circular house rendered the line between domestic and wild slightly indistinguishable. With his eyes shut, Ravno unfurled his bunched hands and relaxed each finger with his palms upward. His jaw and shoulders sunk toward the earth; his mouth and brow released their tension. Only the spot where his head made contact with the ground stayed active. Despite the warmth from the earth's star, and from within his body, this part stayed icy cold. He felt a sudden pinch like a bee sting. Who could tell that he switched right then with Patanjali, whom he lay beside? Then he switched with a woman he hadn't yet met but who also had closed eyes. He did not see with their eyes, which were closed and looked inside themselves, but saw with their jibana, and so entered an even fuller pranayama.

But then he switched with Aron, whose eyes were neither closed nor looking inside himself as he gazed at the bulging cumulus in the atmosphere. In the clouds Aron saw Jasmin Sanjukta's tumbling hair. Ravno caught his breath as his brows scrunched and his own eyes popped open to see those same clouds—no hair. He smiled and let his attention travel over toes, feet, fingers, hands, legs, groin, stomach, arms, chest, shoulders, ears, and face, and slowly he rolled over his bent knees and up to a seated position. He looked over to watch Patanjali's belly balloon and deflate in sync with the sound of small waves on the shore.

The group slowly came to rise and don capas and skirts. They entered the Bhavata House where Jasmin Sanjukta prepared tea by the central fire. She placed two hot rocks from the fire in a leather bag of water and spearmint leaves and tied the bag closed to sit and simmer. As it came to flavor, she scooped the liquid into small madrone cups. She handed the full cups to those who entered the house.

They gathered only for gathering's sake with no meeting or particular discussion planned. Aron heard the story of the most recent batsu omhaal from Keba and Ravno and sipped his tea and tap-tapped his frames. They sat in a small circle to one side of the room. Clusters of people around the three spoke or signed about developments in the city and the implications of living among fractured islands with one Group of Eleven and other such veins of thought.

Aron looked to Keba, 'What do you think, did they plan to have a third and just bear the punishment, or was it an accident?'

Keba looked up from the two saturated mint leaves that clung to the rim of her rough wooden cup.

'To be honest I hadn't thought... it may've been intentional. But do you really think they'd let that happen to their children?' she asked.

'It does seem improbable, forcing that on them,' Aron said. 'But isn't it just the same how we decide to teach our kids about this but not that, or even that they're born at all? We determine their lives without questioning it. We just think a thing is the right way to do it and suddenly the kid doesn't know how to swim or hasn't a clue about herbs. Or they're raised on Lurruna but could've been born on Peninnah.' Aron brought his lips to a sideways bunch. His gaze fell to his friends' knees and ricocheted about in contemplation.

Ravno looked past both of them to Dabi who stood alone in a cluttered corner with a sheet of papyrus in hand. As he read with her, unable to look back to the beginning of the letter but forced to follow the trail of her eyes, he saw these words in dark kurumi ink, elegant around the edges but with a shrewd exactitude:

'...tame Santulita ni kite dan menyertai kami koko sebaliknya. Di jam-jam bat dari ghatato bosgar divasana nu bulaniru ini sesuai dari tame, misschien. Dari candras amaiera fasea kami avasini atton. Cahaya, Yerek.'

Which meant:

'...you can come to Santulita and join us here instead. Perhaps in the first hours of the fifth days' waning this month of bulaniru suits you. We'll be waiting with the last of the moon. Cahaya, Yerek.'

'He's probably still stuck in shavasana.... Hey, Ravno?' Aron chuckled as his friend's eyes shot over with guilt and surprise. And anxiety—or that was just an aftertaste from the switch with Dabi. Ravno recognized that she did seem apprehensive or carried a feeling of doubt.

Aron looked at Ravno. 'I was just saying, I'm sure some of the Eleven have had more than one sibling, or had one kid too many themselves and yet no batsu omhaals.' Aron bent his torso forward. 'If we can prove and expose it they'd lose credibility and we could avoid the tragedies—at least long enough to come up with an alternative, eh?' Aron's weak, if not humorous, conspiratorial tone suddenly exhausted Ravno altogether.

'I need some time to think,' Ravno said as he got to his feet. Aron turned his focus back to Keba and pursued his thoughts while Ravno walked straight for Dabi, where she stood in the low, rounded corner of the hut.

'What are you reading?' he blurted out, like coughing in a silent crowd, or one-way kissing.

Dabi rolled the papyrus sheet shut with deliberation. She smiled as she turned her head and her jungle-weed hair swayed, as if it laughed at him.

'I am curious, my friend Ravno, what is your impression of batsu omhaals? I understand you observed as Zus and her family became permanently marked with the noh. I am sure you have constructed my perspective of all of this, but what is yours?'

His forehead crease lost its depth as his whole scalp and ears sunk backward. His eyes, large as clay saucers, became less large and lost their usual sympathy. His fingers danced and careened as much as they could, anchored to his hand. He swallowed.

'Well, I'm still thinking about things,' he said, 'and don't necessarily think it's the best idea, but you have to wonder if there wasn't anything done would we toss children down volcanoes and start using muh-nee and following time as if there was nothing else to do?' He later realized that what he meant to say was, 'People should follow the rules.' When he realized that, he repeated it to himself again and again, People should follow, people should follow the rules, follow the rules people, should people follow the rules.

But it wasn't what he said and so Dabi replied, 'Ravno, I appreciate your jibana so please do not take offense to my observations. I believe our society certainly has much to learn, as we sterilize innocent kids and are unable to share what is truly on our minds. You are limited in what you see and I encourage you to look at not only what you perceive but what you actually see.'

Dabi left him. His eyes were fixed on the muddy, bark tangles of curved wall in the corner where she had been standing.

But people should follow the rules.

## A discussion with Temperance

When Ravno arrived at Helena and Sebastian's pack he found Temperance sitting by the entrance on her blue capa. Oddly shaped flowers lay all around her. He saw a white-stemmed one with thick green petals, a vine-like plant with purple-y circles joined by stringy fiber the length of an arm, and a hairy yellow star with black polyps. But the well-used dandelion made him smile.

'Ra! We found new flowers and look at them all. This one's an eye rope and this one's a hairy yellow star.'

'Did you name them? Can you eat any of these?'

'No they're just for looking. You can eat the dandelion, but not this one okay?'

'Ha ha, all right. Where's Helena, Temper?'

'She's making love with Seb.'

As he sat on the dirt beside her gallery, Ravno wondered if he could switch with Sebastian or Helena even though the redwood bark walls stood between where they lay. He wondered how close in proximity he had to be to switch with them. It infringed the boundary with his saudari in this case, so he focused on the flowers.

'May I pet the hairy star?' Ravno said.

'Ra, it's a hairy yellow star. It doesn't like to be pet but you can sing to it.'

'Does it have eyes?'

'Ra, the eye rope has eyes.'

He laughed and lifted the rope-of-eyes at her beckoning.

'I wonder if I can switch with it?' he said.

He meant to say that last bit in his head. But Temperance was lenient of such oversights. Her young, acute mind would follow his lead, of course. Or maybe not.

'How do you switch with it?' she asked.

So her mind did follow his lead. She lifted the end that dangled dangerously close to the hairy yellow star.

'It doesn't like to be pet, remember? Even by other flowers.'

He looked at her busy hands and her flat brown chest and darkest of dark curls and the plastic amulet that hung along the part in her hair, and he carefully avoided the hairy yellow star.

'What I do,' he said, 'is I look through its eyes. Though this one is tricky because it has so many. Which ones should I look through, I only have two?'

'You can look through that one, and that one.' Her fairy fingers put a spell on the chosen eyes. 'Can you switch with my eyes?' As she asked him, her hands instinctively caressed the dandelion. She picked it up, squeezed it, and placed it by her side.

'Okay Temper. You look at a flower and I'll switch with you and tell you which one you're looking at and you tell me if I'm right.'

She transferred her eyes carefully between the dandelion, the white-stemmed flower, Ravno, the eye rope and the hairy yellow star. He could've guessed which one she looked at without the full procedure of switching but he savored the feeling of the icy pinch and finding the window, and he found her passion infectious. She was excited for him, far as he could tell, and he wanted to cry for the joy of sharing it with somebody. He loved her even more, if it was possible, and decided one day he'd teach this bottle of sun how to switch. Perhaps he could learn from her what to do with it.

'Do you switch with animals?' Temperance asked.

'No, not with animals, just people.' But he had to admit it was a good idea to try.

'Well, what do you see?'

'I see what the other people see,' Ravno said.

'What do they see?'

Again he felt the albatross—his cryptic ability to see what other people see. The heaviness draped around his shoulders, despite Temperance's neutrality and how unnecessary it was to prove anything to her, in her mood.

'They see what's before them....' Ravno caught himself, as he knew this was not always the case. 'They see what they're looking at: sometimes the sky or their feet on the ground, or sometimes other people.'

'If I was seeing what you see, I'd see me,' she said.

His heart lifted from its groveling divot in his chest and his smile widened. 'Yes you would, you'd see a beautiful little girl asking question after question.'

'Can I try?'

'Ha, well, maybe. Yes, you can try but I'm not so sure you'll see anything, Temper.'

'I'll see me.'

After she tired of pretending that she was seeing through his eyes, she asked him, 'What does it look like through K's eyes?'

Ravno put down the green-petaled plant and paused. 'I don't know. I haven't tried that yet.'

'Really? I'd look through her eyes, Ra.'

Suddenly, he realized he had. Keba was the first one, on the beaches there in the morning three months ago, when he fell headlong into the honeyed waters that faced Peninnah.

## On the beaches, in the morning, three months prior

A fan of glowing, finger-like clouds advanced over tangled forests and buildings on the head of Peninnah Island. The giant cloud-fan prodded small waves against the neighboring shores of Lurruna where Keba stood, face in the wind and ankles in the biting cold of the Pacific Ocean. Salt clung inside her nostrils and the sea shanty of a morning gust moved across the two east-side beaches. Keba's second hand plugged her nostrils and lightly blew to clear the air in her head. She wondered how she looked as she stood there in the surf with her hair a tired eagle's nest.

A grey crow picked at sand mites and stepped, without grace, across the beach. Its trident tracks mingled with a raccoon paw's quintet. Their footsteps framed the spot where mussels lay on the beach with their innermost secrets unceremoniously offered to the morning sun, which intensified the sea spice. The crow swayed its feathered shoulders and nodded its crown, then flew from rock to rock to hop and stop on the pile that separated the two beaches. The crow pitched its head to eye a man's prints that led to the water on the far beach. Keba's focus shifted from the crow to the man. She looked back over the sea, to the ball of fire that appeared in the east. The sun rose from wrist to palm to dispersing sky fingers in a frenzy of hazy reds and orangey pinks.

Ravno caught the bird's eye. Before long, his attention shifted to the woman. He saw the blonde double fishbone bundled at her neck, where the asparagus-green capa slung around her trim shoulders and clasped in the front. He saw the black skirt hang over her legs, which stood in the ocean like his. But he was as naked as an arbutus tree that sat high up the beach and safe from the tide. Ravno's thumb flicked his forefinger, and his forefinger flicked his thumb, allowing the dirt under his fingernails to escape. His own capa, skirt and cloth were folded on the bicycle by the rocks. His clothes provided shade for barnacle footprints and seaweed slime on the stones below.

His thoughts lingered on the woman, rather than on the sunshine that dripped, thick as honey, into the ocean right in front of him. Loons dressed in black and white bobbed one, two, and three, right in front of him. And four or five caspian terns flew in arcs and cruised along the surface in front of him. He hardly saw the birds at all.

Ravno's ankles asked to go deeper, or retreat, instead of standing still in the prickly cold. His thumb and forefinger still danced, furiously. But all his lusty eyes could see was the woman drawn to the water's edge the next beach over. Like a bee to the hive she emerged between rock clusters. She crossed crushed-shell tide lines with grace to the sea, where she now stood like a mirror of his delayed sea entrance.

Keba's feet shifted indelicately as the ocean stole sand and grit away from underneath them. All the events that lead up to this morning had happened so quickly. Her saudara had had to drag her out to see the batsu omhaal and to see the tears that had stung the fresh wound on the little boy's neck. It's impossible that they think this is the best way, branding whole families at a time, she thought sadly. And out in the open for all to see. She had thought those atrocities only happened thousands of years ago—hundreds of thousands of years ago, when the ancient peoples dominated the earth.

On the beach, she let her head sink to the right. Whatever was left of her buoyant joy rushed out with her breath and joined the sea dance in the air.

At the batsu omhaal, she had caught eyes with that stormy woman, Jasmin Sanjukta, who poured oil on the wounds of the victims. Jasmin Sanjukta had seen Keba's discomfort and had told her to come for some support and insight this morning. Now Keba was ready to go.

But then her eyes shot to the man who no longer stood in the water. He had dropped face down, like a dead tree into the sea.

His eyes blinked from the seawater. He coughed, and asked in halting Wawasen, 'When did you get here?' Keba's second hand held his wrist, her first arm firmly looped under his neck. He lay in the surf, his hair wet and his back on the sand in the water. He faced his feet that waved haphazardly to the stout, naked arbutus on the high edge of the beach.

Keba looked down at him. 'Just now—you caught my eye when you fell in. You okay?'

'I was just... looking at you, over there.' Ravno tried to look past her but her capa hung open and blocked his vision. He felt stupid to admit that he had been watching her but he didn't know what else to say. He tried to figure how he came to lay in her arms in the maro bulanbederatzi—the ninth-month sea.

He asked her, 'Are you okay?'

Miraculously, she laughed—though her laugh seemed most natural to him. Keba's eyes warmed with the honey droplets of sun that still lingered toward Peninnah.

She said, 'I'm fine, just a bit more wet than I planned to be this morning.'

As she helped him up, Keba could tell that the ocean was still too cold for swimming. His tight skin had tiny winter bumps and his nipples couldn't be harder. He shook with each breath and his penis hid way under its skin. His balls hid even farther up in his body to stay warm. Keba held his arm as he walked tentatively up the beach to the bicycle.

'So did I just fall, just like that? I don't remember diving and my back's not broken, is it,' he said between shivers. 'Maybe I tripped on something—a rock, or something.'

'Well I wasn't watching, but you seemed to just fall.' She regretted that her comment unintentionally reproached him for watching her, which she didn't mean—and didn't mind. She decided he should wait till at least bulaniru or later, perhaps, but it was still a wonderful morning for a sunrise on the beach. And with him. She fastened her capa to block the hiemal breeze from her bare skin.

Keba laid her hand on his shoulder. 'Will you be okay? I need to get going, so I won't be able to walk with you anywhere.' She debated heading toward the uncertainty that storm would bring up the beach.

'Oh no, I'm fine and I've got the bicycle,' he said. 'The water feels great actually and I couldn't have started my morning better.' He buttoned his skirt and slung the capa over his shaking shoulders. He wanted her to stay a while longer. 'We could double, if you like.' His pale hand motioned to the rusty handlebars.

'Sure and we can fall again, only this time the sea won't catch you,' she said, kindly. 'But I'm off down that way, passed the jetty there. I guess you're going up the path here?' She brought her mossy-green eyes back from the mossy-green trees that stood like an army behind the arbutus. He let her look at his wide eyes a moment before he told her 'yes,' and she was off down the beach as if she'd never been there at all.

Ravno took the bicycle up the rocks to the root-shrouded path. He realized he didn't even know her name. He had been too busy shivering and wishing the weather was warmer so they could've relaxed on the beach together. He wondered if he would see her again the next day, or at least another time in the city.

Ravno missed the cloud fingers give one more dazzling pronouncement of saturated hues before they grew grey in the brightening sky. They retreated, like an octopus escaping along the seabed. Ravno had three more months of maritime mornings before he saw her again. After those three months Keba's joy still hadn't found its way back inside.

## Dabi boards a boto on her trip to Santulita

The day Ravno and Temperance discussed flowers and switching, Dabi and her scar boarded a boto to Santulita. She had joined a small group of Wawasens along the Duat Canal, near Phoyara. As they weaved along the canals, passengers appeared like hawks from the forest as they floated down ramps to the boto. The dawn, sea mist, and island-spewed steam all enveloped to create ghosts of each migrant being. They arrived at the end of the Lurruna Branch, the chosen point of embarkment for southern trips to various islands. Amidst the large egress of steam from the para zona that vented and veiled the docks, those on their way farther south, like Dabi, changed to a sturdier inter-island boto built for channel crossings.

