The morning was already exceptionally hot. It was rare that the skies remained clear for so long and allowed the heat to build. It had been a long time since dust storms had hidden the sun. The nights had been clear and calm and filled with stars. Any reprieve from the driving wind was usually a blessing, but the heat from the naked sky was starting to take its toll on everyone, and even the few worshipers that still came had started travelling during the cooler night hours.
They came, the few loyal, and showed their respect by trading for credit from the Sisters inside the Church of the Cloistered and to worship a single thread of dark twine as round as a barge as if pegged by a giant’s hand, no, a god’s hand, from the top of the pyramid to stretch towards the stars and disappear. Such an unfathomable construct built by the old ones in the time before.
They were the few that had not been scared away from the slopes of the pyramid by the arrival of the army. In the morning, they congregated at the bottom of the slope closest to the cool water of the canal, and when the sun was high, they would climb the stone terrace of the pyramid and crouch in blocks of shade in the daytime breeze. Huddled on the stone, waiting for the Sisters to emerge, they could feel the vibrations from the tower.
The first-time travellers would climb the massive pyramid and place their palm on the tower. It was said that to touch the tower was to feel as if one’s life mattered for nothing, and very few ever touched the tower a second time.
In the old days, some would take the second pilgrimage and travel upstream to the other side of the Western City, climb up God’s Stairs in the waterfall to the top of Table Mountain, and enter the Sister’s Observatory. Some would haul with them great gifts of food and cloth, but the most pious were always the ones who offered the most valuable tech. If they were deemed worthy enough, they would be shown the long glass and be allowed to peer through it and see the city of crystal atop the tower.
It was on the pyramid blocks where Raj, an ancient orangutan, sat in a dust-faded robe. Old and arthritic, with his orange fur long ago gone to ragged tufts, he was the only one that preferred the recent days of searing heat. It cooked into his bones and helped ease the constant pain that seemed to have recently settled there. When he had become too old to fly the wasteland, he had been summoned here to the pyramid. He had been told to wait here, with his glider, for any possible drone launch. He had been waiting here a long time. The Sisters had given him food, the little food an orangutan would need, and he made sure he was always ready to fly.
Today, he had another message from his mysterious benefactor. It had been a long time since he had received one in reply to his constant reports. He stared at the small rag in his hand. His own words, written with coal, had been smudged away, and over them had been written:
“Prayer for today. Ignore the arrow. Follow and aid the buoyant. All journeys end at The Beast, the oldest seeks him first to ask for passage. You must carry our prayer.”
Down the slope of stone below him, pilgrims clustered in the cool morning shade beside the water. Another barge loaded with crates had left the city and was drifting past in the lazy downstream current—more merchants abandoning the Western City due to the arrival of the ambassador and The People’s Army. The barge shack emitted a thin trace of smoke from a cookfire within. Remnants of the bargemen’s breakfast and tea. Some along the canal waved half-heartedly and exchanged greetings with the bargemen who waved back. Their barge poles dipped and glistened wet gold in the rising sun. In preparation for the coming heat, the bargemen had already donned headscarves soaked with cool water.
Raj was old. Too old, and the secret message worried him. He wasn’t sure if he had enough left in this body, the body he wore, to accomplish what may come next. He had existed in this form for a long time. A very long time. A true Awakening. Probably the last one. A human mind that had awoken in the body of an animal.
Waking in this body had nearly driven him mad. At first, he couldn’t communicate well. His thoughts were… jumbled and backwards. His memories of those times were like shattered glass. But he had learned to make peace with what he had awoken into; a long time ago, he had made peace with himself.
He had spent years out on the desert by himself. His form allowed him to go for long durations without food or water in sour air under harsh light and wind. The sun and radiation affected him less than others. Those that had tried travelling with him soon turned back. He thrived where others couldn’t survive for long at the world’s edge. He could see exceptionally well, and his eyes never failed him when others often went blind for periods without some form of protection. He was light and strong. But now he was old. His teeth had since fallen out along with great patches of his fur, and the sun could severely burn him where his coat of hair no longer grew.
