Revision: Lore of the Corners Trilogy, Book 1

By Samhu L. Iyyam

Siglez Ipt, once and now again of Prul, awakens, disoriented, in the desert to the warming chill of disturbed sunshine and to the impatient voice of the Playwright, who instructs him his charge is to save several worldsand possibly the universe. With only a blurred memory of his past, Siglez dutifully sets off across a barren land riddled with strange creatures to Afadral, where the moons have converged, signaling that a time, long foretold, has come.

Before the venerated council of reflections, Siglez learns he must prove himself the true agent of prophecy. He rises to the challenge of three daunting proofs to claim legitimacy as the prodigal son of lore. Despite a deep reticence, Siglez prepares iPrulautu forces to confront the rival aBekod, who stand between the people of Prul and the fulfillment of an ancient destiny. But can he prepare himself to confront Sra Ja, an aBekod woman of both arresting beauty and a dizzying capacity to see what others cannot?

In this epic adventure tale fueled by love, passion, devotion, and honor, the future of worlds hangs in the balance as an inadvertent hero embraces his fate and planets clash beneath the light of their shared and blighted sun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491713587

Samhu L. Iyyam

“I have, regrettably for us both and at the insistence of the author, sworn to withhold the few intimacies of Samhu L. Iyyam to which I am privileged. Far be it from me to add to the poor soul’s encumbrances the violation of such a vow. I can only say that Samhu resides elsewhere and that her language is, of course, otherwise. She does fret over what may be lost in translation. But thought, pure and naked and unencumbered, is for FaeLba alone, and not for such as we. If we are to know anything of one another, words and want of words will have to do.” —Niftalfta So

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 Samhu L. Iyyam.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1356-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1357-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1358-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013919685

iUniverse rev. date: 1/14/2014

Contents

53019.png    Acknowledgments

53021.png    Editorial Preface

53023.png    Forethought

53025.png    Visitors’ Guide to the Corners

52942.png    Visitors’ Guide Table of Contents

53029.png    Prologue: An Author’s Lament

53032.png    Author’s Epilogue—Dregs and Reparations

53034.png    Chapter Notes

53036.png    About the Author

To my only one—for every reason under suns and of them. For every prize implied by the horizon. For a bounty of lesser truths.

—SI

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the devoted effort and incomparable acumen of linguist Niftalfta So (Nifa), without whom admission to lexicons not native to the Corners would have been irreparably forestalled. The selfless assistance of the many others, nameless alas, whose contributions populate the visitors’ guide is greatly appreciated and far from adequately recognized here. Above all, the author is indebted to SI, but for whom much that matters most would have been forever unknown to anyone else.

Editorial Preface

There is a prologue to reVision, and indeed the trilogy, and by explicitly eponymous claim and convention, it belongs here, at the beginning. You will, however, find it at the end, nestled up against the epilogue, where I have situated it. I have done so without the author’s formal assent, but at least without her overt opposition. I have done so for what I hope will be recognized as discretion, rather than presumption. I have done so in the service of first impressions.

We may think of this story as a child, newly born into the world. A child I have come to love and hope you may too. But like all newborns, this one is delivered of maternal labors. The tale a mother tells of birth while still in the throes of her contractions, under the assault of the attendant indignities may be truth—but only a truth, not the truth, and truth of a contorted and ephemeral character. It is not the best truth for first impressions. Just so, Samhu’s prologue, a tortuous if illuminating product of its torments. Let it wait; first, cradle the baby. Learn only after the price of this parturition.

Inevitably, though, all torment grows weary of itself and remits to draw the occasional breath of respite. The clouds of delirium may clear for cogent moments. So did Samhu’s rant permit of fragmentary clarity even in its turbulence. While the rest may wait, such lucid fragments may serve us here.