It would take about two days for Dabi and the ghosts to pass Sekitsui, the first island of ten under Yerku's responsibility, and the other nine islands, before she would arrive on Santulita, the last island in the province of Pangitain. She hoped to be there in the first hours of the day after tomorrow but was uncertain from Yerek's letter whether to expect the full Group of Eleven or not. The letter's closing line, 'We'll be waiting with the last of the moon,' told her she had no reason to rush. She had a window of approximately eleven days. This flexibility hardly abated her heart from rushing and the upcoming meeting tore at her usual sobriety. Dabi partly wondered if, upon arrival, it might be only Yerek's phosphorescent-blue eyes and pale, solemn face that waited for her. What would be the result of that? The two women would be strictly professional, and avoid any lingering moments or talk of a personal nature. 'You were born on Passat and have lived on every island around the ring, Yerek?' 'Yes, and now Santulita's my forty-ninth.' 'Will you stay on Peninnah once you get there? Passing of course through Lurruna and coming by my area.' 'No I'll just turn around and head back to my birthplace. Passing of course through Lurruna and repeatedly stopping by your area.'

Thoughts and inner dialogue aside, the dense steam this side of Lurruna Island and the pretty dawn did Dabi well. She briefly closed her eyes and pictured Jasmin Sanjukta: Sable diamond thick and bold in silver on her forehead, shaded lids and tapered cheeks, eyes that hail the island's spirit, dusk-hued skin in constant contrast with brilliant colors of a patchwork capa, and only twelve kukui's left around her neck.

Dabi steadied her breath to the rhythm of the oars and smiled broadly. Moisture gathered on her windward jungle weeds, and a shy drop of sea sallied the camber of her forehead and followed a scar's path to her delicate brow. It was hard to tell where the next salty drops originated from as they rolled the soft chine of her face before tumbling amidships.

## Trials with Aron on the fifth day's waning

'Ravno, why don't we lift our arms up to the sky like the trees do?'

'They're feeding, Aron. It would be ridiculous for us to walk around with our arms up when we don't even feed that way.'

'Well we should stretch our arms toward our food,' Aron said. 'I think we would have better awareness of what we're eating, or what we're about to eat.'

They were walking north from Mara to Phoyara along the hard packed, rose-red earth. Aron lifted his arms in the air as they edged closer to the city. A grey crow watched nervously from a low cherry blossom branch, preparing to take refuge to a higher perch if this human did anything more erratic. The three of them carried on for a few moments in this balance of uncertainties, as neither species knew what would happen next. An unusual bout of clouds dotted the eastern sky.

Ravno couldn't help but smile at his friend, though he debated how to tell him his news: I can switch—too ambiguous and unclear; I can see through other people's eyes—too creepy; I've fallen upon a way to see what other people see—a bit pretentious; I think I'm going crazy—a great way to start Aron on a rambling soliloquy. As a result, the bunched, dusty brown capa around Aron's raised arms bobbing along the path was a welcome reprieve.

'Aron you should take a look at what I'm seeing right now it's much funnier than what you're seeing.' There, I started it and there's no turning back, Ravno thought.

'I believe you Rav. Nothing like laughing with and not at, eh? Ha.'

For a moment Ravno thought he lost his chance. Only their footsteps sounded out along the path. But he tried again.

'I mean, I can actually see what you're seeing,' Ravno said. 'I switch and can see exactly what you see, when I choose, more or less, if you know what I mean.'

The awkward sentence caused Aron's hands to slowly lower to his side, like a sun and new moon setting. With tight lips he kept his pace. Aquatic images still flashed through his mind, as they were before Ravno had spoken: The beach from afar, floating under a rocky outcrop, water lapping a boto under a dock. Aron's frames partly hid his eyes, which opened and closed deliberately, as he attempted to dismiss the visions.

'Come again?' Aron managed to ask.

Usually, the behavioral differences of inanimate and animate beings—the trees and their arms—truly intrigued Aron, but today his mind was too busy with vague images and daymares. The talking helped, especially with Ravno's unerring tolerance for the whims of conversation.

Talk and walk, talk and walk. Ravno felt like a complete fool.

'It's cool,' Ravno said, 'lately I've been able to sync up with other people somehow and then see what they're seeing, like through their eyes, exactly where they're looking.'

He mistook Aron's silence as a request for further explanation.

'My sight is limited to what they're focusing on. It's not like I take control of their body or whatever....'

He watched Aron's loping hands out of the corner of his eye but they didn't tell him much. He switched with Aron, just briefly, and felt a satisfied fear in his friend—a copacetic unease. But Ravno also sensed muted excitement, though he may have constructed that from his own imagination.

'Do you think I'm just scuffing the dirt?' Ravno asked.

Aron stopped their progress at Phoyara's cusp, where avenues mazed around the first of the resident packs.

'Show me,' Aron said, 'let's see this trick of yours in action.' Tap-tap. 'What, do you think you'll get stage fright?'

'No, but I'm not some mid-month art show for you to gawk at. I'd probably want you to do the same thing, I guess.'

Tap-tap. 'Exactly. Now on with the show, maestro.'

At that moment, two young girls passed by on their way to the city. The taller one held a disc, coral-orange and molded of plastic, from the dark ages. The sweat of the game clung to their slick backs and temples.

Ravno called out, 'Utusar, right? You're in a group with Temperance?'

The girl without the disc, the one with short hair, and chestnuts for eyes, whirled around to face the two men. Ravno gave the young girl his first hand.

'Cahaya, I'm Ravno.'

'Cahaya Ravno, I'm Utusan.' Butterfly wings brought the blood around her body and warmed her cheeks.

'Utusan. Right, sorry. Yes, and Temper just loves you and all the things you do together,' Ravno said. 'Thanks for being so good with her and the other kids. May we have the disc?'

As their hands parted, her sweaty palm left traces of its travels on his fingers.

'Yes of course,' Utusan replied quietly. 'We're done with it.'

The girls pattered on while Ravno and Aron found a small patch of low grass and dandelions. Ravno handed the disc to Aron and instructed him to throw it so Ravno could try to catch it without looking. Ravno clarified that he would in fact be looking but not with his own eyes. Dubious, Aron obeyed and tossed a fast one. As Ravno walked the distance, he caught it with two hands behind his head—a fluke, possibly. Aron threw it again and Ravno caught it straight-armed behind his legs, with only a casual bend of the knees to reach the disc's low flight. Aron still doubted that Ravno actually saw through his eyes.

'Incredible that you caught those, but show me something else—something more convincing,' Aron said.

Ravno privately rejoiced in his achievement. He had completely switched with someone yet maintained full control of his own being, avoided collapse, and had in fact reacted with his own body to the environment he observed through Aron.

As they walked farther into Phoyara, Ravno gave the orange disc to a boy, hardly older than Temperance and fair skinned and skinny, who sat on the ground eating bush beans and mint leaves.

Ravno and Aron found some flat stones around a thick and uneven stump table near the intersection of two avenues. They sat on the stones; Aron faced the intersection and Ravno sat opposite him.

Aron said, 'When someone or something comes around the corner I want you to shut your eyes and describe to me what it is, or who it is. We'll do it a few times to factor out the chance of a random right guess. And, go.'

Ravno laughed at his insistence but decided to play along and practice his art.

Aron sat up straight. 'Wait, did the thing at Vesta's have something to do with this? When you bit the sand?' His broad, tight-lipped grin was gelastic and contagious.

'Maybe,' Ravno said, 'but I'm sure you'd be more interested to know that the boy we gave the disc to is coming up the avenue behind me.'

The skinny boy came up as Ravno described and stopped to introduce himself. He held his second hand up to his heart, still holding the pale-orange disc, then carried on with his adventures.

'Lucky and sensical guess,' Aron said. 'More.' Tap-tap.

Ravno detailed the eucalyptus that sat across the avenue behind him, directly in Aron's field of view. He counted the main branches—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven visible from the front—and noted which were mostly bare and which still dripped stringy bark, and how that one, that stretched to the left above the big knot on the trunk, was mostly bare. In order to ease Aron's lingering disbelief, he counted and described the strips of bark in color, from the first to second side of the trunk: 'One beige, two pale red, three and four beige, five grey—'

'Good, good—impressive,' Aron said. 'But you've seen that tree before and might have a better memory than I know. Actually, I don't think I've heard you talk enough to tell what kind of memory you do have. So let's have another.'

At that moment a heroic, dreamlike and adorable creature appeared around the corner. Her little nose curved in tandem with her upper lip. Her black kawaii strands of hair lay like brackets along the sides of her face, brushed her chin and brought focus to her shrewd eyes. Her shorter bangs played at her brow and her two fleshy lips lolled open like the volcanic gap on Notou's peak.

Ravno didn't speak at first, though his mouth opened as if he made to. Aron pried his eyes off the woman to see his friend's reaction and to wait for his description. The look on Ravno's face convinced him immediately. Ravno's enchanted gaze mirrored the thick jelly feeling that wobbled in the bottom of Aron's throat. Aron looked down as the woman crossed their sphere of existence and smiled his smile with teeth hidden and tucked inside. His eyes shot to Ravno's.

'Enough said, my friend, you have proven your insanity!' Aron said.

They both laughed, though quietly so as not to make the passing woman feel uncomfortable. She continued on her way, presently out of hearing range.

'Where did she come from?' Aron said.

Ravno thought for a moment. 'I think I saw her on the boto recently. Yes, just after my switch with Mister Sunshine.'

Ravno remembered those rushes of black hair behind Helena's curls. He recalled that a few more people were around, but forgot what they looked like.

'You've already done your stunt with Mister? What was he looking at?'

'Well, me, and then his time piece and then me falling,' Ravno said. 'It was on the way to Pelajaran the first time.'

'Oh I didn't know you met him before the forum started.'

'I'd hardly say I met him that morning.'

'Ravno you were in his head, that's a lot more intimate than most of us get with people we meet for the first time. Or anytime thereafter, actually,' Aron said. After a pause, he added, 'What's your plan with this madness anyway?'

Ravno was lost in his own mind and looked down from Aron's eyes at the old creases in the table.

At the same moment, an old woman buried under a thick capa stopped to rest by the eucalyptus. She squinted down the avenue toward her destination. Her creased hand lay against the wrinkled bark—against the eleventh strip of grey.

The boy must learn to move on, she thought to herself.

Silas, the boy in her thoughts, had his heart lacerated with grief after his adopted daughter disappeared. The woman hoped to be a source of relief to him because her saudari, Silas's mat, could not make the trip from Pangsi. The woman thought of Silas's daughter's chubby cheeks and ever-curious eyes, the sweet face that soon escaped her memory. Little Samato's body had presumably gone back to the ocean and, she reasoned, Silas needed to transfer his energy from Samato's heart to someone or something else. But that takes time, and time she could offer.

The old woman had let her eyes droop with her head whilst she ruminated. But with resolve she now raised them upward and focused on the road ahead. Ravno felt in her a renewed strength, as at that moment he focused down the road with her. He had switched with Aron, just for a second, and noticed, through his friend, the old woman leaning against the tree. He had then switched with her. Her strange power gave him confidence.

Ravno said to his friend, 'Rain's coming. It's just down the street to your first. It'll be here in a couple breaths.'

They waited. The woman walked away. The west wind diminished and they waited. The rain did not come.

'Okay, so you convinced me with the apparition that passed us, with her little nose,' Aron said, 'but that rain trick was rather unimpressive, sorry. It did almost feel like the rain was coming though, I'll give you that.' Aron's brow turned in, but imperceptibly, behind the black glassless glasses.

The old woman walked over the wet soil, down the avenue to Silas's pack. Too bad it stopped, she thought. You never know when the rain will come or when it will go.

# 3/ mandiri kenaikan

## The moon continues to hide her face on the third historia forum

Mr. Sunshine opened his large hands in a gesture of welcome to the forum group and said, 'At the full moon we discussed muh-nee and profit. I realized later these things make no sense to you without understanding the ancient's obsession with ownership before the Ada Era.'

'Why was profit so negative in their time?' Bapor the boto builder said. 'Don't we profit by eating or by getting to know someone else or by creating something substantial with our own hands?' Her own rough hands opened to Mr. Sunshine in query.

'Because profit was all-consuming for the ancient peoples,' he said to her. 'Profit became the meaning of life. The most heinous evils became simple numbers on a budget.'

Mr. Sunshine stood. He paced around the circle like a caged feline. He approached Bapor intently and spoke to her directly.

'Profit was negative, Bapor, because they stopped at nothing to achieve it. They took life; they raped the earth. From our most reputable accounts, they didn't seem to care about the rampant greed.' The porter had turned again toward his own seat. He stopped in the middle of the seven and said, sadly, 'All hail the most Holy Profit.' He said the word in the ancient way, pro-fit, so the pun was lost on them all. It sounded funny to the group and felt weird on their lips. Ravno understood it as two foreign words: praw fit. It felt dirty on all their mouths and hands.

The moon elegantly waned a hemp-line more.

Back at his seat, the porter added, 'Consider what they could've accomplished and invented if they weren't stuck in profit. Communications, mobility, restoration of their bodies, and other basic functions like eating and waste management—the last of particular importance considering their numbers.'

'You keep mentioning their numbers. How many of them were there?'

'Millions.' A gasp spun around the seated circle. Most doubted the possibility of that many people and where they would all go or what they would all eat.

'Think about what they left behind and how long it's lasted,' Mr. Sunshine said. 'It takes a mighty contagion to cause that devastation and impact.'

Aron snickered. Not at the thought of such numbers or grisly leftovers but because Ravno had switched with the man that sat beside the porter, and whispered to Aron, 'Payu is looking at Bapor's breasts. And anytime she moves, his eyes skitter away.'

They began a game where Ravno combed the circle at Aron's bidding and told him what each person was looking at or how they were feeling.

'Aadi was looking at you while you were looking at Payu. Yolotli is feeling unwell. Allete is watching the lark, like usual.'

'I could've told you that one,' Aron whispered back.

Mr. Sunshine's point progressed, 'But back to ownership, which is intricately tied to profit. Since they acquired their possessions and experiences through muh-nee, and were always in danger of falling victim to a bad deal—because of profit—they possessively kept everything they got their hands on. "This is what I own," they said. "If you want it you'll have to pay for it."

'The concept of ownership so infused their culture that they came to feel they owned other people. At one point they did literally buy and sell people. Ownership snuffed out their potential.'

After a brief but well considered pause, the porter said, 'Much like a batsu omhaal snuffs out yours.'

Those who hadn't gasped at the 'millions' figure did at this remark. A stunned silence crept through the clearing. Mr. Sunshine reflected with amusement that Wawasens were not nearly as open as they pretended to be, not nearly as democratic as they believed they were. Are we free to say what we think? he questioned them quietly, in his mind. Ideally, yes. Socially, no. The black bristles that crowded his cheeks, that grew thicker at the sides of his chin, drifted down with the corners of his mouth. His nostrils widened to accommodate stale scents of western hemlock, waxy notes of sitka spruce, red dirt, sun-dried stone, and all these kids who've grown and grown, the porter thought. Some are as old as me of course so they must recall days before the batsu omhaals. They must have some passion left for living as a child and saying what we think and infusing ourselves with each other and this earth. Or is it just me?

'Seems Yolotli is feeling rather shocked,' Ravno told Aron. 'And Payu is watching Mister's chin, really focused in on it.'

Aron hid his face and pretended to fiddle with his frames and nose. He cleared his throat.

The lecture continued.

'It's ironic that through their addiction to ownership they completely befuddled the whole picture,' Mr. Sunshine said. 'It's like when you're watching a sunrise and you feel you should be looking at the most vibrant part. You catch yourself daydreaming and not really looking at it, or looking at something incidental in the foreground, and realize that you feel you should be looking at the colorful bits. But what if the whole thing was vibrant and bright—then it wouldn't be a sunrise at all, would it? The darkest parts are as integral as the brightest parts. Without each part complimenting the other, the whole picture is just not what you came to see at all.'

Mr. Sunshine found it progressively harder to articulate his intent. He wondered if his struggle derived from the irregular accumulation of clouds and sporadic rain for this time of year. But the subject pervaded his reflection as he paralleled humans, and campaigns, and power, and change. It is absolutely okay to be focused in on something in the foreground, and to not look at the colorful part. It's all part of it, anyway. And the colorful part waxes and wanes even more than the moon.

The two men that whispered to each other distracted Mr. Sunshine momentarily. Their whispers fueled the reaches of his cognition as he scoffed, inwardly, at their lack of attention. He knew that when you're being selfish you're not just thinking about yourself, you're thinking about other people in a different way. Otherwise it'd be easy to stop being selfish, he thought, you'd just have to think about the other person. Instead, you begin thinking about what the other person should be doing differently to cover your needs, to understand your concerns, to meet your expectations; you become selfish.

'I think I'm done here for now. Carry on with your discussions.' The porter turned and abruptly left the circle.

'Payu's looking at Bapor's breasts again,' Ravno said.

Aron and Ravno looked at each other and laughed. Some of the others tried to make sense of what the porter had alluded to near the end, or with the whole session. The two giggling fiends left the circle for the canal. Aadi watched Aron go and willed him to turn around. He didn't. But she didn't pursue him either, similar to how Allete never pursued the lark. Similar to how Payudara never went beyond a glance at Bapor. Similar to how the ancients never achieved true greatness or humility. Similar to how Ravno suspected that his dance was aimless and without any great consequence.