His back he kept pressed against the warm stone block, and that had always helped it, but lately, his hands and feet had begun to pain him severely. This worried him the most. He was afraid he’d lose them altogether, and he still had too much left to do. He held his hands in his lap and his feet against the stone, waiting for the heat to seep in and drive away the stiffness.
He had recently started wondering if he had simply worn them out. He thought that if he had been a man, in a man’s body, like he was supposed to have been, he would have naturally used his hands and feet a great deal. He thought that a man’s intelligence operating through orangutan limbs could have worn them out too quickly. They had never been intended for the manipulations a human’s mind could put them through. But that was another question for the architects of the great Reclamation. A question for people that had long ago turned to dust.
Today was to be a day of action. And of all days, this day also came with a threat. Below him, the newcomer clustered in the cool shadows with the others. He had been watching him—a big man, one that didn’t belong.
He had come in the night with the three mumbling old women that always came from the city to pray at week’s end. Merchants’ wives filled with piousness and self-importance. Their own souls didn’t need praying for, of course. Raj wondered if they knew their lives were about to change with the arrival of the ambassador and his heavy-handed government. The merchants’ wealth would be taken for he Peoples Army and the wives would be allowed to join the cloistered. The men of the family would be pressed into service with the army as long as they didn’t resist too much; if they did, they would be killed.
But it was the strange man that they had brought with them that was his real concern. There were too many uncertainties about him, and the timing was not a coincidence. And Raj did not believe in coincidence anyway.
The girls were close to the man, crouched down with Old Betty beside her cook pot. They had sensed the threat of this big man too and were hunkered down, appearing as small in their robes as possible, but they had stayed close to Old Betty and her cookfire because they were hungry. They were hardly more than children, but they were also indebted and would be thrust into slavery if they were discovered out here by a bounty hunter.
Raj unfolded the rag and glanced at the writing once again.
“All journeys end at The Beast.”
At least Old Betty had been able to sell something from her cook pot. The big man was eating the meat off the skewer like a slob. Like a beast. Of all the folks that men called beasts, including himself, Raj the orangutan, none were more like beasts than the men that persecuted them.
He held the command in his hand, the command that would finish things. He had worked, planned, and toiled forever towards this day. Things had become severe, and the waiting had become expensive. Then the unexpected arrival of the girls had been a further drain. Back in the day, the regulars at the pyramid would have taken the girls in and would have helped them until they were able to move on. But the people here now were only the discarded and the needy. The few that were left could only hope for the odd handout from the Sisters, and even the Sisters were growing weak. It was a poor day when an old, worn-out orangutan took on the task of caregiver for two girls.
And they had been reduced to eating only mash for some time now. The smell of the roasting meat came to him from below as an old memory. They couldn’t live on just mash for much longer. The girls would grow unhealthy.
He lifted his gaze east along the canal to the barge drifting away with the current. Yesterday, he had been wondering how long he could hold out before he started trading the parts of the gliders for space on one of those barges. Now the note changed everything.
The big, dirty man was loud and obnoxious, his voice unsettling in what usually was a quiet and peaceful time of reflection at sunrise.
“It’s pure gold. Wait till you see it! I won’t reveal it till the Cloistered arrive, of course. Don’t want to start a riot, do I?” His laughing mouth dripped with grease.
His boasting continued. “A flat thing, as about the size of your hand, traced across and down with straight gold lines.” Raj had noticed there was something wrong with the man’s left arm. He kept it protected, bundled. He wore the clothes of a Wayfarer with the close short hood and neckcloth, but he didn’t carry the weapons they did to fight off scarabscorp. This one had concealed weapons. This bully would carry a cudgel and a knife for quick and dirty work, possibly even a garrotte. Not the weapons of the kind desert Wayfarers but of cruel alleyway thugs.