We learn, for instance, that the Lore of the Corners trilogy is a transpective, and that in this genre, author, reader, and presumably editor, too, may prove to be characters all. We get the sense that we may productively pursue deep meaning here as the spirit moves us; we may probe the levels where creativity and control engage eternally, as darkness must with daylight. But we are also invited to glide, if so inclined, nearer the surface, to lose ourselves in the flow of epic adventure, in the good sport of passions and purposes not our own.

reVision, then, is that epic adventure, in which the fate of worlds hangs in the balance and heroes must embrace their great destinies. The universe itself is imperiled and, we may hope, restored to something resembling safety, across the expanse of the trilogy. There is conflict here, in the absence of evil; there is combat, on an interplanetary scale, in the absence of malice. There are ambitions, and aspirations, spanning eons; with as much, or more, that truly matters measured in heartbeats. There is love and loyalty, passion and courage, devotion, and honor. There are characters with names and faces that may come to be as real to you as anyone you know; they have done that, and more, for me.

The tale may be a tale or a dream. It may be the dream of a tale, or the tale of a dream. We are apt to come away knowing it is all of these, and more besides. The enigmatic Playwright we will meet may have scripted this adventure, may coalesce out of another character’s imagination, or may be a player along with the rest, on a stage encompassing vast reaches of the cosmos.

We will see great vistas, and glimpse the distant prizes that beckon to far horizons. But we will feel, as well, the tug of home. There will be great deeds and great fortunes—and the hazard of lies, intended or otherwise, to tempt and misdirect us. But there will be a bounty of lesser truths along the way, too, that may prove irrepressible. And perhaps before the end we may see, by a great light from without, into corners from which all shadows have been banished. Perhaps the true prize will be illumination.

That will do for now. My aim in this liberty is only a less encumbered orientation. But of course, before the end, you will note the paradox. Interposing myself here for the sake of clarity, I have configured myself into the very mix of torments of which Samhu warns as both principal victim and singular prophet.

—NS

Forethought

She at times would envy

his horizons; and he

understood—perceiving

distant prizes.

but in the end the world

was bounded wholly

by Her eyes; and for the bounty

of Her lesser truths, he would gladly pay

the fortune … of his lies.

—personal musings entitled Worlds Apart; initialed only (SI); home world unspecified

… never the

bellow, nor ever in

rage or

rapture, the cry.

but what

is simply done or

softly said speaks

the only statements

even eons won’t deny.

—personal musings; initialed only (SI); home world unspecified

Chapter 1: kadaut y afraut bevektreul (Woman and Man Fall Asleep)

Narrative

And so it begins. Or continues, for all beginnings follow the end of something. Something to which they may owe much, or even all, for coming, and going, and yielding this space.

The day was unremarkable—except to them,¹ and it is on their behalf we make note of it. Unremarkable in that it spawned nothing notably great nor memorable. A nondescript page in the archives of history. It did not incubate any great deed.

But the air was warm and soft, and the sky effulgent, coaxing blue from powder to cobalt as the afternoon deepened.² The sun played across it in a bravura of yellow and orange, seeming to indulge in colors beyond its customary palette; every leaf was vivid against the sky; and only clouds well suited for decoration were granted passage. But still, mundane in the great flow of events—should there be any such currents.

And the evening, too, mundane, but for an inexplicable softness. Asked, they might have ascribed it mostly to what was avoided—non-occurrences of happenstance rather than design. The unwanted call, unwelcome missive, ill-timed trespass of an offspring desisted on this day.

But there was a bit more to it than what didn’t happen. There was what did.

An inadvertently sweet sequence of gestures. A graceful cadence, unsought and irrepressible. The convenient convergence of need. The softly ardent confluence of wanting. Such inconsequential things are the makings of ecstasies. Such is the spice of rapture.

Soft grandeur, like a sunset, or sunrise. Unimportant. Fleeting. But sublime.

They saw the beauty in one another by the light of such contrivances, but the beauty was there objectively.

Hers was stunning, parading through the seeming softnesses of gentle curves and graceful arches; these were real, but belied the steel within. Her eyes were of a piercing darkness that said much about such deeper resolve, eyes seeming to own no definable color. In this moment, though, they were suffused by sweet insistences, unfixed. Her hair was black and bountiful, rich with hints, by certain light, of improbably darker blue, delicate with perfume all its own. Her skin was a pristine expanse in olive hue, clothing a lithe choreography of movement, a dancer’s inadvertent grace.