## From one side to the other side and how quickly he falls

The sky had furrows like the beach. Dusk hung in the crevasse of clouds and crooks of ash. Keba and Ravno stepped from the boto to the dock like a shadow of Dabi five days prior, when she had departed to Santulita. But instead of boarding an inter-island ride to the south, they scaled the basalt stones out of the canal and their feet milled the sand as they entered the para zona. The largest vents and hundreds of smaller ones that gave birth to the island's inner congestion sat on this sandy outcrop of Lurruna's western hem. If one wished to stay with the person with which one arrived, one tended to stay unusually close to one's companion in this area. The steam swirled heavily and fro-frayed the tree leaves and grasses and hairs of one's neck.

They faced one another at the great wooden water-filled pot. Ravno brought her first hand into the madrone basin and paused.

'Is it too hot?' he said.

She shook her already-wet hair and he rubbed the hemp residue from her hand. Vorra gardens drifted to the unseen bottom as Keba washed his hands too. The zona caretaker came to greet them and his intemerate aura welcomed them in.

To hang one's skirt and capa on the loping tree-limb was almost useless because everything became wet in the para zona, whether on or off. But the freeing interaction of steam on skin and general heat of the zona demanded that clothes be removed.

They ducked under a low sandstone archway to enter one of many parna rooms where, with large boulders and close-knit foliage that surrounded the smaller vents, steam accumulated with concentrated purpose. Ravno briefly explored the limited amount he could see inside the parna, while Keba found a thoroughly polished rock to sit upon. The room was strangely quiet, except for the breath of the vent and the sound of dripping water and of his feet shifting on the wet, scratchy rocks. He settled on a similar stone that had been sat on thousands of times before. He sat to her second and their knees almost touched as a right angle. So close but he could still hardly see her—though the steam lessened at times when the wind came through. One of her hands held her other elbow and her head tilted back. Keba breathed in deeply through her nose and into her stomach. The motion brought her eyelids closed as streamlets of steamlets ran the course of her body.

Ravno also closed his eyes and breathed in and exhaled. He opened his eyes and closed them again. He was conscious of how his arms lay in neutral repose on his legs. He wondered if it was odd to be so conscious of such things. Then he closed his eyes purposefully and switched with Keba. Her eyes were closed and her heart seemed closed too. But an avid feeling stirred within and her lids opened and blinked at the heat of the steam. Ravno watched as her eyes lay straight ahead and she looked at him through her peripheral.

What an experience to look at yourself with such lust! Ravno tried his best to stay steady and still. He focused on his breathing. In through the nose and down to the stomach, out from the chest and out from the nose. He felt the hard stone against the bottoms of his thighs, his feet and toes on stone, but smoother stone here beside the vent. He lingered as her eyes lingered, lashes lowering or locked, their focuses coalescing. It felt like he had interlocked fingers at the bottom of his skull, ice-cold fingers that locked and squeezed and pulled apart. He wandered the twists of his neck and shoulders with her eyes, and his flat chest, even flatter than hers, and his lengthening penis and his considerate and calloused hands.... He lost his place in the process and opened his eyes to the heavy grey air and the sunbeams that shuddered through airborne water molecules. He lost his place and wondered, Is it her or me, from whose eyes do I now see?

Ravno's head rolled to the side and he saw his hand but it was her hand reach over and gather his fingers and hold them tight. And the fingers turned to icicles and shattered—the ones at the base of his skull—and he turned his own head to look over to his hand, which was held tightly by her hand. Everything glistened. He had to hold his eyes closed and open again to focus. He was conscious of how incredibly clear his nostrils were, with the steam that flowed in and out.

Later, after he cooled and the blood flowed less urgently between his legs, they wrung out their soaked clothes and put them on at the dock. They stood side by side and watched a scarlet-throated hummingbird flit between clusters of foxglove. Ravno's mind riveted on the fierceness he had sensed in her before, when he had inhabited her body. He reached over and turned her to face him and opened her capa, roughly and all at once.

'Rav, no!' Her defensive reaction and the way she clutched her bunched capa at her chest snapped his mind back with sudden clarity. The regret and tenderness didn't last long as his shame carried its own bout of defense and he backed up nervously.

'I uh, I didn't, I thought, weren't you...?' Ravno stuttered helplessly.

'Jebati makian. What are you thinking? You can wait here for the boto. I'm taking the long way around.'

He looked at her, stunned, unaccustomed to her anger. She seemed taller and stronger. Even so, he couldn't bear the thought of her sledging her way through the forest alone. She would come upon the Sunberry Trench, and the Duat no less, and upon the inevitable chill that hid in folds of darkness.

'K wait. Seriously, don't go that way. I'll go, you stay here. This is ridiculous.'

She spun on him from halfway up the black steps.

'Makian, get off the dock if you mean it.' She spat the words like the side-to-side movements of the hummingbird and her throat turned scarlet—spectacular he could see even that in the failing light. He stared at her resolute yet hesitant feet on the basalt.

His mind scrambled, How did this happen so quickly? How do I make it stop?

He blurted out, 'Did you know your fearless leader, Dabi, got a letter from your enemies and she went to join the Eleven on Santulita?'

Keba didn't capture any of the small amount of genuine concern that laced his tone. But she caught his attack and turned to finish the stairs.

He quickly said, 'She went before the last quarter started. Yerek had asked her to come on the fifth day's waning.'

Keba breathed out shortly and set her jaw. After her head ducked out of sight it was as if she had never been there at all.

## An aberration

The front section of Ravno's brain felt unusually empty—incredibly immaterial. He sat with his feet dangling off the dock and let the first boto emerge and regress into the foggy canal without him. He gently bit his teeth along the delicate skin inside his bottom lip. He sat on his hands, savored the rough spruce pain on his knuckles, then let his hands rest on his legs—less conscious of them this time.

She wanted me in the parna. She wanted me to be closer. But he knew Keba disliked part of him. While she ate him with her eyes through the steam, she had been restrained. Was that why she didn't come at him with equal appetite? But it was there inside her I felt it, he thought. She wants to be closer. She wanted to.

But she wasn't. Apathetic grey crows watched her follow an unworn trail through mid-island forest and bush. Her capa, still unclasped, flapped sadly in its wetness. Her small nose brought in forest air loudly and her eyebrows were tense, unlike languid slugs on the damp ground. Keba remembered that Dabi had been reading a piece of paper at the last meeting.

Makian, he's right. Who's to say what it was? But all those details that he knew.... She decided to at least check with Dabi, or maybe Jasmin knew about it. A growing distaste irritated her tongue. Everything had been so good. Had he been nervous? But she recalled with disgust how rough he had been as he madly ripped her capa open even after the moments they shared in the parna.

Keba walked firmly through the fractured forest and Ravno boarded the next boto that came through drapes of moisture-rich air. He tightened his dimples to acknowledge the grebets and sat facing forward. His damp cloth and skirt darkened the sugar pine that wafted faintly sweet smells in the briny evening. He paddled along and numbly followed their rhythm. Ghosts boarded then went ashore as they drew closer to Duat Canal. Ravno got out and stayed on the dock at the center of Lurruna, to wait for the last length to Mara. The next boto docked and he spotted that girl again—the same girl? Unmistakably, with her round lips of silk. She got up from the bow, stepped over the saxboard and up onto the dock with her hair like brackets around her wily eyes. As Ravno approached the boto he wanted to look straight at her into those eyes but couldn't resist a switch with her instead. As his eyes fell into place, he found her looking steadfast and forward to the basalt steps as she passed him; though, she watched him from the side of her vision and he was surprised to feel her attraction. He paused after he switched back, stunned at the edge of the spruce planks before the boto.

'Ready?'

Ravno looked over to the expectant navita, whose question snapped him out of his reverie.

'Oh, I'm not... I forgot....' His feet turned his mind that turned his body around and back up the steps and away from the departing craft. The navita, Bapor's only saudara, burly and robust, glanced back in time to see the woman turn around to the boy with the sea-crushed hair. Then his paddle dug fast, through the dark waters to Mara.

'Cahaya, I'm Ravno.' The girl's long fingers closed around his cold hand like lianas on cottonwood. The somber gradation of her high cheekbones darkened around lurid eyes that were locked on his. The middle of his chest started to burn and he could feel his heart beat in his weakened stomach. He swallowed.

'Cahaya Ravno, I am Sircy. I have seen you before, around the island.'

She didn't smile and her face was still as she spoke. Though when she spoke it was like a song—not light and fairy-like but full and dark as if crafted deep in a solitary wood. He wanted her to speak again but he wasn't sure what to say next. The sliver of moon hid somewhere else in its rotation and wouldn't show itself again until the night was old; twilight faded quickly and Sircy's eyes became darker. Ravno feared she understood what he was feeling, perhaps even better than he understood himself. He wished he was back in the parna with Keba's hand in his with the warmth of the steam all around them.

'I live close by here. Are you cold, Ravno?'

He couldn't argue. His body gave small spasms that made his arm shake within the grasp of her spiny fingers. They arrived at her pack in the dark, with shimmers of winged beetles overshadowed by Notou's dim outline against the starry brilliance. Inside, she took off his capa, skirt, and cloth and wrapped him in a coarse hemp blanket. He sat on a mound of leaves and watched her as she put dried herbs and spices into a leather bag with hot rocks. The ember and starlight accentuated her rhythm of nose and upper lip like the higher ridges of Vorra Mound in sunrise red. He watched her fill the small cups and thought he saw the beginnings of a smile as she glanced up at him. He was unsure in the deceptive light.

At first he ruptured with talk, encouraged by her silence. He explained the simple mathematics of large families that became ever larger and the limited resources that dictated the need for control. The dichotomy of branding loyalists versus so-called pro-life advocates confused him. Each side, or at least some staunch believers from each side, knew one hundred percent that their approach and conviction of the situation was correct, and that the other was mistaken. How could each side be one hundred percent unmistaken? Their perceptions were convinced. It was impossible.

Like a chorus of mossy hemlock and fir, her voice, though quiet, filled the antechamber: 'I don't have any saudaris and I will not be having any children.'

In the still space after her riposte, while Sircy sipped her spicy and warming tea, Ravno heard muffled breathing in the adjoining room.

'There are seven of us in this pack, altogether. Three in the room beside us and three more in the house across the garden.' She inexplicably synced her comments with his thoughts; it shook and allured him.

After they finished their tea, she showed him where the closest lavvy sat on a slight hill back toward the Sunberry Trench. Then, back at the pack, she folded her capa like a pillow and settled closely behind him. The hemp blanket enshrouded them both as they lay on the leaves. His eyes remained open and his mind-river swished around the bends and down drops and over stones.

And what, Ravno wondered, is the water? Life. So we live in our thoughts? Well, we live through what we perceive.

He listened to Sircy's breath and matched his breathing to hers. In through the nose and down to the stomach, out from the chest and out from the nose. He had to breathe a bit quicker to match her pace. The blankets rose with their shoulders and few sounds fell around them as they lay. Her thin brows gathered at the moment he switched to her eyesight. His body just lay there. His breath came in through the nose and down to the stomach. A sharp intake of air through the mouth, and the skin around his ears and scalp tightened as his vision pounced back to his own eyes. Aron was right about the intimacy of being inside someone's head. It was like talking for hours about minute details, but all within the brief instants of a switch.

Ravno left after carefully tucking the blanket between where her chin curled against her shoulder. His gaze briefly lingered on her closed eyes. She lay awake, of course, but she let him leave in the darkness. He made his way to the trench, unconcealed. He bunched his still-damp clothing in considerate and calloused hands above his head as he swam across the canal.

Just as Ravno exited the water, Keba left his pack in Mara where she had been watching the breeze play with the black leaves. Her bare feet, numb from navigating the forest and waiting all night, led her back to her pack in Phoyara where her saudara and the others slept. Though still troubled by the evening's events, her thoughts inevitably returned to her parents. She had no idea where to find them and, in her memory, she only saw their shapes in a boto with a basket beside them. Keba also remembered a cry in the night as her mother had looked back with worry at her. Keba had hardly stayed composed; she had waited till the sounds of the paddles and hull in the water dissolved before falling with her hands in the sand and sobbing.

## Confusion around Dabi's letter and who thinks what about it

Jasmin Sanjukta held Keba tightly. Their hair mixed as storm clouds. They distressed in their speculation together about the possibility of the Eleven convincing Dabi to join them in their judgment. They wondered if Dabi had tired in resistance and if the enemy fed on her fatigue with their insatiable governance. Keba wore her disappointment plainly on her body after her friend confirmed Dabi had indeed left Lurruna before the last quarter. Jasmin Sanjukta saw the trip as a wise decision and understood the motive to get away. Advocates too involved become disillusioned and lose sight of the entire archipelago, as it were. Yet subtle unease crept between the many colors of Jasmin Sanjukta's patchwork capa.

As it happened, with the sun halfway along its cosmic path and the last of the moon unassumingly low in the blue ether, Dabi returned that same day. After they greeted each other and settled on the warm earth, Jasmin Sanjukta asked her maitatu directly about the point of her travels; the answer was vague and indirect. Dabi had retired to Santulita to meet with some family there as she had explained before her trip. Her answer for the brevity of such a journey made sense in that she wanted to keep the momentum on Lurruna. But Jasmin Sanjukta still waivered, unconvinced because of the timing and clues from what Ravno mentioned to Keba from the letter.

Dabi mulled it over and wondered why she couldn't tell Jasmin. She answered to herself that the discussions with the Eleven were in their infancy and hard to define. Yerek had proposed a licensing program for those who desired to become parents. Yerku supported the idea and explained the necessity of the approach. But Dabi was unsure whether parental screening would eliminate the unethical batsu omhaals—they would still need to penalize those who gave birth without license.

Yerek had been right though, in the letter, that Dabi's canal would be redirected from the meeting. Dabi returned to Lurruna with a clearer understanding of the Bhavata's role and even more so of her love for Jasmin Sanjukta. Dabi reasoned that Jasmin would become unnecessarily suspicious if she had known of the meeting with Yerku and Yerek, though her trust already seemed depleted in a way. Her usually vivacious eyes were held downcast and troubled. Perhaps tomorrow's batsu omhaal was the cause, as it would steal another kukui nut from the lovely chersonese of her body.

Dabi looked kindly at her true love. She spoke of how they could overcome the population mandate and lessen the awful batsu omhaals. They would educate their people and Wawasens would rise as one, from life's myriad species, and embrace the abundance of life and possibilities under their insulate skies.

Jasmin Sanjukta was not so easily placated. She inwardly questioned the usefulness of the Bhavata with a compromised leader. She went over to where Keba sat on the sand, just outside the Wawasen sitting circle on the beach side of the house. Keba split leafless hemp stems and twisted and braided the inner strings on her knee. Jasmin Sanjukta revealed that Ravno may have seen something legitimate and that the letter may have been a call to complacency and an attempt to dismantle the Bhavata House. Keba said nothing and finished the length of braided rope. She let the sun dry the small pile of gutted stems at her feet. The ocean waves continued their obsession with the shore and a gull passed high overhead, carrying an object, bright orange and lifeless, in its beak.

## No ini kayama

On the eleventh day's waning, three days before the new moon of bulanau replaced the sun in the sky, another victim and her family were branded on a bare headland in the north. The Duat and Teratas canals joined in a half circle close to Maradanicki's small cluster of packs. The sun burned away all traces of steam or mist from the scene, where they assembled.

Keba met Ravno farther down the Duat, beside Mara, as they had planned when on their way to the para zona two days prior. His face was blank, the forehead crease mostly imperceptible, and they skipped the greeting.

Keba looked at him coldly, if at all. 'You're right about the letter. Dabi just got back yesterday from Santulita. Jasmin is crushed. I hope you're happy.'

She didn't get in the boto as it pulled up and Ravno said he would see her later. The sugar pine felt oddly hard under his thighs. He shifted uncomfortably. He felt guilty that he had exposed Dabi's secret and had possibly slated the women against each other. But the guilt was heavily mixed with an accomplished sense of ownership. Wasn't it best to expose them before Dabi's plan developed further? Ravno had discovered the plan with a switch, the only action he had accomplished through his secret craft.

Even so, Keba's hard words made him feel useless to try anything against a power greater than himself.

The boto reached the spit of land before the Teratas Canal. Twenty-three people milled about and, despite his misgivings and indecision, Ravno still came to rest on his knees with two others. Ravno felt particularly unnatural in this position, with the high contrast of sun on bare land and no clouds or haze to hide behind, no Keba to depend upon. Though, he saw Keba's saudara standing fixedly within the crowd. He also noticed the man in the red capa—first he noticed the capa, then the man—and Ravno automatically switched with him. The man conversed with his kashimat's saudari. Ravno recognized her from the time with Aron by the large eucalyptus—old tree, old woman. She made a comment to the man but Ravno could only see her lips move amid the canals of her old face; the sound was lost in the wide stillness. Here, the man's chest overflowed with explicit fervor, a fervor contrary to the somber setting and the eagle grip of the Kawani's hands on the scroll. Ravno fed on this positive energy and drank it like a sea-starved grebet who's lost her way between the islands. The man dropped to his knees and tenderly helped the old woman down beside him.