“Definitely will be good credits coming my way this morning,” he continued.
He didn’t talk like a Wayfarer either because Wayfarers talked way less. This one was a braggart. Raj had never known of a Wayfarer that was a braggart.
And he was too heavy to have been living out in the wastes. Fleshy. Only those that took food or work from others could become so, especially with a weakened arm. This man was cruel and sly.
Old Betty spoke over her smouldering pot. “Well, even before your first stride, once you get that big pile of credits you’ve been bragging about all morning, you’ll be sure to pay Ol’ Betty,” she said.
Ol’ Betty was no one's fool, Raj thought.
“You nag me, old woman. I said as such, and I will, at advanced extra cost, as agreed.” The man grinned, and his face dripped with grease. “Although this is not worth extra,” he said and held up the skewer. “You skimp on your spice; you can almost taste the meat. And that is not a good thing.”
His words slurred around the food in his mouth. Raj tried to remember the last time he and the girls had eaten meat.
“Betalli’s word is good,” he continued, even louder now, so everyone could hear. He gestured with the skewer. “I give as good as my word, although it is my choice, you see,” he said, pointing at his chest, “and no other’s.” He flashed a big grin, teeth yellow. “You weaklings out here living on nothing but canal water hold no sway over me.” His teeth tugged at the stringy meat.
“Only the old, the poor, or children are here living off scraps from the Sisters. Small, weak animals.” Raj knew that last remark had been for him. The big man would be surprised at an orangutan's strength, even one not long from the grave. “But you all do a great service here worshiping and conveying messages, so you are given thanks. But be wary. Things are changing.” The skewer swept to take them all in. “Be careful who you call master. You should change your worship into service to The People. It is much better to join with The People now than to be taken as slaves later.” He laughed. “If you haven’t noticed, the ambassador’s airship sailed in last night.” He tossed the naked skewer into the canal, where it surfaced in a skein of grease.
Raj stood. He had to get away from the sound of this man. He turned and climbed the blocks of the pyramid with the fluid ease of a creature. This big, harsh man was definitely not a Wayfarer. The man was a deception. If he did possess such a wealth of tech, how did he get it?
There was always less and less tech to find and always fewer pilgrims out at the pyramid. The big man was right. It was hard to live now out at the pyramid. He wondered when the rest of them would give up and move into the fallen cities like the others had, hoping for the work that wasn’t there, joining the gangs, going into debt for food or passage, or becoming one of the People’s Army.
Raj was too small to be a soldier. They would make him a slave, but he only had a little time left in his hands and feet. Most likely, they would see him hobbling around and would just simply kill him and eat him.
He clutched the scrap of rag as he climbed and felt his anger grow towards the man.
There were very few now that came from the city for Old Betty to cook for, and even she had been growing thin. He was sure she had cooked and sold her own food this morning. The big man did speak some truth. She needed to leave soon, or she would die out here. They all needed to leave.
The thought of Old Betty giving this man her last meal flashed rage through him, and too late, he realized he had halted his climb.
It does not matter. It does not matter now, he thought to himself. Do not draw attention. On a day like this, do not draw attention.
… but Old Betty will get her trade today. He squeezed the rag tight in his fist.
Raj turned and looked below to those huddled in the shade. He spoke loud, his voice drifting down to the canal.
“Regardless of where the power may have shifted to, all pay debts out here, as we follow the same laws as in the city. Even the ambassador and his people pay for their breakfast.”
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The big man looked up, and Raj met his gaze and continued.
“Out on the sand, so close to the tower, The Creator watches his children. Those in his disfavour risk losing his protection, and often unfortunate things happen to the unprotected… out here on the sand, so close to the tower, when the sun sets.”
“You’re full of threats, little one, aren’t you?” the big man said. “I don’t fear your tower. There is no god up there, and only women with silly masks, shaven heads, and tattoos that speak of devotion and worship down here to starving people. I’ll ask you this: where was your god when the ambassador pulled down the other towers? Why didn’t he appear?”
