The Mere Tide P10

Stepping outside she was struck of a deja vu subsequently justified by her tour through the ail wherein the tuqim engaged in the prior day's chores as if they inhabited some strange rhythmic stasis like animatronics in an exhibit. Or as if rehearsing for some final performance. Each day wearier. And even the days do not continueth, failing into night. Between each station there were favored paths she took pains to maneuver offside or oblique to as if fearing that in their assumption was some magic that might entrance her forever. But the pilot would admonish her saying but you are already alive.

She meandered to a wiry farrier. Who wore a thin mustache and buzzed his hair. His sleeves rolled to his elbows. He kept a cigarette in a mouth corner and he would light each one upon the hot metal it was his trade to ply. He tonged a steel bar into the open of an electric furnace and shut the grate and pressed the power button. The furnace whined a dozen seconds. When the door popped open the steel was bright and he tonged it out and hammered it into shape on the horn of his anvil and replaced it in the furnace again. He repeated this method of heat and modification, each time shaping some new feature. He used a clinch to groove either quarter of the shoe and he punched holes in the grooves and then dunked the shoe in a bucket of water and the steam hissed up high like a den of vipers.

Drink thereafter. A kind never tasted before. Standing over the sour reek of an open kumis bag. She dipped a finger in and tested the stuff. When she stumbled out the yurt stolen into she was drunk and stumbling past a circle of ancient smokers sat on cushions was remarked through the fog of their exhaling a thing without precedence. That while the dimension was a variation upon a theme yet the interior did herald something new of time's incubation filtrated out the desert or its dungeons.

Distant laughter drew her to the outlying polya where children her age or older played soccer. There were three teams of seven and they had sets of sticks for goal posts and they were kicking an actual ball white and black and sufficient to regulation through the high grass they had unsuccessfully tried to haze the sheep to crop. Someone pointed to her where she watched from the sidelines and a time out was called.

Сәлем.

Здравствуйте, said Dachni.  

Біз орыс емес.

ол қайдан пайда болды?

Қандай оның көзімен дұрыс емес?

Бұл жын болып табылады.

Someone passed her the ball. It rolled up her boots and rebounded against her shins. She pondered its utility.

Wells, she said looking up at them, byes.

Far from the games she found the girl. Sitting as if beyond a shore in the lashlike grass the wind lashed gold bright and wheat bent back that showed combing forward and back the wispy black of her savage hair. She plopped down unannounced and the girl eeped and clapped shut her book.

Heydee, said Dachni smiling enormously. Seen ye was figured of a company.
The girl's eyes darted fervently for to alight on any clansmen but none were here nor near.

Was yer wrong? said Dachni perking to follow her mad search over the awned spikelets. Not sawmones out there?

There were none. The horizon seamed shut in its utter round broke by not even the smallest animalcule. The girl's gaze resigned slowly of its search to settle to her. Dark melancholic almond eyes betraying a will able to endure a single tragedy more. Nothing else. And opposite them two vacant orbs wholly black, no iris, and reflecting nothing and preventing that infinity of reduction in its infinite depth. The wind murmured their grassy sea. Dachni smiled.

Heyhey.

Сәлем, said the girl nervously clutching her book.

Wheres ye from?

The girl rose abruptly. Менің барғым керек.

Dachni stood. She slung the nagant and pocketed her hands. Well. Crazy days aint it? Crazy crazy. Is ye learned of read?

The girl regarded her. The wool cuff of her sleeve was pinned back and the blade of her arm stuck out. You could see the stump where she held it between the fingers. It had been shorn midway below the elbow and it war partitioned along its knob by a faint dermal memory of sutures and with it she wiped a smudge of mucous from her lip. Dachni tapped the book. She met the palms and unfolded them and the girl opened the book and she laughed at this minor success of communication and jabbed the title with a finger.

Will ye give a read?

Не?

A read. A read. A reedy read.

The girl read the title.

Aye, aye, laughed Dachni.

They sat shoulder to shoulder huddled over the book, the girl cordial if reticent, tracing her finger across the lines.