The Kawani continued her statements, scrolls in hand, 'Pada sariana dari kaku sankasha noh shinboru ini naisetsu avalokana karo, kudasai.' Then the Kawani looked at each participant who would soon be inscribed with the noh.

'No viennav augliba parce koko mat ini naisetsu dans auglibs, a nirdosa no ini abisua souviens a bhavi dans nu motsu gia panta,' she chanted.

Ravno looked up and saw her eyes, but not her lips, above the scroll as she ended her speech: 'Kaku vie bezona kaku vie.' Every being depends on every other being, both now and forever.

Without giving it a thought, Ravno switched with the victim as the Ammit brought the blazing hot noh against her neck. An ugly chrysalis of shame desperately clawed the inside of her chest. Ravno could see nothing else as her hair clung to her wet face and blurred eyes; it masked her vision like clouds. But the sun still shone hotly on her tears. Either compassion or the terrible clawing inside her chest forced Ravno to plant his face on the earth even before the Kawani threw her declaration over the people, 'No ini kayama!'

The word 'kayama' overshadowed the word 'ini,' in all its supremacy. It stood as a feline over its prey, kayama over ini. Ini was shriveled and grotesque, Kayama was beautiful and proud—but the corrupt kind of beauty that fosters resentment in the onlookers. The Kawani branded a fair mark on the rest of the condemned.

On his knees with his forehead on the ground, Ravno toppled to his side. He watched the trio of designates walk sideways through his field of view to the canal, one more batsu omhaal on their list. He realized how effective the branding was. He understood how the victim would easily convince everyone she knew to obey the mandate. Weathered grass pushed against the side of his face and he absently picked at the blades. It struck him, too, that Keba must dislike his restrained approach, passive and non-committal. He lay there in the grass as a growing fetus under the late afternoon heat. How could he prove himself definitive to her while he was still unsure of which side he supported? He felt himself sway toward the decision to reject the mandate, either from his desire to please Keba or from the raw pain left inside after his switch with the victim. Either way it was curious, right after he experienced how effective the branding technique was, to realize how detrimental the batsu omhaal might be.

## Flagrant use of an unsacred thing and further disconnection

The moon had one last visible crescent ascent before sunrise on the day of the fourth historia forum. The porter had been describing vast lands covered by enormous cities connected with black veins for most of the morning. He talked of the ancient, sprawling clusters of towering packs with see-through walls. Gardens stretched as far as the horizon and large devices did the work. Bizarre systems created power to let the cities function throughout the night. Because of their mechanical suns, the sun, as they knew it, never set. The people never slept, though they reproduced at maddening rates. They combed the surface of the earth, above and below, for resources to plunder and places to keep their things. But, according to Mr. Sunshine, they lost their sense of incumbency to maintain the earth—an ironic contrast to their obsession with ownership.

The porter said, 'Don't you see, with their larger land masses and populations, that their sense of responsibility should have been equally large?' The seven looked at him quizzically.

Ravno broke the silence. 'Is it possible that they're still out there and that they will come against us and take over our islands?'

With a switch he sensed Mr. Sunshine's innate fear of invasion and pounced on him ruthlessly. 'I mean, we really have no idea what's out there, do we?' Ravno said. 'The oceans are massive and you describe other lands as massive too, so there must be millions of people out there, as you say. Or billions? Then the chances are high that they will come across our little paradise before too long....'

Payudara and the others restlessly questioned the porter with their eyes.

Mr. Sunshine looked around at them, almost fearfully, as he tried to regain composure. Then, avoiding Ravno's eyes, he said, 'You see, many cultures and people groups in the past had similarly supportable ways of life like ours, but at a time when consciousness and connection with the earth was most—'

'I'm sorry Mister,' Ravno said, 'I don't see the connection to my question.'

'...When connection with the earth was most important, the land wars and colonialism began in full force,' the porter continued, reinforced by the line of crows that cackled upon his head. 'The colonialism drove these little paradises, as you say, right out of existence. I guess you're right,' he looked Ravno straight in the eye, 'perhaps they will come, if there are any left. But as we'll soon discuss, the majority of the people were gone after the earth had changed forever.'

The porter looked around ominously and thought to himself that Wawasens had become like the ancients, in a way; the ancients saw themselves as an advanced civilization. In some ways they were, but they didn't know how to align with their environment. Or align with themselves, for that matter. They got stuck.

'Now,' Mr. Sunshine said, 'you're wondering why we talk so much about the menial aspects of the ancient lifestyle. It's because, contrary to other approaches of understanding past peoples by way of their recorded beliefs, we try understand and learn from their actual ways of doing. Though people profess to believe one thing, they often act in another way entirely. In that case, it doesn't benefit us to know what they officially believed in their written records. What they actually believed, through practice, is of interest to us.'

Aadi watched Aron's feet as he created gullies and ridges in the dirt around where he sat. Aron inwardly questioned the validity of the porter's lecture and whether to trust someone who referenced documents that only he had access to. Tap-tap. He wondered if any of it was even written down or whether it had mutated through thousands of years of oral transmission. Bapor eyed Payudara and his rough hands. The way the whole Wawasen circle behaved, through their actions, proved at least one matter: Everyone needs to find their anchor.

## Ravno and the Botorang and the view from the water

That afternoon Ravno bypassed his pack in Mara and headed straight to the east beaches as an afterthought. On his way he crossed through the knee-pocked meadow where he had viewed his first batsu omhaal with Keba. He saw the spot where the fire had come to die; it left but a dismal ring of charred black and grey dust. The tears of Zus had long since dissipated. Ravno gathered a handful of black embers and entered the tree line. He collected slender sticks and dry bark on his way to the beach.

The late afternoon wind weakened along the quiet coast. A pair of raccoons dug in the sand for butter clams and a pelican flew along the surface of the sea. Ravno watched the two raccoons from the trees until they wobbled off past the rock pile. He built up a fire on a flat, rocky outcrop that overlooked the ocean. Peninnah was in the distance, sun-brightened against a cimmerian curtain. Terns played through the last rays that grew distant from Lurruna's shores. Ravno warmed his feet and hands and watched the fire's heat drive dampness from chert depressions on the rocky platform. He moved to the other side of the flames to warm his lower back. He adjusted his eyes to the dark sky, his mind open and at rest. The gentle warmth gave Ravno a false sense of confidence as he sat on his flat outpost. Though comfortable on the beach alone, the ever-changing elements and the grand mysteries of the sea beyond made him vulnerable. Would it be foolhardy to cross the channel in the evening—now, after the sun was gone? It would be hard to judge distance and easy to lose direction, especially as the wind picked up and drove away the clouds. The exposed, moonless sky tossed the ocean to and fro. He settled back in front of the fire to face the sea and reached his fingers to the small flames.

All of a sudden he looked up. He glimpsed a flickering light in the dark sea. The light came from a spot on the beach, or just up from the edge of the shore. On the beach? he wondered. Ravno looked over to see a muscular woman, surprisingly discernible in the near-darkness, grip her oars with commanding ease. Gripping her oars.... Ravno looked back to the shore, nearer now, and to the figure that reflected with firelight. In his mind he felt Mr. Sunshine's stubble brush his ear and he shook his head quickly, this way and that way, and fear flung from his hair. He saw the woman again, with one oar tucked under her arm and her hands signing incomprehensibly. He saw his own hands respond confidently. One of his shoulders held a coiled rope. Ravno saw the shore again and noticed the figure scattering the fire. The fingers at the base of his skull shattered and Ravno startled in the thick, ocean air with hot ember fingers.

Ravno had just observed the shore from afar. The last time he saw it that way had been during the day. He again recalled the maro bulanbederatzi on his face and Keba's arm around his neck; her capa torn in two like a temple curtain. My switch was not with her on the beach. I saw the beach. When I switched the beach was wide, me first, Keba second. His second hand absently crushed over his sea hair, firmly. He listened intently for the people of the sea, and waited for the woman's oars to strike a wave. His eyes gradually drew images from the pockets of night and he saw a boto there—and maybe there.

But of course the Botorang were masters of the night sea and Ravno couldn't see them—Wawasens could never see them. But Wawasens didn't know they were there. I know they're here, their eyes are watching me now, he thought with excitement. I can prove it.

Both Ravno's hands were planted on the marine sandstone and both his eyes watched, as he switched to the boy in the boto, his own silhouette on the black trees. Was it still a standoff if both people were watching the same person? Everything changes with a slight shift of perspective.

The woman's arms and oars worked as one to whisk the small craft south. The chert-filled sandstone met the ocean abruptly where the spruce and ash crowded small patches of foxglove, and the boto slipped around the corner. But Ravno maintained the switch. He mocked the coastal cold that crept up his back and neck; the pinch that sent his mind reeling was colder. His fingers still braced the rock and his eyes blended with the boy's eyes in the boto. The fingers at the top of his spine braced and squeezed and pulled as he watched the sandstone come close to the boto. Through the boy, Ravno glanced back at the oar-woman then up at his hands and thick fingers as they grabbed and pulled at the rock. Up, up his body went and in the trees; the branches seemed to bow to create a path for him.

Ravno stayed on his rock in a yogic sea pose with his eyes closed. The boy from the boto came through the forest as a flea through the fur on a feline—nimble and deft, though small, in the great woods. The boy approached with no sound, effortlessly. Ravno turned to face the boy's direction and the lightless tree line, though he still watched through the boy's eyes. Only the boy's insides moved. His heart pumped blood around his limbs and his lungs pulsed with air. His nostrils flared and his eyes trained forward. Ravno disconnected their sight web and looked at the boy through his own eyes. The boy looked right back. Though the darkness limited visibility, Ravno and the boy saw each other. Many year's worth of questions filled the ten-paced gap between them. Fear, suspicion, gravity, love and even curiosity suspended to leave only recognition. This basic discovery left them both silent and peaceful. Ravno let the boy's shape dissolve into the trees.

So the Botorang are out there, Ravno acknowledged. I've seen them and they've seen me and we're both here.

Ravno breathed in and out and became aware of the blanket of cold around his body. Even so, he stripped and walked up to his waist in the sea. After a quick dive, he took his clothes to return through the night to his pack.

# 4/ bhula susthatara

## The twins are discovered

Temperance hung and swung on the balance beams while her mat met the Ishi lady in the large central hut. Great furry clouds cruised the high seas of the sky. Miniature people formed never-ending lines through the grass and sand and up the trees and out of sight. Temperance never let the flower of the day far from reach—a marigold, pale orange with yellow edges and white puddles with black spots inside. The black spots in the flower were like eyes that Ra could switch with. They were like stars with an embryo within, like pregnant stars that rested inside the folds of delicate flower skin, so soft to the touch.

Inside the main hut, Helena lay on her back and rolled her head to the Ishi, whose hands rubbed slowly against a rough hemp cloth.

'What is it Vesta? Is my child healthy and getting ready to come out?' She caught her breath as she felt a strong jostle and turn from inside her round belly.

'Both of your unborn children are doing wonderfully, Helena.'

Stars and nebulas explode without a sound, deep in the universe. Snails dry up in the summer heat and cry soundless tears. Similarly, Helena's heart quietly weakened; her eyes filled like spring pools. The women could hear Temperance hum and patter around in the diffused sunlight. Vesta lay her strong hands on Helena's naked belly and said, 'They will both grow up to be strong and capable and full of life. You and Sebastian will give them the best of environments, along with our community.'

Helena couldn't keep Vesta's steady gaze. She let her eyes spill the spring pools through her curls to the stage on which she lay. She swallowed and noisily took in air through her wet nostrils.

'Is... You saw my saudara, Ravno. Is he doing all right?' Helena asked.

The Ishi deliberated at her side then brought her arms away from the pregnant woman.

'Ravno is doing all right. In fact, he is healthy and strong and full of life.'

Helena felt uncomfortable in her own smile, though it was genuine. She kept her smile but let the positive emotion drain away behind it. I bear two more, growing quickly within me. They're getting ready to enter our world no matter what is out here. They are so small and young and full of life....

Vesta went to Temperance outside and Helena mourned in silence. Helena felt no regret, no disappointment, not even fear—just sadness. A helpless flavor of sadness, sticky inside her bones.

## A sterile conversation between lovers

Rain fell as dust and filled the spaces between sea rocks and arbutus trees. The spinach darkened where Ravno's fingers held it against smoked halibut as he placed it in Keba's mouth. She chewed slowly, her teeth broke the fresh vegetable and mashed it with saliva, and the halibut sheaves busted in fibrous folds. Her teeth and tongue and glands all massaged the food into rich, digestible nourishment. The smoky fish and bitter spinach became her island, for moments. Keba rolled some halibut into a larger leaf and brought it to Ravno to bite in half. She finished the last of it. Her communion shocked him, as he felt considerably untrustworthy. Yet she sat in front of him, each moment between them like learning the beginning steps of a dance.

'So, how is Jasmin? You've been working over there, right?' Ravno asked, but looked only at the coconut halves that held the spinach and halibut. He waited for her response before he glanced up to meet her fiery eyes.

'Mhmm, I've been there working on the drapes. Most of them have worn-out hemp rings.' Keba broke their gaze to briefly inspect the black smudges at his hairline below the ocean spray atop his head. The smudges were less black than the kuro verve on his large earlobes. She looked at his black earlobes, black forehead and huge black pupils that supplicated her heart. She added, 'Jasmin is all right now that Dabi shared with her the real reason why she went to Santulita.'

Ravno had been looking again at the small shreds of spinach that clung helplessly at the smooth coconut bowl's edge, while he waited for the next step in the dance. But with that comment he found her eyes again. His lips began to form a question but it didn't come out.

Keba said, 'Dabi didn't go to abandon the Bhavata House or to conspire against us with the Eleven. She only met with Yerek and Yerku to help them understand why we are so opposed to batsu omhaals and to begin a process of transformation—or at least that's how Dabi sees it—into effective ways of managing our numbers.'

'But, really? It seemed obvious in the letter...,' Ravno said, sure of what he saw when he had switched with Dabi that morning. But even as he tried to excuse the error, he remembered having been stuck with Dabi's reading direction, as he had followed her eyes at the bottom of the letter, Dari candras amaiera fasea kami avasini atton. He had been unable to force her eyes back to the top to read the full context.

'You were wrong about Dabi, Ravno. Obviously you saw something but it made Jasmin and I work against her. It made an unnecessary obstacle in front of us.' Keba felt empowered as she echoed the points of discussion the women had yesterday, though the words still felt contrived.

'What do you believe, are you against us?' Keba said.

Again Ravno's gut was empty and pulled at his heart. He wanted to react with profound and convincing parlance to show her his worth. But the emptiness prompted his mind river to pour continuously and haphazardly. Somewhere under all the swirling and crashing, the point about Dabi and Jasmin Sanjukta realigning held its ground. That point almost cleared to the surface of his mind to tell him what to do. But it did not. He was distracted with her eyes and the thick but light rain and the shared meal and the emptiness in his gut and everything else that helped him stubbornly avoid restitution. He sat silently. The dance between them paused awkwardly and the roots of her disappointment spread further through the ground. It became a rancor tree that grew up into the clouds.

Ravno moped. I switched with Dabi and saw what I could see but the timing was off and I misunderstood the point. Useless. He wondered why the peculiarity happened to him in the first place. It felt like a mockery developing inside him to push him off the island. He had already pushed Keba away on the dock, and had forced her further away with Sircy. He couldn't handle it. He didn't know what to do.

Keba watched his fingers flicking—forefinger, thumb, and forefinger again. She wondered why he didn't apologize. She judged him to be like a baby crow thrown down from the nest by the parents. She knew she was like that crow too, in her situation, but at least she kept her composure.

After Ravno left, Keba was the crow without the composure. The aching moment automatically made her think of her parents. Where were they now? Almost three years ago, Keba and her saudara had gone south from Pangsi and followed the belly of the beast out of Oura, in through Midden and up north into Pangitain. Her saudara had wanted to stop at Sekitsui but Keba pushed onward, half-fleeing, as far from that evening as possible, but half-looking for their lost family. Their parents had gone the opposite way, north from Pangsi. They had traveled up the tail of the archipelago and could have stopped at the end, on Passat. But who says they stopped there? Perhaps they had pushed across the open ocean to complete the circle at the head of the archipelago, squeezing between Sekitsui and Lurruna to come to rest on Peninnah. Keba wanted to continue across the channel to the head island as a finale of her search. If they weren't there, she could accept it and settle on Peninnah. Or she'd be ever transient through the archipelago. Or her obsession would drive her onwards and out from under the insulate skies of Wawasen. What was beyond? Was it better or worse?