“I do not speak for the gods or the ambassador. I only speak of things that happen outside the cities. I have seen such things.” Raj turned his back and continued his climb.
“This tower you all worship is coming down next. So get your trade in while you still can,” the big man finished, calling after him, but he could see the creature had dismissed him.
It’s the message, Raj thought. It has given me a renewed purpose and has filled me with foolishness.
He continued his climb up the terraced blocks of the pyramid. He had his back to the brutish man, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t stop watching him, however it was time to check the gliders.
Heat from the rising sun changed the tautness of the gut strings, and they would need adjustment, or the delicate glide surfaces could tear from increasing tension. The girls had risen from their spot beside Old Betty and climbed the pyramid blocks to join him.
When the girls had first arrived, he had tried to talk them into returning to the city. Kalla would not speak to him of it, and the smaller Ishi simply could not speak. But both girls had just shaken their heads “no.” Raj had sent for information, and what he got back was the girls were left with inherited debt. It would be very bad for them to return to the city or to be discovered by bounty collectors.
So he had fed them what he could, and they had shadowed him like kittens. It had been his glider that interested them. He had asked through the secret notes for more food for them, and some came.
The girls had stayed and watched and learned how he had trimmed and changed the tension from the frame out to the wings when the heat and weather changed. They watched how he adjusted the rudder size with variations in wind speeds. They watched him clean, repair, and reassemble optics, his own and those that were brought to him. They worked hard on the tasks that the Sisters gave them. At the night fire, he could see the glint in their eyes as he spoke of his years of flying. He could see they were as keen to learn as any apprentice had ever been.
And he had needed them. His old eyes didn’t see so well anymore. His hands ached. Very few could disassemble and reassemble optics. Fewer still could repair optics that didn’t have the tech download of a bird brain or their delicate mechanical arms, but with his old set of tools, the girls had learned to do all these things.
So he had started their training. He taught them how to see the ground and the weather. He taught them how the air moved and, more importantly, why the air moved. He taught them how to use the theodolite, send the bladders aloft, and calculate the wind speed and direction of the air currents.
He taught them how to deploy the drift chute, and then he trained them to fly. Tethered chute, then tethered glider. He showed them exercises to make them stronger. That was finally when he first noticed the difference with little Ishi. The little grey one. With her ashen complexion and her narrow face, she was almost sickly looking. But she was anything but sick. She held back, he knew. Hid her talents. Hid her strength and her stamina from Kalla. Gave Kalla a great deal more of her food than he thought—the pretty fair Kalla. Ishi was always on overwatch with Kalla. Always aware, even at night.
But he said nothing and continued to teach them as if they were the siblings they pretended to be. He could tell it was what they both wanted, and they were inseparable anyway. He taught them how to tumble through a bad landing then he dropped them out of their harnesses. He improved their conditioning by keeping them in the air on the end of the tether line for longer and longer periods. It had toughened Kalla, and it let him see that Ishi was something else entirely. But still, he said nothing because it was not his place to do so.
He taught them the stars. How to navigate without any tech. This Ishi was poor at. He realized certain aspects of her sight were poor. But other things, like the movement of the air and wind, she sensed better than him. He taught them map reading. And he made them memorize everything he taught.
This morning, he watched the girls climb towards him. The note had sent his mind rushing down a thousand avenues. He had just realized the scrap of rag he gripped also meant the end of their training. They would be free-flying for the first time, and they would be leaving him.
He felt that old familiar ball of tightness step back into his chest. The loneliness that was his old thin friend from his days travelling alone.
He would miss them so much.
Kalla flowed up the stone beside him with the suppleness of youth. Ishi was right behind the taller girl.
“Is everything ok? You seem… worried,” she asked.
“Yes, Kalla. Everything is ok. I was just thinking how well you both have done.”