He was molded to her, an assembly of correspondences. His beauty was prototypically rugged. His tall and athletic frame was populated by muscles more sinuous than bulky, clearly generated in the service of demanding practicalities, and at the ready for the same. They danced now beneath a smooth skin of bronze, to the invitations of her cadence. His hair, some variety of brown suggesting lighter shades, was a tumult of undisciplined waves. His eyes, too, a soft shade of brown that somehow insinuated glints of gold, reached for her more fervently even than his fingers.

In between, there was the customary tussle. Warm hands, and the deep impress of fingertips; hot breath, urgencies. But it began and ended with their eyes.

Hers were the warm bath, inviting. His, penetrating; the eager plunge.

But this was not a place of soft and hard; not a place where weakness meets strength. This was a place of purpose and need. And the purpose of purpose was fulfilling need, and the need of need was finding purpose.

They thought none of this, and little of anything else.

In the moment that undid him, his vision expanded and shrank, thinned and stretched. He saw everything. Then burst. He saw nothing. He saw … her …

It was tame, not wild. But that does it no justice. It was comfort itself. Solace. Sanctuary. Even, if but ephemerally so, salvation.

The pleasure of pleasure was almost beside the point. It was her proximity, and his. It was being in so small a space together. All the world was just that space.

Uncharacteristically, she lingered fully awake slightly longer than he, looking at his profile through soft eyes in the feeble light pupils make do with after a while in the dark. She held him in there—something in it gentle, something fierce and possessive. Her lids grew heavy.

Done, and undone, holding tightly, one another’s only tether in the disquieting calm of storm clouds dispersing.

Held tightly, limbs intertwined and let go. Let go and fell. Fell, together and in parts. Fell toward elsewhere, other reasons, reverie.

Spent of purpose and of need, they fell, and delighted in the falling.

They fell …

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

—personal musings; Jessamyn West; Earth

Scene 2: afrautaf y afrautib ne Prul (Once and Future Man of Prul)

Siglez³ … landed. And landed alone.

Or felt as if he had, and from a considerable height at that. Slowly it dawned on him that what felt like a crash landing through successive panes of glass was merely the misfortune of waking ill-timed from a nap. He was just mulling over the fact that his body parts felt badly misassembled when he heard, You’ve kept me waiting. Siglez fixed his gaze on the figure before him, and tried to orient. The blue sun in a peach-colored sky⁴ was … somewhat diverting. All the more so because the warmth it tossed at him was riddled with a chill—like irony, perhaps. A chill riding shafts of sunlight. Bizarre. And disorienting. Little success, then, with orientation.

You’ve kept me waiting, the figure repeated, more matter-of-fact than impatient, because that ‘tussle’ of yours was, well, somewhat more protracted than usual.

Siglez felt a warmth suffuse him—warmth, and an undeniable sense of pride. Damn right, longer than usual! A rakish grin brought a cleft to each cheek, invited creases to dance at the corner of his eyes—eyes ostensibly a warm brown that managed somehow to hint at gold. The man’s features were distinctly handsome; ruggedly so, but with a finesse suggesting, perhaps incongruously, a patrician’s pedigree. While this combination might have been imposing, it was softened more often than not, even as it was now, by playful inclinations and a penchant for gentle mischief. The resulting impression for most observers was charm.

The grin gradually devolved even as the recognition grew slowly in Siglez—like the burgeoning of predawn light—that the event in question could not be real. He recalled it, but as if from a dream, receding quickly into something like distance, but unmistakably different. Certainly it wasn’t real. Not here.

It’s so odd— Siglez was startled again by the distinctive clash of cold within the warmth of sunbeams.

Yes, the Playwright replied. But few can discern it. A privileged few. Well, and the doomed.

What? Siglez was still attempting to overcome his general sense of disarray. But doomed has a way of grabbing one’s attention.

The Playwright seemed a bit unsympathetic, or perhaps oblivious, to Siglez’ disequilibrium. If at any point I might have your attention, a hint of sarcasm in the tone, we might get to it. My principal purpose is to give you directions.