Then, of course, there was Ravno, with his kuro and ocean spray and lost eyes. Keba wanted to see, if only for an instant, what it looked like from where he sat. How did he see her? What was his next plan? He could come with her; her saudara could stay happily behind on Lurruna. Wasn't her saudara the last factor, the condition that determined where she stayed and when she left? For it was he, out of all eight thousand, five hundred and ninety-seven Wawasens, who had reported to the Eleven what his parents had created. Samato: Their parent's third child, the great iniquity, untimely peccancy, the push off the beach and out into the great, wild ocean. Their parents decided to evade the inevitable batsu omhaal of the family. They fled.

Fine rain gathered on Keba's double fishbone on her walk back to her pack. She made mental plans for when and how to leave Lurruna. She dreamed of meeting the littlest one again and holding her tender fingers.

## Following the boy and the other two Botorang

Ravno was up long before the sun warmed the red dirt and while the night wind still disclosed its direction on the waters. He didn't completely confess to himself the reason for his early expedition until he saw them through morning fog on the south bank of the Sunberry Trench. Even then, he tried to act surprised to himself when he saw them. He got winter bumps because he felt sheepish for pretending. He rubbed his arms as if the bumps meant he was cold.

Ravno saw the ripples first and knew no Wawasen botos tread the canals at this young hour. The three Botorang stashed their skiff under the dock, where Sircy had hooked Ravno from inside the gills, and they slid discreetly over the bank. Ravno stood stock-still when he spotted the people from the water and watched them with his own eyes. Then he sat down in the long, course cordgrass across the canal as they disappeared through foggy feathers. He shut his eyes and folded his mind fingers in an icy embrace to watch them go, with them.

He switched between the three Botorang to see them all and to see them well:

Tetora was the one from Ravno's switch that night on the beach. He wore a weathered hemp strap around his shoulder—the strap hard to discern from his skin—which stayed an unsheathed knife at his side. A well-worn cloth was slung across his hips. On his head sat short, roughly cropped hair, like pac choi, most probably trimmed with that knife. Sharp eyes, sharp nails, sharp knife.

Shisen was the oar-woman with Tetora in the boto that same night, when Ravno had seen himself from Tetora's eyes on the sandstone spit. Her strength was evident even in the ever-dim dawn light and she was also uncovered but for her bottom cloth. In her second hand hung a hemp haversack.

And Chichi had incredible large and all-seeing eyes—a joy to switch with. Ravno could see so much of Tetora and Shisen from Chichi's eyes. He, or maybe she, was coconut-milk white, tall and slender and conspicuously white, like the face of the waxing sliver moon. No clothing, just vine-like bangles on his or her wrists. All but the bangles and her earlobes were white. He had kuro verve, which Ravno expected to see, and his black lobes stood out against the rest of his whiteness. So she was he, judging by the lobes.

Though Ravno himself couldn't see well in the early non-light, he could through the Botorang's eyes—particularly with Chichi. It looked like a desaturated daytime, almost, with low contrast shadows silverscreened on surprisingly ungrainy textures, as the three snuck through dwellings at closest reach. They picked up carelessly placed items, admittedly hard to find in Sircy's pack, like dried husk for fire fuel or a stray piece of hemp string under a stool. They put their treasures into Shisen's haversack. Ravno sat enraptured, his body in the cordgrass, as his mind watched the three fleet-footed foreigners work quickly with measured countenance.

Chichi lumbered over to where Sircy lay asleep, under the hemp blanket on a pile of leaves. Her head rest peacefully on her black folded capa. Enough fear rose in Ravno's true throat to shift his true body and flutter the eyelids. They take random treasures and small children but what do they do with the adults? Ravno's body tensed as he felt Sircy's attractive gravitation pull Chichi toward her, the call exuding even in her sleep. But fascination and intrigue spread over the white Botorang's body and Ravno relaxed in his grass nest, as he understood Chichi's motivation to pause; Chichi was curious about her and wondered who she was. Ravno, on the other hand, gazed greedily at Sircy and drank her mystery and divulged in her beauty. In complete disregard for her well-being, he willed Chichi to steal the hemp sheet too so he could lose himself in more of her silverscreened skin.

Ravno's intent did not affect the towering Botorang. Instead, he looked over to Shisen's signed remark and followed her out. The icicle fingers in Ravno's head groaned with growing cracks and splintered all over the cordgrass. Ravno sat slouched and breathed heavily.

What am I doing? I need to use this with purpose, he thought. I'll watch them and catch them in the pack. I need to respect what I've developed, and—and the thought of Sircy and her abrupt softness interrupted his anxious questions. His rivers and streams became a marshy delta with no ocean end. He forgot to breathe until he realized the Botorang were gone. The three people of the water left only faint ripples in their wake and insufficient air in Ravno's lungs.

## So many and so much

Mere hours before the utaran solstice, while Ravno digested his breakfast and his Botorang adventures from bulanau's first quarter, Mr. Sunshine spoke of the population in ancient countries. He related it to some belief groups' written cultural mandates and the explosion of rewarding propagation. He compared that to the one-child limit and its impact on generations, how the will of The Just Cucumber forbade controlled conception, and a sundry. The porter called it the Classical Mis-education and Mis-defined Enlightenment.

Aron questioned his arrogant and disdainful barrage against the ancients. Shouldn't we respect our elders? Aron wondered. It has been so long, how can Mister be sure of his accusations? But, although it was a forum, Aron withheld his concerns. He rather resolved to discuss these thoughts with Ravno at a later time. Aron was sure his friend was unconvinced of the porter's authority and trustworthiness—the perfect candidate for his intended monology.

Mr. Sunshine remarked on archaic peoples' amazing surgical talents and advancements in mapping the human body. He also explained that they had, however, a nonsensical disconnect from other living things of their time. As an example, he told how their resources and infrastructure were centered on the use of independently-powered personal vehicles to get from one place to another and how, in turn, they became dependent on the resources and failing infrastructure to keep those vehicles powered. A logical congruity with nature flaunted about them, accessible, but remained tasteless to their estranged appetites.

'The bulk of their legacy is floating round and round and saturating our ocean,' Mr. Sunshine said, 'most especially so just a few quarters' boto ride away from here....'

Most eyes of the group followed the porter's outstretched, hairless arm north, to the open ocean, a ubiquitous horizon past the mouth of the Hanashi Canal.

'...Which is why most of us only eat freshwater fish.'

Some eyes in the circle watched the horned lark play on the low branches of the sitka spruce, while other eyes watched Aron watch Ravno.

Ravno watched inside his own brain. He replayed the long white limbs and hemp strings, straps and knives, oar-arms, breathing shoulders and illuminated darkness—a sparkling confection inside his lids. Though the skill of switching had strengthened, whether he recognized it or not, he still could not reach to the past and see what the ancients saw, with their world of black veins and perpetual suns and herds and herds of people. True, he could not see what they saw; they were all dead. But in his dream that night an intense and noisy presence flooded those black veins and ran the course of the gigantic, ancient islands. Boto upon boto moved ferociously through kurumi ink canals. Large and bulky ones, and slim and colorless ones, rounded giant loop-de-loops and made the most awful vibrations in his head. He wondered if perhaps he did have some connection with the ancients and if he had only begun to uncover a step up to the past. But before his dream he ran into Keba and their discourse left his mouth dry, chin heavy, and cheeks warm—the perfect climate for nightmares.

## Keba's discourse with Ravno—and emptiness

At first they didn't say much with their mouths or hands. But their bodies yelled out—their faces furrowed, their shoulders hunched, their legs shook. Both of them were focused on their own body and didn't watch or listen to the other in attempt to connect, but by way of defence. Strangers have said more words to each other in less time, though with less communicated in more time, but at least with an attempt to connect, in time. Ravno's fingers pinched the skin on his chin and pulled on it and let it go. His fingers worked their way up his jaw almost to where his black lobes suspended as cherry leaves.

'Mister said today that there used to be way more people around than there are now,' he said.

They spoke in parables when they both came together and didn't know what to say first. He could've said, 'I feel confused about our attempt to control the population of our islands. What do you think about it?' with more appropriate transparency. But he continued, 'And they had ways to control their population, though lots of people didn't bother.'

'Did they burn a symbol of iniquity into the flesh of the people that didn't bother, and into their babies' flesh?'

Keba's voice was hot and unapologetic. She could've said, 'I don't feel our batsu omhaals are the best way to control the population. In fact they horrify me,' and come closer to a connection with him than she did with the sting of her accusatory tone. She did sense the undesired effect it had in his defeated slouch, undesired yet satisfying, and for a short instance considered a softer approach.

The source of light had almost disappeared but still flung remnants through their insulate skies. Ravno pinched his chin a bit more—and swallowed. And unfolded his legs and brushed the red dirt off the side of his shins.

'K, I guess at that point when there are so many people you wouldn't even need the noh or any other signs because the people would be all around you and you wouldn't really have a choice because what room would be left for the new ones?' Ravno said.

He raised his brows like a mirror of the porter's flying hands and his brain-hinge defined above his eyes like the morning ocean's horizon.

He added, 'I don't understand how they just kept going and going like that, adding to an uncontrollable population.'

Keba said, 'I could see us doing the same without some education about it. Don't we just keep going with our own routine and keep to ourselves? If we do something wrong or are uncertain about a choice we make, don't we feel pressure to emphasize the best parts and bury the worst? And we just keep doing what we think is best.'

Ravno took the liberty to attempt some transparency. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean if we actually talk about the stuff we struggle with, then other people who struggle with those same things will find support through us,' Keba said, 'or be fortunate enough to avoid them before they reach the same point. Like how people struggling to care for their children feel pressure to show that nothing is wrong and then other people who shouldn't have any children are disillusioned into thinking they should.' She paused but still breathed as if talking in streams. 'Or what if I told you about how my parents ran away with their third child and abandoned my saudara and me? Maybe then you'd be more sensitive to how I feel about the batsu omhaals.'

Even if he could switch with her at that moment it wasn't necessary to feel her anguish as it poured down her face and between her fingers. One third of him recognized the need to hold her and have it pour over his shoulder, but two thirds left him to hug only his knees and wonder why he hesitated.

After she steadied her breath, she described to him how she used to have a second name: Karan. So her short name used to be Keba, not K. Her mat and ottsa forced her and her saudara to drop the Karan and create for themselves a different circumstance. Her parents pulled away into a pale and cloudless evening sky, leaving her as K.

Oh, K, please care for your saudara, her mat had been thinking in her conscious thoughts. Under those thoughts, safely tucked from her conscious cognition, her mind had added, And come find us when you can.

# 5/ mati

## Ravno's descent quickens

Two nights after Ravno's uncomfortable dream with awful vibrations, Helena told him she was expecting twins. This, he knew, would bring her family over the limit of two children. Ravno also knew the batsu omhaal would crush the tender core of his saudari; the glaring noh would sit beneath her once-happy curls. The Kawani's proclamation would echo forever round her once-peaceful mind. But Ravno heard the news with a detached disinterest. He was unable to show sympathy, though he knew he ought to, like when he wasn't able to touch Keba as she dissolved in the cadaverous dusk. Beside Helena, Sebastian sat as an oak among oaks—still, silent, defined yet invisible.

Leaving Sebastian and Helena and her heavy heart and hatch, Ravno headed to the east-side beach to see something remarkable. He hoped to make something remarkable happen, but at the very least to see it. The primed sun and sand waited expectantly. A tarn cut blue and dove into the sea. Ravno's feet toyed absently in the rough coast soil, but it hardly distracted his mind. He waited for the remarkable nothing. Tears piled up as his eyes hovered where Keba had stood there on the beach four months ago. He bit the inside of his lip and drew and released a sharp breath. He had created the rift between Keba and himself. This difficulty was far harder to accept than if caused by another. His own actions were possibly what held him back from the ability to switch at all. He wondered if he had even made up the experience, though there were legitimate proofs that he had switched. But makian, why doesn't it just leave me alone? he thought. Maybe it has and now I'm done with it and just like everybody else.

Though Ravno presumed he probably could still switch, a taste like burning milk simmered in the bottom of his throat and kept him from exploring it past the thought stage. It was an invisible suffocation; he wanted to switch but he could not. He wanted the situation with Keba to happen one way, but because of his own actions it happened a different way. He could not do much about it now. Ravno felt there should be some action he could take, but that particular thought brought him back to thinking about what he wanted in the first place, and he got the burning milk taste again in the bottom of his throat. He stood on the beach in the evening sun, outwardly apathetic as Keba had said.

## Out with the old, in with the new

At a point in time, yesterday becomes today. Mr. Sunshine held this and other concepts carefully between his large hands and flung them high in the air, in the center of the seven, and let them land haphazardly, like birdseed, and allotted recklessly among their minds.

'Despite their advanced technology and knowledge that enabled them to plant and harvest good, pure foods,' Mr. Sunshine said, 'they still added unneeded chemicals and preservatives to their diet. They sustained comical infrastructure for living spaces and food sourcing—all again in the name of the most Holy Profit. They had much to learn but it was too late in the end. People got larger and things got hotter. The solar storms stripped their simul-suns; the seas and volcanoes vanquished their over-valued dirt. They took to the caves and thus the time of the Ada Era began when our species was beaten down to focus on only one thing: survival.'

The porter raked his eyes over their faces. He noted Ravno's face held less color but more contrast than usual. He continued.

'Before the period of survival they had viewed their world as infinite, their spirits as infinite, yet tangible life as extremely finite between birth and death. We are the opposite: the world is finite, our spirits are finite, yet our lives are infinite as we tread the red earth.'

Mr. Sunshine paused.

Yolotli hesitated, then asked, 'Don't... we also... begin through conception and die through death?'

'Hardly. Yes, we do, Yolo, but it's how we react to that span in comparison, and to the impact we leave behind, that differs. The beginning of life, for the ancients, was through the birth canal. Then the middle, with fear, and necessary frameworks to rectify death. Then it was the end in their distraught finality, when they died. Whereas we start as mere stars in our mat's womb and never really end, as our life continues everywhere we've walked. When we die and are consumed by the birds don't our footsteps still remain?'

Hardly, Ravno thought. Our footsteps dissolve in the weather and our pieces are spread with the flight of the crows.

## How Keba and Ravno reunite

That evening the full moon and an empty heart filled the insulate Wawasen sky like a predictable lovers' ballad. Oh heart, canst thou find it within thee to merely repeat yonder moon's reflected light, as to brighten darkest valleys of love's abstraction? Cosmic brilliance laughed in reply, Hark! Dost thou conceive mine light be held so greedily? And though reflected light of moon's face showed Ravno his muse, thereupon the ballad, Ravno's heart yet sulked, layered with a despondent lacquer.

After the historia forum, when the porter mentioned the ancients' retreat to the caves, Ravno disembarked from a slow moving boto. He got off where the Olive Fork meets the Sunberry canal and, after a stop at the lavvy hill, spent a moment at the east beach. Rather than step foot on the sand and tide-wet rocks he merely glanced at it with the top of his vision and left his pupils to sweep the floor.

With twilight, his feet brought his body and limbs over the field where he first saw the Kawani's claws on the scroll. He stumbled in a dip in the ground and his jostled vision caught Keba's shoulders alight with perigean moon dust. Her silence frightened yet invited him to sit beside her and stare into the long gone fire used to heat the noh for Zus. He sat.

'Ravno....' Keba let the silence complete her thought, but unexpectedly. As he said her name in his head, in an equally silent reply, Ravno's insides surged with a sweet weakness. He realized he loved her still, despite what happened between them and his own discouraged heart. Keba. Keba Karan. Kebakaran. He almost smiled to himself but the dried salt of his sadness sat along his cheeks and stuck his expression flat and empty.

'Where are you going?' She still hadn't looked at him.

'I have no idea.' He noticed he spoke from some base level in the container of his body; whatever she asked he would answer with no filter. He would be candid and honest to her questions. Would he voluntarily contribute unelicited comments or feelings in the raw? Wait and see. Wait and see.

'I still can't believe you did that.'

'I wish it never happened. There are so many other things I could've done instead.'

'It really scared me, Ravno.'

He forgot how long it was before he replied, 'I wish you had responded to it differently, though. Like if you jumped on me and started kissing me so I could hardly breathe.'

He wasn't sure if she smiled when he looked at her at the end of his comment. The moon's ballad is difficult to interpret at times. But she did look at him and it was incredible to see her eyes in all their dark fragility. At that moment he wished he was turnip-white Chichi to see her clearly in the dusk.

'I wasn't expecting you to do that. And it was so rough, Ravno. You scared me. I hated it.'

He looked at her. 'I know. I'm sorry.'

Somewhere a galaxy exploded in a silent frenzy of orangey pinks with hazy gases and red minerals unknown to species on earth. The beauty of it was overwhelming. That may have been the faint blink of light Ravno saw in the sky. Though, the explosion would not be seen on earth for a few hundred thousand years. By then Ravno would be long gone—but would his footsteps remain? It's hard to judge using intergalactic timing; many things seem so relative and dizzying. In the same way, Keba's hand on his arm felt like it happened both in the past and the future, which together create the present. Either way and whenever it happened, his hand responded with a somber eagerness and he turned to sit facing her. His first arm leaned across her lap on the night earth.