Kalla had a concerned look on her face. “I don’t think so. I’m thinking you’re thinking old man worried thoughts again because you woke up this morning with sore bones.”
Raj patted her hair. He rarely ever did that. Had he ever done that? No need to get her as worried as I am. Quit acting like a fool. “And I’m thinking you’re thinking you are right. I’m just being an old fool,” he said and smiled.
“Or it’s him. The big man has you worried about something. You don’t like him.” She made a subtle gesture down the terrace of stone behind her.
“Well, do you like him?”
She gave him a sour look.
“Did you catch a glimpse of his tech?” Raj asked quietly.
“No,” she replied. “He kept it wrapped. Why would he come all the way out here to trade tech with the Cloistered?”
“A good question. To make this trek out from the city instead of staying in the city to trade with the ambassador’s men for more credit.” The ambassador’s airship, a distant dot of white, hung in front of the far-off city.
Ishi signed, her hands fluid with a speed that only her sister could follow.
“That is too fast for me,” Raj said. “What does she say?”
“She says she smelled blood on him.”
“His own, maybe?” Raj had learned some of Ishi’s communication. Now he picked out the sign “no.”
“She says ‘no, it’s new blood, and the man had no wounds.’”
“And not animal blood if he’s in the need to buy meat. He keeps his arm wrapped. So we all know to be wary of him, at least.”
Once they reached the top of the blocks, with their backs to the tower, they gazed out across the desert to the north. It was their ritual every morning. Their assessment of the desert together. The winds. The air currents. They did this every day unless it was storming.
“Are we going to see thermal updrafts today?” He strained to straighten his back and stood as tall as he could. He realized Kalla had grown taller than him. He had to look just slightly up a little to meet her gaze. At the same time, she had become so thin. It worried him.
“Yes,” Kalla said immediately. He caught the affirmative sign from Ishi.
“And how significant will they be?”
“If the weather holds all day, very strong ones.” Ishi signed her affirmative.
“Very good. I think the weather will hold here, but there could be snow far off to the north. If we were to launch today, at what time would the updrafts be strongest?” he asked.
He caught Ishi counting off the hours before Kalla even returned her gaze from the sky.
“Well done, Ishi,” he replied and turned to continue the final climb to their gliders.
“What did she say?” Kalla asked.
He took a few more flights of stone.
“What did you say?” he heard Kalla ask her sister.
He heard Kalla grunt in frustration. He grinned to himself.
“Well… I think it will be soon after high sun,” Kalla said. But she was unable to carry the confident tone, and her words became a question.
“Really? Ishi and I don’t seem to think it will take that long. Once you are done checking your glider, Kalla, it sounds like you have earned the great and honourable glory of climbing back down to the desert and staking out our streamers today.”
He could almost hear her pout. Raj completed the climb to the gliders and checked the tension. Ishi closed in beside him and began adjusting their own tension lines. The girl’s gliders were an exact copy of his own, only with newer skin and lines. Without his mysterious contact through the rag messages and the meagre support they provided, building two gliders to add to his own would never have been possible.
And the gliders were good. The best ever, even. The girls were very good students. Their minds and hands were quick and crafty. The girls worked best together and learned from each other more than if he taught them separately.
And then Raj was back thinking about how it was that a poor-looking mean man with a weak arm and new blood on his clothes had recently acquired expensive tech. Arriving with women that were far above his station. Murderers were coming to the tower now, walking in the daylight. The West had become dangerous. Dangerous this morning. The same morning he had been sent the note. There were no coincidences.
He looked at Ishi. “Regardless of what your sister thinks, you and I know the thermals are going to start early today. It’s unusual, but I think we should take the precaution of running the guidelines out to the chute now.” He caught Ishi’s glance at the big man below them. “Go down and help her tether the chute. Tell her I said to launch it now as far out as you can.”
Ishi bounded away down the giant stone blocks, following her sister’s course from a few minutes before.