Siglez gave up on a train of thought that seemed to follow no set of tracks, and did turn his full attention—or at least the full measure of it currently at hand—to the cowled and somewhat ink-spattered figure before him. I’m a guy, he said. I don’t get directions.

Guys don’t ASK for directions, the figure retorted. You didn’t ask. I’m just giving them to you—and I’m not asking either. You must go to Afadral …

Who are you? Siglez interrupted. And while we’re at it—who am I?

You, the figure once again seemed more patient than not, even parental, are, of course, Siglez Ipt—as ever you were. You are Siglez Ipt, of Prul. You were of Prul, and now you are again. Well, still, if we disregard trifles, and really we must if we are to have the least semblance of sense. If you think about it, you will realize you already knew that.

Siglez thought about it, and indeed realized exactly that. Of course he was Siglez Ipt—who else would he be? And he was, undeniably, of Prul. He was standing on it. Well, sprawled, actually.

You will realize as well, the figure continued, "that you know exactly how to be Siglez Ipt of Prul, in all the particulars. But that can wait—it will simply populate the relevant necessities as they arise.

I, the figure paused for what must have been dramatic effect, adorned with a hint of a bow and flourish, am the Playwright. Literally, accompanied by a soft chortle, although the joke was lost on Siglez, at your service. As you are literally, again the chortle, a bit more heart in it this time, at mine!

So listen, good fellow, and let us play our parts.

Siglez should have been listening, but just then noticed the wled⁵ floating near a flat-topped boulder a short distance behind his interlocutor. At the very instant he did so, he knew what it was and how to use it. He knew it as if he had one of the electromagnetic gyroscopic hoverdiscs common to Prul and Bekod all his own. In fact, he was pretty sure he did, come to think of it.

The Playwright was either oblivious to Siglez’ diverted gaze, or dismissive of it, and carried right on. Your part is of far greater moment than mine. Mine, naturally, as Playwright, is to help spell out yours. Help, I say, for there are matters here in ‘play’—again that chortle, which seemed to percolate up quite readily, and which, among other things, had Siglez rather liking the Playwright, in spite of the dense shroud of eccentricity—well above my pay grade! But my job is to do what I can with the job that I have. Your job—well, your job is to save several worlds, and possibly the universe. But I’m ahead of myself, and that won’t do. Line by line! Your job is to get to Afadral. It’s a long walk, and apt to be dry and dusty this time of year. Well, any time of year, really.

It dawned on Siglez for the first time that the Playwright simply liked to talk, or found comfort in the traffic of words. He may have kept the Playwright waiting, but he was clearly going to be paid back with interest. He settled into a more comfortable position, finding a rock to perch on that allowed his legs the opportunity to unfold. They had started falling asleep and tingled their irritation at the interruption of a process well underway.

So it’s apt to be dusty, then.

Yes, the Playwright responded, somewhat absently. Certainly that, but it’s of no importance. Your arrival though, at long last, is another matter altogether. They will be waiting for you. From here—the Playwright made a rather vague gesture with a sweeping hand—you will travel first north, and then somewhat to the west. You will start out straight across this high plateau—again a vague hand gesture—and then descend the first of seventeen ravines.

Seven? Siglez asked.

No, seventeen. Actually, it might be nineteen come to think of it. It’s a detail not worth my ink, so it’s an approximation.

I might be worrying about getting lost about now, Siglez responded, with a hint of a grin, except that I’m a guy and had no intention of asking for directions in the first place.

Of course not, the Playwright agreed emphatically. It wouldn’t suit your character at all. But you aren’t asking for directions; I’m simply giving them to you.

Well, I guess that makes it okay, then. Siglez shifted his legs and adopted an expression of attentive concentration.

So you will traverse … some number of ravines, the Playwright continued, pretending no embarrassment at missing details. At the bottom of each—

There will be water, Siglez interrupted.

There will indeed. And both the benefits and liabilities that implies. Do be careful, Siglez. You have been long awaited. It would be a lamentable shame to get yourself killed before ever the adventure begins.

