But this Deezhul was not the city she had left three years ago. Tonight she walked the among the straw thatch huts and ever changing construction of the Deezhul of her childhood; a Deezhul tightly woven into her memories.
In those days, families still clung to their tribal loyalties and behaviors. Two decades after the experiment of the Simér had begun, the people had not yet forgotten their sense of changing winds and the longing to move their lives and kin around it. They also had not forgotten how to be fruitful. Children and toddlers flooded the streets in waves and while in her mind's eye, those children were now absent, the energy of their play yet swirled around her being.
Echos of grand weddings throughout the city reverberated from the thatch roof huts and then rare but multiplying mud-clay hougrixi, the traditional winter earthen homes dug out from the soil and roofed by grixi reeds and mud. Polygamy, while accepted and practiced in moderation among most Nüish tribes of the south, exploded in popularity in those days as the burgeoning city struggled to house a new population of thousands on an island that had never known a permanent structure. Entire lines of sons from one family would build their huts and invite all the daughters of another family to bake their flat journeycakes and beat their gathered grixi into thread for cloth.
And the festivities hosted for the tribes those sons once traveled with... in her mouth she could taste the baked fish and roast bison tongue, the grainy journeycakes and tarragon dipping stew made by the bride sisters with unsullied determination to impress.
"So there you are, Onion. You are a hard person to find, but I suppose I was looking for you in the wrong places." the yellow huts and green-brown hougrixi blurred but did not disappear as her attention snapped into focus at the sound of the voice.
Rejnev.
Onion looked at her brother mournfully. Thick dark brown hair mildly tainted with memories of grey cascaded down his shoulders framing a firm jawline and inquisitive golden eyes. Taut brown skin clung tightly to the sinew of an active but aging man. But his visage was one of life.
And Onion understood that she was not dead, she had not become a wandering Spider trapped in the web of another, for how could anyone be stuck in the web of a dead man?
"What are you doing here? Has your body not yet been claimed by the Void? Have you no desire to go to the cloud home of Sheng'er? How can this be? How can you be trapped in a web that is broken?" Onion found no logic in this place. To look at her brother's face again, to see the lovingly earned creases in his face, skirting his metallic eyes filled her with an enormous sense of loneliness even as it inspired suspicion. Dressed in her memories of mere days ago, his smile was radiant and his strong sinewy hands still held the promise of pain and of comfort to those deserving. Were it a dream she was living, it was a torturous one.
Onion's thoughts echoed in the chamber of her mind. "Be you dream, memory or spirit, you cannot be true. I know this is so." she whispered quietly that quickly manifested into a plead, "Even so, do not go. Do not leave me! I will stay here, by your side. I will be your warrior. I will be the best at it. I will protect you and no harm will come of you again!"
The Nüish girl flung herself at the visage of her brother and found her memories of the man to be comprised of the very feel of his skin, as much as they were of his character. She buried her face into his chest. The smell of his Sandoran cologne surrounded her senses. Her first memory of Rejnev included a strong aversion to that scent, but over the years she had learned to love the signal of his presence.
Her brother never failed to wear it, thinking it quite continental of himself. He had, after all, been a man known to indulge in pleasures of the flesh from time to time, and the women of the continent had not been shy about their approval of the aphrodisiac. For Onion the vapor never had that effect - it never changed her opinion of him one way or the other. For her, this smell was the essence of her brother.
"You know I cannot do that little one, though it breaks my heart. But dear girl, eternity can wait. Let us simply enjoy this time we have together."
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