'Where have you been?' he asked her quietly, face-to-face, eyes downcast.

'I've been avoiding you and waiting for you all at the same time.'

His second hand unclasped the asparagus-green capa that draped her shoulders. Moon dust spilled all over her chest. His fingers, as they moved the material, were like Vesta's voice coaxing leaves of lavender and sage. Their bodies flattened the capas that lay beneath them. The capas flattened long, steam-moistened grasses and their legs moved round and round to write their own love-soaked stanzas. That galaxy, its colorful destruction subsiding into a hundred light-years' expanse, ignored this lovers' chemistry and minor explosion. The feeling was mutual, so lost were Keba and Ravno in each other. Their individual skins became one as they surrendered definition in the nightfall.

As their pulses became steady and slowed from a canter, Ravno listened to her breath and matched his rhythm to hers. In through the nose and down to the stomach, her body draped over his. Out from the chest and out from the nose, her head against his chest. And, be it abstruse in the benighted obscurity, the sudden deep, cold pinch at the top of his spine told him the shapes and treetop silhouettes were being viewed from her eyes—from her eyes! The salt-crusted boy face couldn't hold back his pleasured grin. To feel her closeness, of body and of heart, in the delusted aftermath of lovemaking, shook the ground on which he lay. Yet a film of empty disappointment coated the inside of her chest. He sensed this along with filaments of subdued excitement. Her brow scrunched as thought slowly turned to icy command and Ravno's eyes once again looked from his own eyes and raced around in their own sockets.

'This field is miraculous,' he said as they detached themselves. How quickly it all changes with a little making of love. They cleaned carefully with his cloth and he shook out the capas. 'You're timed with the full moon?'

'Right now, more or less. Though last month I was done bleeding by mid-waxing. But I'll be timed up now, until around bulanazpi.'

'Tam'ini miwa tekina.' You're incredible, he said.

Ravno's thoughts clung to the switch he just had with her. There it was! he delighted. There was Keba and the switch and the plane that he crossed like a hemp sheet on leaves. The plane wasn't physically there but it was integrally there. The plane spread wide and tucked beneath and it held their dear bodies. And, though the field was knee-pocked with sadness, Ravno walked lightly across it with Keba firmly beside him. Good night, moon ballad. Good night, sacred heart.

# 6/ penemua kembali

## You don't know about what you can't see

Early early, before the terns left their beachfront sticks to fish and before the broad-faced moon drew cinereal fingers back beneath dawn's arousal, Ravno quietly flattened his papyrus switch-list on the earth. In the quiet pack, his calloused hands that rubbed against the dry paper in raw morning silence were like squelches and screams of caspian terns all a balking. But Keba lay still on the leaves in his pack, breath slow and asleep. The kurumi ink list of letters and words formed meaning in time through the newborn light, as he strained his eyes: Cokha lehen, capa kokkino capa morea, and bigar, boto di saya ini dan Mister.

No, that's wrong, he knew. Lehen, koko plaj timur motsu botorang. First, the Botorang on the east beach. He scratched bold kurumi lines through the numbers to start with the actual beginning. He recalled the vision four months ago when he saw himself and Keba on the sand from the boto with Tetora and Shisen. Well it must've been them, anyway, he decided.

Keba awoke and they ate together. His switch list wanted so badly to poke its frayed head out from where he kept it hidden. After breakfast they went west, retracing Keba's retreat back from the para zona—but in reverse. After the swim across the Duat canal, during which they held their clothing above the water, Ravno pointed the way through the first few strides of bush. As he paused to tighten the hemp line that held up his cloth she took the lead and raced through the thicket. He enjoyed the tree shoots that whipped his face as he shadowed her. Vorra's needle peeked through breaks in the foliage to their second and the density of steam increased after they crossed the Sunberry. They walked beside one another and came upon a tall arbutus, its red arms reaching out to preserve its own clearing.

As he looked up at the arbutus, Ravno asked, 'K, you want to climb this one and watch the zona from up there?' He had to look away as she scrambled above him, showering him with bits of scaled bark. He left his clothes beside hers on the papery ground and shimmied up the polished branches to join her near the crown. There they perched on facing branches, and looked west over the halcyon canopy at the para zona's rising steam, lit amber in mid-morning sun. To the north sat Vorra, its distinct marker in the blue, and in the southeast Notou Mound, which hid the grounds of Pelajaran. The low crest of Sekitsui Island was barely visible in the jumbled horizon soup to the south.

Keba gazed slightly past Ravno.

'Oh, there's a nest,' she said. He looked over his shoulder to a tung tree that flowered clusters of white petals with purple throats in array. Hidden from all ground animals was the nest of a grey crow, tucked in the crotch, where the trunk met a higher offshoot.

'Couldn't see that from where we were before, could we?' he said. 'Had no idea it was even there....'

Keba sensed the overly wistful notes in his voice and her eyes asked for more explanation.

'Well, you don't really know about what you can't see,' he said. 'I mean, you can imagine and guess and sometimes you're right but you don't truly know unless you see it.'

'And by see you mean touch, feel, smell—'

'Sure K, the wind's in your hair. But, I guess,' he realized he had again been speaking in parables, 'what I'm saying is I've begun to see...,' and he trailed off, as he knew it wasn't much more than that; and to say it, to honestly and outright say it, would be the most honest thing to do. The nest of the grey sat, twiggy and round, weathered like Keba's hair.

'Thing is I can see through other people's eyes.' Without waiting for a reaction and perhaps to avoid any recusant response, he added, 'So turn around and hold up some fingers and I'll tell you how many.' She swiveled on her branch and held a two on her fingers close to her boyish breast. She waited.

'K, I can't see anything with your eyes closed.'

She laughed a short spurt of excited disbelief and opened her eyes. It's possible at that moment the first sliver of joy, back from its sea dance in the air, quivered in the top of her lip. They reenacted his time with Temperance and the flowers, but now Ravno sat up high and off the ground, as he savored the sensation of the icy pinch and finding the window. Their delight in being together lured cautiously under their dangling feet, pressured by the weight of what came before. They wanted what they had, but at least still had what they have, while they sat in the crux of the arbutus under insulate Wawasen skies.

'At first were you worried that you had a problem or something?' She moved to his branch, grateful to rearrange her bum on the bark, and grateful, too, that it was an arbutus and not a spruce.

'Not really, but Helena made me go to the Ishi.'

Keba wrinkled her nose. 'That guy creeps me out like he's out to find something wrong with you.'

'Oh, I didn't go to the one in Phoyara. I went to Vesta. Near Notou. Aron brought me there—though I've been there before.'

'Did she notice anything unusual?'

'No, not that I could tell,' Ravno said. 'But that's when we ran into Jasmin, who got us to come to the Bhavata. And then I saw you again. So I'm happy I went to her nonetheless.' He laughed.

They danced like the night before, when they were back on the ground and on their capas. There was a crackle of sticks every time they moved. He was still warmer and warmer under her body, and faster, but he looked forward rather to the slowing of blood and the freezing of the fingers of his mind; he looked forward to the slowing of mindful thoughts giving way to the free birds, their bodies aligned with legs in a stitch. He matched her breath, in through the nose, he smelled her hair, out through the nose. He moved his leg, he bent his arm. His fingers lay at rest in the sheets of papery arbutus. Her fingers traced his forearm. Down on the ground, he couldn't see the empty nest of the grey crow through his own eyes or through hers when he switched with her. But he could feel sincere joy in her core, a buoyancy unfamiliar to the red forest floor.

## How Ravno realizes what he must do

The frequency of batsu omhaals this year is unusual. And so, two days after they climbed the arbutus, and when Keba's uterus was again refreshed as the forthcoming new moon of bulanost, Keba and Ravno and Jasmin came to support yet another victimized family in the process of their public marking. Dabi, as usual, travelled from village to village to educate the people about their responsibility with population control.

The small crowd converged near the Kuroshio Drifts in the white north of Lurruna. They gathered in a sun-bleached field surrounded by black walnut groves. A phenomenon of ocean air temperatures, unfettered chemical bitteries, and the early solstice light flung a sugar plum band low in the sky. The purple banner of shame suffused the trees and surrounded a teenage boy, branded along with his mat and two younger saudaris. Their ottsa was nowhere in sight since the last term of the pregnancy; only the boy and three girls stood exposed in the field. Roka, the boy, had his deferentectomy rendered at daybreak in Phoyara. He was weak in the groin and unsteady on skinny legs. The Ammit's hand brought him to his knees with momentary relief. Shortly thereafter, though, and with a squeeze, the universe closed in on Roka's throat and he could barely whisper his suppliance to forgo the brand for his new baby saudari. The groan, as it was more of a groan than a whisper, was cut thin by the Kawani as she looked at his mark and cried, 'No ini kayama!'

Though Ravno wanted to abort his switch with Roka, as it was so troubling and pregnant with disgrace, he clutched the icy fingers tightly and with stubbornness. He pressed his forehead into his forearms on the sandy grass. His host's eyes were hazy and Ravno watched with the boy as he despairingly fixated on the clearly inscribed noh on the first side of his baby saudari's fleshy neck. The Ishi passed the baby to the mat. The boy's hatred welled in gales but tempered with shame. Roka glared through hot tears. What an unnecessary punishment. What a heavy sign to bear. Just a baby, unable to stand, and all her life she'll be singled out and alone.

Alone.

Brow scrunched on forearms as thought quickly turned to icy command and the fingers fell away. Ravno said it aloud, 'She's alone, but she doesn't have to be....'

Keba drew a nose full of coca corba as she came to her haunches and looked over at him.

'What?' She had been looking at Jasmin Sanjukta gingerly spread oil on the newborn's wound. Now she looked squarely into Ravno's eyes.

'She doesn't have to be alone, Keba. If we're all like her then she won't be alone.'

The initial pasty, drowned look of pain on Ravno's face fell away like granules of sand when his smile widened and eyes flared.

'K, we've got to get branded!'

An emotional potpourri spilled over Keba's face. She startled with fear but realized, then envisioned, yet faltered, and celebrated and loved. Her mind screamed, Branded? Quiet Rav, she won't be alone.... And everyone would—but would they, really? The entire archipelago. Yes, yes....

Never before had Ravno been so quickly convinced of what he must do. He acted in confidence—so as to avoid the next barrage of questions from Keba and from his own mind, perhaps. He left no time for that. He dropped his night-blue capa beside Keba and bolted through the grove. The great arms of the black walnut trees held vigil over Ravno's flight.

The trio diminished under hues of purple. The bald Ammit lumbered half a step behind the Kawani explosion and greyly subdued, taciturn Ishi. As the three neared the Teratas Canal, the Kawani heard Ravno's portent steps and reeled around, uncertain. One of the many scrolls she held contained the inventory list of all those branded; as she turned, it fell to the cordgrass near the canal. Ravno picked up the scroll, rough in his hands. He gave it back to the Kawani. His mind raced. He faced the Ammit.

'Cahaya, I'm Ravno. What a powerful ceremony today, my friend. It pierced my heart.'

The Ammit mumbled cahaya and possibly his name, though Ravno didn't catch it. The Ammit turned back to the canal.

Ravno urgently cleared his throat to stop him, and asked, 'May I feel the weight of the billet? The large one, if you don't mind.'

The Ammit's thick shoulders and neck tensed. He hesitated a moment. Ravno switched with him and sensed his hesitation. More importantly, Ravno noted his burgeoning sense of pride.

'To appreciate your distinction, Ammit,' Ravno said.

The Ammit presented the creambush rod to Ravno. The freshly used noh hung like a deflated number nine or a sperm with a cowered tail. The bulky, bald man was eager to satisfy Ravno's curiosity and wished to prolong this rare praise and open appreciation. Bolstered by the pompous look on the bald Ammit's face and a quick switch to sense the suspicion spidering through the Kawani's chest, Ravno wasted no time. He grabbed the billet and dove off the bank into the deep intersection of the two canals. Just before he plunged into the heightening tide, the Kawani shrieked and whirled around to reach for his capa. But Ravno didn't have it on and he disappeared in the salty water. The trio dashed down the ramp to the awaiting boto.

'Follow him!' the Ammit commanded as his weight and heavy step gracelessly rocked the dory. He shook the smallest noh with rage. The grebets eyed the navita cautiously then pushed off by her decisive sign. Their spruce paddles dug into the fearful water and their muscles quivered with the excitement of the chase.

Ravno swam awkwardly with the rod in his second hand. He blinked his first eye wildly to expel a piece of debris. As his body accordioned on to the opposite canalside, his fingers tried to clear the chaff in his eye. His feet scrambled up the embankment. A shoot of hair on the back of his head pointed upward like the needle of Vorra Mound that he ran toward.

The boto with the Ishi, Ammit, Kawani, two grebets and navita was halfway across the intersection. Ravno had a solid lead but his chest heaved frighteningly. He still couldn't clear his eye. Ravno heard the Kawani shriek again as she pulled herself up the embankment with her claws and brought her face above the canal's edge. She held only the scroll with the names of those inscribed. In the heat of the hunt, she began to cite the other scrolls as they are read at the batsu omhaal.

'A nirdosa no ini abisua,' she said through her teeth, 'souviens a bhavi.' But it also acts as a summons to those not iniquitous to remember the future....

Ravno barely heard her words as he quit the trail that lead north around Vorra Mound. He broke west through bush and bramble off the trail to cut straight for the mound, Vorra's tooth as beacon. Before the forest density enshrouded him, he caught only the last of the Kawani's exclamation, 'Kaku vie bezona kaku vie.' He realized that running from the council or any of its designates prompts mistrust among the closest of friends. But even the ocean-sprayed ocean spray on his head followed his set direction. There was no turning a capstan.

In his hurry, Ravno unknowingly caused a sitka deer to abandon its foam-flowered lunch. He could not hear the discreet hooves run into the distance. Rabbits bounded about in the brush, and shrews, gophers and lemmings fled from the path of the oncoming biped. Tight branches scraped at his sides and left their mark. No ini kayama.

The Kawani softly muttered her proclamations to the forest fairies. She stopped on the marked path and lingered near the edge of it where the plants and trees grew uncontrollably. 'Pada sariana dari kaku sankasha,' she whispered hoarsely. Her words were lost in the trees as her lanky fingers trailed the bark. Then, with more intensity, as her talons fingered a contorted sprig, she emphasized the line, 'Noh shinboru ini naisetsu.' Please observe the symbol inscribed.... She quickly folded her shame-colored capa on the dirt as a marker. Her half-naked body slipped through the chaparral. Thus she snuck, a lark through the branches, without a sound. The gophers and shrews and lemmings were all surprised when they saw her. She used her skin as a heightened sensory organ to help her scout through the scratchy spears and soft berries. A stick in the sticks, oak in the oaks, her feet and her knees moved like navitas and botos. She glided and whooshed and floated in pursuit.

Tears streaked Ravno's cheeks as he ran. Tears from the air in his eyes and from the grief in his heart. His tears leapt into the forest as he half-whispered, half-mouthed, 'I'm sorry Keba, I'm sorry Keba. Tam'ini miwa tekina. I'm sorry Keba.' The creambush rod was like an extension of his stressing knuckles. He held the noh safely against his chest and offered the skin of his arms and shoulders to the forest in defense of it.

All at once the rod became a scroll as he switched with the Kawani as an afterthought. His chest shuddered, as he simultaneously chased and was chased, her swift feet through the brush and a sudden branch in his face. He felt the cold fingers in his head and warm blood pour from his nose with skin-of-fish taste. He switched back to his own self with a shattering and fell hard and broke the billet. He panted forcibly into the grass and twigs and leaves. Blood from his nostrils coated the noh, now more of an oval or an eye than a nine. His knees shuffled under his torso and his arms carefully steadied and raised his body. One eye worked the ground in search of the noh's broken tail. The other eye followed the first, as a proselyte, and offered rough and red-blurred vision for his brain to decode.

'Makian, my mat and all her jebatis,' he said in frustration. His hands worked wildly through the canopy chaos and he sneezed snotty blood into the fray. He breathed roughly through his mouth and licked his bloody lips. Then he abandoned the lost tail and ran forward without a trail.

Back at the canalside the boto floated idly. The Ishi from Bu needlessly examined his articles while the navita and grebets signed about their afternoon plans.

'Once they find that guy with the hair we'll do one last trip down the Sunberry and Lurruna for the trio,' the navita said.

The grebet that stood in the mud and held the boto added, 'Then let's spend some time in the para zona to chat about this debacle in private.'

Buried in his rainy-grey capa the Ishi self-consciously averted his eyes from their signed conversation. Yet he concocted the entire discussion in his mind, anyway.

The Ishi imagined one grebet say with disgust, 'These are them, the three designates from Bu. They've been up here thrice since bulaniru you know.'

'They won't leave us alone,' the Ishi made the other grebet say.

'Though I wonder how many other ceremonies they do elsewhere. They must be burdening more islands with a private chartered boto all day.'

As if to justify his actions he made the navita say, 'But it's all the disobedient people that necessitate it....'