I quite agree. Siglez was, in fact, truly attentive now. He had heard about adventure, saving worlds, the fate of the universe, and doom, and these had predictably shifted his posture atop the stone from lassitude to discipline. His muscles were slightly tensed, his feet planted firmly and back held straight—a thoughtless arrangement that assumed itself. His gaze at the Playwright was frank and unwavering. But such concessions to the portentous drama into which he was being conscripted were limited. He was tense with anticipation, not anxiety, and felt no great compulsion to ask for details, as if he knew they would come. But still, he recognized that as odd. How could he not need to know?

An adventure you will learn about in due time. Inevitably so, the Playwright said, as if Siglez’ thoughts were the object of a dissection, voice burrowing toward the murmurs of preoccupation.

As for getting lost or killed—Siglez gestured to the wled—how about we make this easy and you just give me a ride?

No. The Playwright seemed to regret the obligatory response. "That is arguably at odds with the dicta.⁶ Inarguably, it is beyond my mandate."

What mandate? And for that matter … Siglez was going to ask What dicta? but stopped—because he already knew.

Responding to the completed half of the question, the Playwright looked surprised and perhaps disappointed. Why the script, of course.

"Are you telling me this is all some kind of play? That I am just a … character in your play?"

No, no, no. The Playwright looked pensive and mildly disapproving. "Nothing nearly so mundane or unlikely as that. Rather, as has been so well said, we are all players of a sort.⁷ Playwrights too, of course. And certainly my role is not to revise the script in the middle of a scene."

As for the wled, the Playwright continued, it’s more for show. A prop. I have other means of getting around. But it doesn’t really matter. You, my good man, will be walking. That’s how it was supposed to be, and that’s how it will be.

From this point on, the Playwright managed a bit more focus on the issue of directions. Siglez found that at times there was far too much detail, and at other times not nearly enough. There were boulders of singular appearance, ravine walls with notable streaks, and some trigonometry involving the three moons of Prul, which Siglez was quite certain he would bungle rather badly. The Playwright asked if Siglez was now ready.

As ready as I’ll ever be, I believe. An honest answer, mostly because Siglez felt that his likelihood of getting hopelessly lost was apt to correlate directly with how much longer the Playwright kept telling him how not to.

Well then—the Playwright reached forward with a hand that extended from the loose folds of an ink-spattered cowl—it begins. Stay inside the lines, Siglez. With that, the Playwright was gone. Although standing right there as it happened, Siglez could not say if the wled had been involved.

He stretched, adjusted the bandolier from which a sword hung, admitting no surprise in finding these across his shoulder—and set off generally northward and slightly to the west, with some vague notion of where the three moons of Prul ought to be in the sky.

As he did so, he was mildly troubled to be so entirely … untroubled. He was on Prul, which made perfect sense to him, despite the fact that he seemingly woke up from a nap in the middle of a desert plateau with no recollection of having gone to sleep in one. The Playwright was odd to the point of surreal, yet that, too, seemed reasonable to him. He was apparently playing out a part in some cosmic drama, and even that felt more or less acceptable. (Well, less, really. He would have to revisit that one.) He was mired in incongruities, and as in a dream, things here could be ludicrous and logical, unfathomable and untroubling, all at once.

Yes, as in a dream. His thoughts caught there momentarily but quickly resumed their way, pulling free of what proved to be a frugal bramble. Siglez knew he wasn’t dreaming. And indeed, he was right.

Words are wild

windblown hair and

writing wrestles each from

air and something

nearing madness.

That from such

restless writhing

strands a whispered

hint of my

commands

smoothed by

will if not

my palm; to take their

place in ordered

calm

proclaim the

mind; bespeak

the hands.

—lines of verse entitled Therefore, I Am; initialed only (SI); home world unspecified

Scene 3: befen febniku (Inside the Lines)

Isn’t a bit odd that you would just turn up that way?

I don’t think so, the Playwright replied. It would be truly odd if I didn’t. How am I to tell a story I don’t know? How am I to know the story if I don’t check in on it from time to time? And how, a hint of triumph in this part of the argument, was he to know where to go without me?

I had not thought of that … conceded the voice from a source concealed by shadow.

No one ever does. The Playwright looked rather spent—apparently the cost of casting about. Worn out, but clearly satisfied.