And on and on till he began to sweat in the early afternoon sun. The boto rocked gently in the canal. The wind strengthened and had long since cleared Roka's purple shame and increasingly agitated the tops of the trees.

Back on the trail, the Ammit, hand-squeezer and billet-bearer, though currently deprived of his largest creambush rod, trumbled after the quick Kawani and her culprit. He eventually found her folded violet marker—with difficulty, since she had stopped shrieking. He speculated at the forest's threshold as his large hands gently thumbed the illustrious capa. His jutting nose took in the honeyed smell of it.

## The Kawani's hunt continues

Vorra Mound sent her needle up and up. An improbability of shearwaters sailed close to it, a sure sign of strong offshore winds or a budding gale. Ravno couldn't see the three or more black pimples in the whitening blue as he stumbled through the trees. He reached a clearing of wilted yellow coneflowers and slowed to the center—was that the sound of crackled wood back that way? He spun twice and grazed the timber with both his eyes. Disoriented, Ravno located Vorra's needle; only then did he see the short-tailed birds, high as comets. He raced again for thicket's edge. But again he slowed then stopped, turning the way he had come. He knew she trailed him directly. He switched to pinpoint her advance. As his eyes slid into place and he watched the branches brush by her face, he realized how automatic switching had become. Deliberate, usually, and still hard to control once there, but such as detecting a flash of firelight or shivering in the cold, the process had matured into an extension of his senses. He smiled. The hinge of his mind on his forehead diminished in the face of saturated concern and stress that dripped from his temples.

Ravno watched the scene brighten through the Kawani's perspective when she reached the far lip of the clearing. He ran toward her posthaste. Ravno watched himself approach through the yellow and black polka-dotted carpet. The vibrancy of all the flowers subsided with the gathering clouds. He marveled that his own body could run without the need to watch from his own perspective. Suddenly the aspect of the chase became hilarious to him and he thought he would make her grin as he occupied her eyes.

Alarmed, the Kawani slowed her pace and narrowed her brow, yet kept on the advance, the subject of her hunt within reach. In a glance she saw a peculiarity about the noh and scratch lines on Ravno's chest. She planned to keep her distance and use her authority to command him. Her determination was Ravno's impetus to hold the charge toward her, and in a skip they were together. His arms pinned her arms tightly at her sides, a scroll a pendent in her hands. His adrenaline helped hold his web of strength as she struggled, his beating heart and her pulse and heavy breath all mixed up together.

She used her most dominating, staccato tone to command him to let her go. 'Tame saya soltani.' He slackened his grip just enough to show his suspicious smile and tensed again when she attempted escape.

'Is this broken noh so important to you?' he said. Her defeated slouch showed her frustration and anger. But he thought there must be more between the stitches of her hot emotion and, as he looked through her eyes, he sensed confusion, or was it hesitation—a faltering doubt?—that stained her rage. Also, though he couldn't be sure, a hint of admiration when she looked at his jaw from the corners of her eyes. Because he sensed a great irony in it all, Ravno kissed her temple and laughed. She breathed in his sweat and he exhaled his blood. He felt numb, as if he followed a script.

'We're running after the same thing, aren't we?' he asked the Kawani.

'Obviously,' she said, indignant.

'No, not the noh. I mean, I want to live and you want to live and we just see it a bit differently.'

She shifted a shoulder in protest or annoyance and wiggled to get free. She tried to raise a threatening knee but he kept his legs together.

He said, 'We both want people to be responsible, am I right? We both need each other and everyone and everything else to carry on.' I'm starting to echo Dabi like Keba does, he thought.

'But we didn't need that third child. Avalokana karo, kudasai.'

'Not before, but she's here now,' Ravno said. 'Why not teach her to see clearly with patience and respect? Instead of scalding the little thing with—'

'Pada sariana dari kaku sankasha....'

Then there was silence. Ravno slackened his hold and the Kawani looked down at the papyrus.

'All these names on this scroll, noh shinboru ini naisetsu, I've witnessed them all.'

The remorse smothered her words. He stepped aside, allowing her to unroll the thing to its full, ugly length. 'Each person.' Her fingers lingered on a name, Jaga, and another, Allete. 'Most of them children when they were inscribed.'

Ravno's face hardened with bitter sympathy. He felt out of control. He stood back from her slightly and twirled the noh in his fingers. How many of these names did this one billet mark? It's broken now. Suddenly, her palm crashed into his nose. The attack brought tears to his eyes and a startled cough to his throat. She grabbed the noh and disappeared through a sudden surge of rain. Ravno stood as a sugar pine, stuck to his roots in the earth, as if he watched his sister tree get cut down and removed.

The yellow, wilted petals of the flowers in the field drooped, wet, like his arms. The coneflowers surrounded him. The rushing rain water brought blood from his nose and chin down his neck and over the center of his chest. It ran under his cloth and stained the hemp material red, like the dirt that turned to mud between his toes. Ravno reflected how cold the rain was, and how appropriate. He switched with the Kawani—not for retaliation or to track her down but in an attempt to find that hesitation of hers. Surprised, he saw himself through branch and tree, through the impromptu waterfall, like a drenched feline in the freckled flowerbed, his hair flattened around his skull. He switched back to his own body and looked over in her direction. He couldn't see her through the composite of water and bush, but he held his second hand to his heart. Cahaya.

She turned and fled.

## Ravno's inadvertent backup plan

It took a better part of the rainy day for Ravno to skirt Vorra Mound around the north. The gale had cleared and Vorra overshadowed the garden where he entered by the broad-leafed rutabagas and sprouts. He walked to the canal and munched on wet kale and spinach leaves. He husked a tomatillo and tossed the wrapper into the drenched forest. The sun left a net of eventide draped across the sky. He came upon the bridge and crossed to the other side.

Ravno followed a vacant trail and stopped in the dim shadows before he entered Mara. He opened his mind to see what the world had to offer—if not the world then the island, or at least the modest city of Mara. He stifled his excitement as the obscurity before him unveiled in unsaturated silverscreen. The shadows emerged as if caught by the tempered moon. Through the switch, he watched with the single Botorang as if it were himself; he admired the stealth and plunder. The thief moved through darkness in unfamiliar packs as though they were his own. When the thief departed the last apartment, Ravno located and watched him with his own eyes. Once closer, Ravno identified the same boy with the pac choi crop atop his head. Ravno let him pass, then stepped into the trail and said, 'Cahaya.'

The Botorang slid almost imperceptibly to the edge of the trail.

'Koko karuna,' Ravno said hurriedly, unsure whether the boy knew Wawasen. He wanted to show the boy that he had the best intentions. Ravno stood fixed in the dark. His muscles tensed and tempted him to run after the boy, as he lost sight of the Botorang's silhouette in the lightless roadway. Ravno automatically switched and clearly saw his own figure, which stood in the middle of the path, a statue poised among puddles. Relieved, Ravno slowly gestured with a cupped and friendly outward first hand at waist-height and placed his second hand on his heart.

'Cahaya, I'm Ravno,' he said to the darkness. In those tense moments no galaxy collapsed but time certainly changed its attitude for Ravno. No other movements disturbed the stillness between where they stood except for a solitary frog that sang gloriously in the bush. Then the Botorang came forward, slow, resolute, until the two were but an arm's length apart.

Does he recognize me or is he only curious? Ravno wondered as his eyes gradually adjusted to see the boy in front of him. Ravno saw the sharp knife that hung accessibly at the hip. Again, in supplication, he murmured, 'Koko karuna,' and again his first hand cupped and moved outward like a boto in uncharted waters. His hand floated there as it came to rest, only four finger's width from the Botorang's tight waist. They endured like the dance between Aron and the crow, momentarily uncertain. Then the boy took Ravno's hand and spelled his name against the palm. A straight finger against Ravno's palm-edge, then to the tip of Ravno's index, and palm-edge again, tip of the fourth finger, hooked index on Ravno's palm, and index to thumb. He made a T and an E and a T O R A. Then the boy's second hand dropped from under Ravno's first and came to rest on his own heart.

Ravno grinned excitedly and took the boy's hand in a strong embrace. They looked at each other quietly and without judgment. Ravno spelled his own name on the boy's hand: Hooked index on Tetora's palm, index to thumb, index and middle apart on the palm, then those two fingers joined together, and his index on the tip of the fourth finger to complete the R A V and N and O.

Tetora's thick fingers came across his own nose and lips and he looked questioningly at his new acquaintance. Ravno remembered his own bloodied state of disarray. He inwardly thanked the Kawani and her rashness when she had slogged him in the coneflowers; perhaps his battered appearance made Tetora trust him so readily.

He laughed and Tetora joined in—cautiously at first, then with unsuppressed enthusiasm. Ravno tried to explain, within the limits of his awkward gestures, how he came to be within ownership of the noh, and broke it, and returned it unwillingly to the naked Kawani. Tetora followed the story, with difficulty and humor, as the two young men negotiated a form of understanding between them.

They walked to the village dock and Shisen appeared with their skiff. Ravno's throat floundered when Tetora jumped in; he wanted them to stay. Did the episode end there or would they invite him to see where they go? Tetora motioned him toward the boto. Had the time come for Ravno to take to the ocean? Did all his prior switching culminate to this, a deliverance to the sea? Later, when Ravno remembered that evening and the excitement, he felt ashamed at the absence of Keba from his thoughts as he considered leaving the island with the two Botorang.

Ravno anxiously crouched on the end of the rough dock and squinted at the pair, ready to board as soon as they gave further instruction. But Tetora simply held out a stick, nodded his head and urged it to Ravno. Unsure of what to do, Ravno switched with the boy to see a noh, complete and complimentary, there in the thick skin of Tetora's hands. The size was the same as the one he had stolen from the Ammit. The end of the noh still looped around, intact, like a scorpion's tail. Ravno prolonged the switch and felt pride surge throughout Tetora's jaw when he took the branding tool from Tetora and nodded in return. Then Ravno sat alone on the dock with the cordgrass, under a waning moon, and with a new creambush rod of justice.

## A custom batsu omhaal at the Bhavata House

The sea sat low on the coastline, exposing vivid ocean smells. A half circle of five Wawasens stood on their knees in front of Ravno on the beach by the Bhavata House. They knelt around the fire that heated the noh from Tetora. Fine sand powdered their hairless legs and, even with the excitement that grew around them, no one smiled. Keba, to Ravno's first, held hands with Aron beside her. Patanjali and Tzeko both transferred their eyes between the fire and Ravno, back to the fire and to Ravno again. There sat Jasmin Sanjukta, to his second, with her silver-bound black amulet above her eyes. She watched as Dabi grabbed hold of the billet from the fire and placed her second hand on Ravno's shoulder. And Ravno, with a final switch, gazed down at himself as Dabi looked at him with admiration. She squeezed her hand with wordless support. He smiled to himself and she pressed the hot noh against his neck.

'Hng!' he yelled. He couldn't suppress the painful groan. His head turned away from the burning sensation. Four of his companions dropped their foreheads to the sand, out of step and in apprehensive silence. Only Jasmin Sanjukta stood and came around the fire to his side. She looked with Dabi at the mark.

'No. No intak kayama....' For the first time Ravno heard Jasmin falter in her presence. It is not clear. She shook her head and her hands lowered the ancient glass vial of kukui nut oil. But Ravno's insides were already raw and tears lined his jaw. The goal was all he saw, so he said, 'Do it again. Right away, do it again Dabi, Jasmin, please.'

Keba raised her sandy head enough to see the noh reenter the flames and crash with indifference against Ravno's neck. This time he breathed out loudly, his voice gone, and crumpled to the shore. Keba came to him and held his shoulders and brought his sandy hands away from his neck and hair. Jasmin Sanjukta poured the healing oil over his wound that was clearly pronounced. She let the umber kukui nut burn out as it was passed around. Nine nuts remained on the hemp string around her body's lovely chersonese.

Ravno trembled. Sand powdered his sweat-soaked face. He mumbled to himself, 'No ini kayama, no ini kayama, no ini kayama, no ini kayama....' In turn, all of his companions were branded with the noh. By the end, seven lonely kukui nuts were left to grace the neck of Jasmin Sanjukta.

## The Group of Eleven meets at low tide

At the same moment of Ravno's second impression, but halfway down the archipelago, Prime Minister Varchapet emphasized for a second time, her hands enunciating every sign, 'Our designates will be back from Lurruna before the new moon. There will be extensive opportunity to intervene in this new matter.' Chivors nodded emphatically with agreement.

But Mek, one of the Eleven, said, 'Yes Gara, I saw your comment the first time and I respectfully disagree. We must act quickly on every violation. From the time it takes for us to be informed, our designates to be employed—'

'We are informed very quickly, most often before the infraction is born,' Prime Minister Varchapet insisted. 'In this new case, yes, it has been already seven days—'

'And will be seven more!' Mek's serious eyes stayed, unfaltered, as his serious hands fell open with impatience. The new violation was already the third of the year within Vets' small domain, second from the island of Magulo. It infuriated Mek that the child had grown for an entire year in the mat's womb and neither her maitatu, nor the eldest of the original two children, nor even the local Ishi, had informed Vets. Had the Group of Eleven lost their persuasion? The disobedience of Mek's own domain, which included the islands of Peninnah and Lurruna, added to his building fury. The trio was currently returning from Lurruna Island's third contravention of the year. Mek's toes played in the wet sand of the small shoal that the Eleven met upon.

They held the meeting on the mini-island, defined by its low tide, as an attempt of transparency. But because the shoal was only accessible by boto or through a foot of sea along the sand bar to Bu, it did not accommodate Wawasens well, unlike previous locations in city centers and on rocky plateaus. The shoal dangled from Bu like an umbilical cord of the dragon islands, exposed to mild breeze and choppy seas. A handful of curious spectators sat scattered along the beach.

Yot raised her hand and waited for the tension and attention to shift to her. She had a short blast of white hair and roseate cheeks.

'Is it time to deploy a second trio?' Her face remained friendly and calm; the archipelago had wrestled with the same issue many times before.

Yerek judged it timely to redirect the discussion; she chose to ignore Yot's recommendation. She started to explain about the visit she and Yerku had had from a member of the Bhavata House, which had itself been gaining attention throughout the islands. But suddenly all eyes turned to look at Posel, a local messenger, who splashed toward them through the rising sea. The Eleven seated on the sand in a circle left scant space for even a lean messenger. Posel stood awkwardly at the circle's edge and with an anxious tremor in his hands announced, 'Iniquity has been discovered on the island of Lurruna.'

Mek's head hung forward on its jaw in disbelief but his eyes remained focused on Posel.

At first the only movement on the sandy islet was a shy easterly wind, out from somewhere nigh the belly of the archipelagic beast. Abruptly they stood, all in as rush, and most of their twenty-two hands moved all at once. An electric murmur pervaded the air. Eyes sought other's eyes in an effort to interject. Some, like Vets and Yerek, sat quietly in thought.

Prime Minister Varchapet locked onto the messenger's field of view.

'Posel, please get their attention and give us more details.'

Chivors concurred, unquestionably.

'Gara, control the assembly!' Mek said.

After a great effort, the messenger gathered attention and announced that a woman would bare twins possibly before the last quarter—a woman who already had one child. Eyes came to rest on Mek instead of Prime Minister Varchapet, for it was again an island under his domain that suffered the infraction. The same island, indeed, that the Ishi, Ammit, and scrawny Kawani were at that moment returning from.

Mek inhaled sharply and with purpose. His anger bubbled and popped with his minimal and explosive signs.

'Summon a second trio and send them to Magulo at once. I will go myself to intercept the trio from the north and return to Lurruna with them directly.'

He left the shoal, splashing furiously along the soft, submerged sand. As he went, he turned back to Posel and signed, 'Come!' with ferocity. Though Posel delivered his message and was officially relieved unless it merited reply, Mek still bullied him to buttress his minimal authority. Indignant, he directed Posel to gather the secondary designates for Magulo. He added, 'Be sure Vets goes with them.' He decided new infractions must be dealt with hyper-vigilance.

Mek's brows thickened even more seriously as he prepared for immediate departure to the bright skies of the north.

## Aron shares what Ravno missed from the seventh historia forum

'Looks good, looks good.' Tap-tap. Aron closely examined Ravno's new mark of the noh. 'Not sure it was worth you missing another fun day with Mister.'

Ravno grinned in the face of his friend's tight-lipped smile.

'Though, I do admit, that old rascal is growing on me,' Aron said.

'Really?' Ravno said, unconvinced. He was already surprised that Aron had bothered going to the forum alone while Ravno had been recovering from the Bhavata's custom batsu omhaal. Though Aron had the same mark on his neck, he hadn't suffered from an infection like Ravno had. Perhaps Aron's sole reason was to go on his behalf.

Ravno studied the boyish mien that swathed his friend's face behind black frames: Short hair that lined his forehead like rock-top seaweed, and the almost permanent smile, never wide enough to open his lips. I wonder what his reaction would be if he switched with me? Ravno mused. I wonder what he would feel....