I learn by going where I have to go

—lines of verse entitled The Waking; Theodore Roethke; Earth

Scene 4: miftantosu febnadafu (Counting Steppes)

Siglez had been making excellent time. Well, that might be saying too much. The terrain, the landmarks were all inexplicably familiar, but even so he didn’t really know the distance to Afadral.⁸ So it was hard to judge the efficiency of his progress. Excellent time, compared to what?

But it felt like excellent time. Perhaps it was because he was having an excellent time. That blend of chill and warmth was, once the peculiarity of it had become familiar, quite exhilarating. Siglez didn’t know if the anomalous sunlight was the reason, but he felt mighty! The word seemed melodramatic, but it’s what kept asserting itself. He felt mighty. His muscles seemed capable of just about anything. He was generally athletic, certainly fit, but this was different.

He strode along briskly, and despite an aggregation of hours, felt as yet no hint of fatigue. The air was crisp, bright, and dry. Peach-colored, of course, due to the hues of Prul itself—notably the amber water—and the spectrum of its blue sun. But a bright sky is, it seems, vitalizing in any shade.

Shade. There was none, and it was hot. Siglez was getting thirsty. So it was with a sense of joyful anticipation that he descended his ninth ravine (he was counting on the off chance he might be able to help the Playwright give better directions next time).

Nor was he disappointed. Slightly wider than any of the first eight, this one had a substantial stream running along its bottom, with a fairly steep descent on Siglez’ side, and a more gradual ascent on the other. The water course was strewn with rocks in sizes ranging from stepping stones to small huts.

On either side of the water course, vegetation grew in considerable profusion—although more like forest glade than jungle. Still, the contrast with the dry plateaus that characterized so much of the terrestrial surface of Prul was striking.

Those plateaus, or steppes, occupied the bulk of Siglez’ time, as they occupied the bulk of Prul’s surface. The megacontinent of Prul⁹ was made up of steppes that rose from sea level in the north, west, and east, to the feet of the mountains that stretched along the southern limits of the continent where it met the sea. Those mountains rose to heights of fifteen thousand meters. The highlands at their feet rose to half that altitude.

Much of the continent—and the portion through which Siglez now trekked, near the very center—was at comparatively low altitude, no more than two thousand meters in general. The massive, deeply and permanently snow-blanketed mountains in the south fed endless streams, all running northward at first, that populated every crack in the steppes. The streams found paths of least resistance in soil and rock, and gouged canyons there, running, ultimately, in every direction, and all ending at some shore and the great circumferential ocean. All save some few that created inland deltas, mostly clustered near the continent’s middle longitude, and to the north of its center.

Prul, then—or at least the part of it that matters most both to our tale, and to the iPrulautu¹⁰ who populate it—was a vast labyrinth of high, dry plateaus bounded in all directions by canyons of varying depth, breadth, and inclination. In all such canyons there were, permanently or seasonally, streams of similarly varying scope. The steppes were, literally, steplike, running ever up from north to south, and from the coasts toward the heartland. Siglez, heading north and west, was covering long distances with little change in altitude. His westward progress took him toward the continent’s center, with some attendant gain in altitude; but his northward progress involved a net descent.

From the surface of any of Prul’s steppes, vision was unhindered to the horizon in every direction. Across great distances, the topography was varied, with massive sand dunes in the far northeast and vast fields of grasses and wildflowers in the middle portion of the west coast, better watered than most of Prul due to prevailing winds and clouds well fed by ocean waters.

Across such distances as could be covered on foot within any reasonable span, however, there was a certain risk of monotony. Most of the terrain was variation on the theme of rocky desert, at times with homogeneous stretches of gravel and sand, at other times with dramatic and diverting formations of variegated rock. Throughout were low scrub, occasional grasses, and diverse succulents. And more prevalent than all, the ominously sharp, silver spikes splayed out in a characteristic oval, signaling the presence of the large tuber, the rahd,¹¹ some two feet below the surface.