'Rav, Mister finally set the foundation for us to have a whole-hearted conversation yesterday.' Aron paused to catch his breath and continued, 'And he didn't prohibit it with senseless commentary. He told us about the ancient seed banks and historians, and we somehow got into a discussion of people living underground.'

Ravno's attention strung a line above his eyes. He tilted his head, which prompted his tutor to continue.

'Yeah that's how we all looked. Apparently the ancients were forced down into caves,' Aron paused again for a breath, 'for generations at a time. You know the Ada Era that Mister's mentioned a few times, when all that stuff was happening on the surface of the earth? Well, that's when they had to hide away. Then Mister got on a tangent about an evolving cave-human species—'

'Yes!' Ravno cried out.

It was Aron's turn to look up in surprise as he wearily sat down outside Ravno's pack. Ravno remembered Chichi's slender arms and hairless face and head, which almost dripped with coconut milk, and knew that Mr. Sunshine must have been speaking the truth. There might be hundreds of the cave-humans still living under the surface of other lands. What about Wawasen islands? We must have caves too, Ravno thought, excitedly, as he looked at his friend and laughed.

'Sorry to interrupt, Aron, but Mister is on to something.'

'I know. He spoke in more tangible concepts, though he ended weakly, I thought, when he tried to re-emphasize the need for these forums as a way...,' and another brief pause, 'as a way for us to keep making improvements on the past.' Aron shut his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. 'Obviously.'

'Mhm.' Ravno's mind was a rushing, turbulent estuary. He had stopped listening once Aron mentioned the cave-humans. He speculated whether all humans had evolved to the cave-stage and devolved back to what they were now. Or there could have been a separation at some decisive moment when the species split ways.

Aron interrupted his reverie. 'Rav, I'm heading out. I'll catch up with you for the Bhavata.'

'Hey? Oh, sure.'

'Not tomorrow but the next day?' Aron said.

'Yeah, wind's in your hair. See you at the Duat.'

Aron slowly stood up and painfully made his way down the avenue. Ravno shut his eyes tightly as he strained to see the possibilities with clarity. What if we're the only group of our species that lives above ground? In a world full of cave-peoples—what a world that would be. He envisioned a hairless and white-skinned, underground populace. He pictured their ability to see in the darkness, like Chichi scrutinizing the villages at night. Ravno imagined groups of Chichi-like creatures, loping under low ceilings or convening in spacious caverns. Ravno's hand came up to gingerly touch the inflamed mark on his neck. He laughed to himself while he pictured Aron and his toothless smile.

## Life begins, life changes, life ends

Two days later, Ravno did not see Aron at the Duat Canal because Aron was dead. His condition worsened quickly after he had left Ravno's pack, and he had barely made it back to his own pack in Phoyara. Persistent vomiting and fever kept him up all night and, after the paralyses took over, he died quickly. Others in the pack kept their distance but still tried to comfort him. Tzeko, as he witnessed the fast deterioration, had gone to alert Vesta late that evening, but she had been tending to a child with a raspy cough near the end of the Olive Fork Canal. She arrived with Tzeko after the small sliver of the old moon pulled dawn across the sky and the hemp blanket was drawn over Aron's rigid body.

They made preparations to carefully clean the pack that Aron had lived in and for the sky burial. Vesta led the small group up Vorra Mound that afternoon to a gently angled rock abutment at the base of the mountain's needle. Aron's body lay in deference of the towering gneiss as Tzeko, Vesta, Ravno, Keba, and Sebastian started the journey down. This left only the Mayataran and his tools to prepare Aron to be consumed by the birds.

The following day Ravno occupied himself zealously with the Bhavata's new goal of branding the entire island. He went with Keba, from pack to pack, to engage the populace in discussion and debate about how the Group of Eleven could succumb to their new approach. They lowered their capas and showed the noh proudly. Noh shinboru ini naisetsu—the words still clung heavily in Ravno's ear, like wax, from when he stood with the Kawani in the black and yellow meadow. He involuntarily sniffed, good and long and loud, in through the nose and out through the chest, and set to dispel the discomforts of the individuals before him.

That night, the day after the pieces of Aron's body were spread with the flight of the crows, Helena and Sebastian brought two girls into the world, healthy and full of life. Their names were Laila and Amoretta, which meant 'born at night' and 'little love'. The bashful moon gave no extra light to help with the birth.

The branding trio returned to the island eleven days later to hold Helena's family's batsu omhaal on the first day of the first quarter of the new moon of bulanost. The inter-island boto, on which they traveled, neared the mouth of the Lurruna Branch. Mek, from the Group of Eleven, sat eagerly on the forward-most sugar pine bench. The cloudy vapor cloaked his body as the boto shifted up and down with the waves. The returning Ishi, Ammit, and Kawani sat at his flanks.

# 7/ santulita

## The red and the purple

A few days before the Eleven's designates returned with Mek at the helm, Keba and Ravno championed elective branding through community consultations. The two twisted through the avenues of Phoyara and passed the old eucalyptus with its convincing strips of color. They arrived at the next pack before Keba had the chance to ask Ravno why he was smiling.

The hive-like structure of the pack had open residences arranged in a semi-spiral, as seen from above. Or, one could argue, it resembled a great noh that marked the island astutely. A modest garden sat in the center of the pack and featured most of the key seasonal forest fruits: Arugula, dragon tongue bush beans, broccoli, endive, bulls blood beets and brussels sprouts, florence fennel, garlic, kale, carrots, corn and cauliflower, radicchio, rhubarb, parsnip, potatoes and pumpkins. Neglected, flowering stevia plants edged one side of the garden—opposite the well-picked mint stems on the other.

The pack as home, workstation, and gathering place was well stocked with suitable items. For sleep, cottonwood and arbutus leaves lay piled against the wall. For food or heat, dried husk fuel was stacked near dusty black potholes, spaced at regular intervals, around the habitat. Two worn paddles leaned against the wall, in happy retirement, beside a stick-and-lines that carried heavy loads like Aron's body. For pottery, mounds of sand and clay, coconut halves of water, and refining tools lay in haphazard harmony. Sunshine came through numerous rounded openings in the roof. The light created a heightened contrast throughout the pack and threw highlighted circles on the floor, like sun-lit stones in a forest creek.

Keba and Ravno raised their skirts and crossed their legs to sit quietly on the dark earth. Word spread through the pack and nine others gathered around them. There, Ravno noticed, sat the man in the unmistakable bright red capa; he sat beside the same old woman from that day of trials with Aron. Ravno would never have originally seen the woman, when she had leaned against the eucalyptus, without Aron and his glassless glasses and lively marrow. Ravno's pinky tap-tapped his calf in remembrance.

Ravno spoke while Keba signed, 'Thank you for attending. Ravno and I have been sharing the plan of response to the population mandate. We're careful not to attribute the mandate as only from the Group of Eleven; all and any of us are welcome to participate in their meetings or be selected by the people as a representative. So, the mandate stems from Wawasens as a whole and, as such, must be counteracted by us as a whole.' Keba looked from person to person, eye to eye, and molded each sign phrase to those in the pack.

An elder, around the age of the old woman but hard to tell behind his grizzle and hair, shifted purposefully. He signed his question, 'And why do we desire to counteract this approach? It has been effective.'

His hands came to rest on well-used legs and Keba looked to Ravno to be sure he understood. Ravno had understood, mostly, as he caught the word 'why.' Though they had expected this question, he found himself warm on the cool dirt as sweat distilled under his purple capa. Redness crept across the sides of his face and forehead and neck. But his hands felt cold with shades of purple.

Ravno asked the man, 'Why do we live?'

The question felt ridiculous posed to an elder and almost devoid of respect—but necessary. Ravno continued and Keba interpreted his questions visually, 'We're here on the earth and live in harmony with other species. Why do we live in discord with each other? Can you imagine what happens when we thrust the noh into the flesh of our people? What happens to the individual and then, of course, to the community?'

Keba's hands and face moved somberly. 'We can partially tell you what happens to the individual,' she said. 'But first, can you tell us what will happen to the whole?'

Ideas surfaced through the discussion with those in the pack: fragmentation, disillusioned direction, mistrust. One man, who stood behind the group near the paddles, said, 'And destroyed relationships.'

Keba said to the group, 'And we build community on relationships, right?' She emphasized that, yes, people are the foundation of the community. Whether those relationships are healthy or not, they continue to build their society and on they live, and hope to function, undeterred.

A body whose organs are paralyzed will die and be spread out before the birds in the heights of Vorra Mound. But with the body of community, the disease that paralyzed the body doesn't die with the last bites of the beak. Instead, it festers and grows and spreads throughout the populace. It turns into ugly colors. Fear of the disease becomes a fear of those that may carry it and the fear becomes worse than the disease.

Ravno looked from Wawasen to Wawasen. 'My friends, my family, my community, please listen. If we successfully remove these ill effects on the individual, then we begin to heal the whole. If we take away the punishment that deals the ill effects, then we begin to heal the whole. If we all endure some minor wounds, we begin to heal the whole.'

Both Keba and Ravno threw their capas in a heap on the floor. They revealed their freshly branded necks to those gathered. The people's eyes widened and their throats shifted uncomfortably.

'We've begun a process of immunization. We invite you to join us.'

As Ravno and Keba turned to leave, the man in the brilliant scarlet capa approached them. The red skin around his eyes seemed to flare as he introduced himself.

'Cahaya, I'm Silas.'

'Cahaya, I'm Ravno.' A force secreted and fused together when their hands enclosed one another's, as if they held a pre-established nexus. They raised their second hands to their hearts in acknowledgment of each other.

Silas's tired eyes acknowledged them both deliberately as he said, 'Ravno. Keba. Thank you. I was beginning to question the why and the wherefore of it all. I had lost track of life as life itself.'

At a moment where one would release the hand of an acquaintance, Silas tightened his grip. As Ravno drew closer Silas said, 'What is life if not lived with fervor?' Silas followed them out on their journey through the city.

## Look at me

Ravno joined the circle at Pelajaran for the eighth historia forum and let his head roll with the motion as he sat. He noticed the small craters from Aron's feet left in the ground by his usual seat. Ravno's face brightened as he remembered Aron habitually digging his toes and heels into the earth during the forum. Ravno looked up and his eyes snapped to Aadi's, her spirit lackluster. He stood and walked to where she sat. She kept her gaze locked in space.

'Cahaya, Aadi.'

She stood as he offered his hand, her eyes still distant. 'Cahaya, Rav....'

He let her fall on him with her bouquet of disappointment, shock and shambles. A susurration slipped from her lips, 'Aron....' He felt her body flit and he yearned for Aron's flare and wit. But Aron was with them, in a way, as his jibana had been spread around them. Aron had become like the rains of bulansei, when they wash the island and refill the lakes. For now, in bulanost, his essence shone, warm on their cheeks.

Mr. Sunshine reminded the six of what they had discussed the previous month, about international investors who owned properties overseas but did not use them personally and how it made sense from an economic perspective. The muh-nee spread as a parasite to deliver the Great Profit's sickness. Though the ancient communities grew in numbers, they wilted in connection. They fizzled as a drowning grebet who paddles herself farther down, down, down. They forgot who their neighbors were.

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 cumulonimbus from the morphing mediocris and spread like a plague over the Wawasen archipelago. From Lurruna they appeared to stretch over the expanse of the world, where in fact they only reached the first few islands of Midden, to leave Theo and Bu in the sun. The clouds were like a swathing of smoke from the dragon's after-burn.

The branding trio returned to Bu, uncertain how settled they should become before they were summoned to the next batsu omhaal. The Ishi, drowned in his muted silver capa, still carried Laila on his tired heart. The Kawani, though mindful of Mek's vigilance, scrawled an R and an A and the rest of his name on her scroll. The Ammit sat beside her the entire way home.

Back on Lurruna, Ravno danced lightly beside Keba on their way to the east-side beach. He felt more symmetry with her than ever before. His shoulders were bare in the light rain and a familiar hum marauded his mind as they went along, '...The sitka spruce and magnolias too, more than enough on this island of ours....' They passed a grey crow that picked at an acorn. It turned its head to examine the nut with one eye.

They had slept at the Bhavata House the previous night amidst a mixture of cinnamon, sage, and nervous excitement. Ideas and commitments were thrown around the circle of those gathered like volcanoes flinging molten ash across the islands. The conspirators had no lack of motivation or clarity in vision, but they all knew the possible consequences of acting against the Group of Eleven.

Full of promise and life, Keba and Ravno left the house just after the heavy orange moon of bulanost sunk below the ocean. In its stead, the sun came for the day and spread eager rays through small gaps in the clouds, over the tops of trees and across a shimmering sea.

They left their clothes on the pile of rocks that separated the two beaches and let the cooling water swallow their ankles, their legs, and their bodies. They swam like thought streams that roll and rush through the mind and they let the salt mingle with their eyes. Their limbs waved in slow motion to keep themselves below; then they threw their hands down and kicked to bring themselves above. Down, up, down and up, and down again, when Keba's legs drifted lifeless and her body sank like the moon. At first Ravno smiled at her mischief and swam to the top. But after a moment, when his only companions were droplets of rain that abandoned the clouds for the sea, he ducked back under to find her. He could only see particles in the water and a dip in the sand that made a distracting shadow. His chest tightened in the cold water. I don't see her, I don't see her.... He swam more frantically, and turned to his first and second. All at once he saw her crumpled on the sand floor, blurry through his eyes. Her hair looked unusually calm for all the washing about and fro-fraying of the tide. He wrapped his arms around her torso and kicked off the bottom, up and toward the shore. Ravno struggled with her body in one arm; he held her back against his chest in panic and his other arm ripped at the water. They emerged at the top and broke the surface. With a great effort he floated her, face up. Her hair and the sea were in his mouth. Their legs were tangled as he tried to kick to the shore. He finally managed to get to where his feet reached the rippled sand below.

Once in shallow water, he dragged her body past the surf and lay her on her side. The low tide grabbed at her limp knees.

'Keba Keba Keba! K!' Ravno shouted.

As he rolled her to her other side, her eyes snapped open and looked at him as the grey crow had looked at Aron: uncertain, cautious, and with an absurd flavor of confused comicality.

'Rav. For a second I thought I saw me, in front of me, while we were under water.'

Ravno exhaled an immense sigh of relief when he saw the life in her animated eyes. They both heaved in gulps of precious air as they looked at one another.

'Keba, what did you see?' he said, as he helped her up into a seated position beside him.

She tried to recall. 'I saw flashing suns, like when you close your eyes on a bright day, and I saw myself I think, though it was blurry. And suddenly I'm lying here in your arms,' she said. 'What happened?'

He smiled at her and held her close.

The End

# Glossary

## Wawasen—English

Chapters

Penemua—Discovery

Sagra—Sacred

Mandiri Kenaikan—Self-gain

Bhula Susthatara—False Recovery

Mati—Bottom

Penemua Kembali—Rediscovery

Santulita—Balance

Months

Bulanbat—First

Bulanbi—Second

Bulaniru—Third

Bulanau—Fourth

Bulanost—Fifth

Bulansei—Sixth

Bulanazpi—Seventh

Bulanortzi—Eighth

Bulanbederatzi—Ninth

Various

Ada Era—Time of survival from ancient peoples to Wawasens

Ammit—Person who brands perpetrators

Batsu Omhaal—Branding ceremony

Bhavata—Group against branding ceremonies

Boto—Boat

Botorang—Elusive people who live on boats

Capa—Cape-like garment worn around the shoulders

Cokha—A switch; the act of seeing through another's eyes

Gara—Respectful nickname for the Prime Minister

Grebet—Designated paddler in the boat

Ishi—Healer, doctor

Jibana—Inner light, energy and soul

Jodoh-saudara—Love-brother, formerly brother-in-law

Kawani—Announcer and facilitator for branding ceremonies

Kashimat—Grandmother

Kashottsa—Grandfather

Kuro verve—Black painted earlobes on males

Maitatu—Partner/spouse, female

Maite—Partner/spouse, male

Mat—Mother

Mayataran—Undertaker who prepares the body for a sky burial

Mercato—Open market

Navita—Captain of the boat

Ottsa—Father

Pack—Living area, home

Para Zona—Area of many steam vents and steam rooms

Parna—Small steam room

Pelajaran—Educational forums

Saudara—Brother

Saudari—Sister

Todunasse—State of living alone, without a committed partner

# About the Author

Trevor Leyenhorst was born in 1985 in Pitt Meadows. After he fell in love with his wife, Lindsey, he moved to the city and became a Registered Sign Language Interpreter. Trevor and Lindsey live in New Westminster, Canada, with their three children.

The idea for Switch, self-published in November 2014, sprouted in 2010 as he lay in bed with his wife and matched his breathing to hers—in through the nose and down to the stomach, out from the chest and out from the nose. And who could tell if he switched right then in the dark of the night?

Connect with Trevor on Smashwords.

Trevor's short story We Stand on Glass Walls is coming March 30th, 2018. Available now for preorder at select retailers.