Siglez enjoyed the distant vistas and open terrain as he traversed one canyon-bounded steppe after another. But now he ran down his ninth canyon slope to the water—in enthusiasm rather than haste—and drank his fill. The water, amber in all its variations as sunlight met the many facets of its turbulent surface, was cold, still carrying hints of the great snowfields of its origins where the endless plateaus began, and sweet. Sated, Siglez drank a bit more for the sheer pleasure of it. He stood, stretched, and leaped effortlessly to the top of one of the larger stones in the center of the flow, still reveling in the sheer physical prowess that awakened with him here.

He perched there for the pleasure of it as well, not needing a rest—although the miles traversed would seemingly have argued for one.

A splash diverted his attention, and Siglez immediately knew the creature for what it was: a pethkwin.¹² (In fact, he knew everything he should know, except how or why he knew all that he knew. That preoccupation was now dissipating, like the long tendrils of a tenacious dream, stretched at last to the breaking point by distance from their purchase in sleep. As he wrestled with it less and less, there is ever less cause for us to persist.)

The pethkwin paddled against the brisk current with no apparent effort, heading toward a deep pool just upstream of Siglez’ boulder. His view of the creature in the amber flow was ideal.

The pethkwinatu¹³ were endearing creatures, and widely prized as pets by the iPrulautu. Prized, because they were wild—and so only they could decide to domesticate. They were, in fact, quite good at it, and made excellent house pets, but only when so inclined. Like any iPrulaut, Siglez knew this.

About the size and shape of a bear cub (a Terran reference, and we shall, of necessity, resort to others from time to time),¹⁴ the pethkwin was three-limbed like many species on Prul.¹⁵ It had two hind limbs, and one fore—centrally placed. Its somewhat block-like body ended in an up-angled tuft of a tail that gave it a rather duck-like appearance from behind. Its head and face bore some resemblance to those of an otter.

The coat of the pethkwin resembled strands of well-cooked linguine. The hairs were large and flattened. What was not apparent at a glance was that they were hollow as well—each one, in essence, a straw.

Before heading into the water, pethkwinatu took a deep breath through their skin. Or at least, that’s what it looked like. In reality, as they braced their squat little bodies, they exerted an effort like drawing in a breath to dilate the tiny sphincter muscles that surrounded each of their hair follicles. The hairs drew in and held air, making the pethkwin buoyant.

The pethkwin generally swam on the surface of the water, again, rather like a duck. But unlike ducks, they were genuine amphibians—with adaptations specific to both water and land. On land, the pethkwinatu made their way on padded, roughly calloused feet with substantial claws—well suited for rough, rocky, hot terrain. They were good at digging through both dirt and gravel, climbed even difficult and steep slopes with relative ease, were very heat tolerant, and enjoyed excellent stamina.

But rough, clawed feet were of little use for swimming. The pethkwinatu addressed this by dressing for the water. There were folds in their skin—one centrally over their chest, and two aft along their flanks—into which they could insert their limbs. The vented folds ended in highly elastic skin denuded of hairs. The toes of the pethkwinatu could, at will, be widely splayed. And when that was done inside the sleeves, the result was three large webbed feet.

On the surface, pethkwinatu used only two of them—perching upright, and paddling with the two hind feet. The forelimb would lie tucked up against the chest—the very method Siglez’ pethkwin was now using to explore its pool.

To get at prey below the surface, the pethkwin made three adjustments. First, it contracted all of those same sphincter muscles, expelling air—then expanded them again, drawing in water. This reduced the pethkwin’s buoyancy.

Second, the creature extended its forelimb, and applied its third paddle. Sweeping back with the forelimb as the hind limbs tuck forward, then kicking back with the hind limbs as the fore reached ahead for the next stroke, the pethkwin was both fast, and agile. Finally, pethkwin could close a pair of transparent eyelids for diving, providing itself built-in goggles and excellent underwater vision. Its hunts rarely ended in disappointment.

Nor did this one. Siglez watched the creature finish off the fish it pulled up from the depths of the pool, then paddle to the far bank of the stream—no doubt headed for a burrow likely to reside part way up the shallower side of the ravine, overlooking the stream.

Siglez knew what was next, and smiled in anticipation of it. The creature did not disappoint. Back on land, pethkwinatu expelled the water from their coats in well-known fashion. They reared up on their hind legs, their bodies tensed,