Raj crouched by his concealed chink in the stone, lifted the slab, and slid out a wrapped chest. Inside the chest was a scroll case stuffed with hand-drawn maps. Beside the round case were three items made in the before times: two sets of flight optics and a small sleek metal pouch with a lid. The pouch had a strong, thin, adjustable belt for the waist. From his sash, he took a sack of coins, which he dropped into the case and slipped it back under the stone slab.
By the time the girls had the streamers set up on the desert floor, and the tether chute up and flying, had the largest map laid out and pinned underneath the items from the chest. They had begun their climb back up to him.
Brown relief was detailed on the map on either side of a blue line that was the Eh-Zon River. The label “numerous shifting sand dunes” ran north and south of the river. At the map’s edge were areas dyed in faded white labelled “ice fields.” The exact center of the map was a black dot, the base of the Western Tower. It didn’t need a label. It was the center of everything and where they sat. The black hatch representing the Western City was about a thumb’s width to the west. It had taken a long time, memory recall over years of his flying, and much intelligence gathering for Raj to construct this map.
Far out into the rippled hatch of sand dunes and even into the white ice of the edge of the world were a shotgun of “x” marks. A carefully hand-printed label adorned each “x.”
Some labels read “A1” or “A1c.” Some were “readout nw,” some were “cortex co.,” and some had additional text: “internal rock fall blockage,” or “impassable metal plating lvl 2,” or “all chambers flooded.”
One label that stood out was a hashed-off perimeter at the very eastern edge of the map. The text read, “estimated location central tower top” in line with text that read “The World’s Edge.”
The sound of the girls approaching, the scuff of their sandals on the stone, made his heart thump. He would miss this. Their time together. They settled onto the stone beside him, their cloaks settling with them. Their hair shone in the sunlight. The sleek blackness of Ishi’s, and the gold of Kalla’s. They were ready for today’s lesson. He wished these days would never end.
Raj dipped his head low over the map, tracing it with a hand for a few moments while he hid his eyes from them, as if he was studying it.
They waited.
“Where is The Beast?” he finally asked them. The word “beast” appeared nowhere on the map. It was a secret. Both girls pointed to the same symbol.
“MINE Redoubt Eight. Partial cave-in due 2 Rubble. LETHAL.”
“Very good. Now put on your optics and make sure they are adjusted onto that bearing.”
“A bearing to The Beast?” Kalla asked. “You told us no one was ever to go there.”
“Just do as I say.”
They slipped their goggles up from their necks. The optics they took from the case. Flat monocles with fine dials on the perimeter fitted with neck lanyards under leather glider helmets. They were deft with their movements, slipping them on, and adjusting them over an eye in moments. He had made them do it with one hand while flying their tethered gliders over and over. The one set of optics and goggles had been his, the other one of the many requests that the mysterious benefactor had fulfilled.
“Now, without making any obvious movements or showing that you are doing so, I want you both to study the ambassador’s airship behind me. It should look to anyone watching us that we are simply sitting here cross-legged on the stone having a nice morning chat. Once you have focus, I want you to read out the bearing and range to make sure your optics are calibrated. Make sure you are properly focused on the airship; the individual structural components of the airship should be clear. The city buildings behind should appear blurry.”
“Nearly exactly twenty kilometres on a bearing of two hundred and forty.” Beside Kalla, Ishi gave the “yes” sign.
“Ok. Now, on the airship high up on the structure, find two light blue escape pods.”
“Pods?”
“Like seed pods. Round, smooth, and elongated. They are buoyant. Lighter than air, similar to the way a barge floats on water. They are what the airship has been built off of. The ambassador had them removed from the Eastern Tower. Their use in the time before was to save the crew in an emergency. The councillor has used their buoyancy to tether the airship to and build the framework around. There is a ring, like a halo, at the very top of the airship. That halo is clasping the pods in its opposite ends.”
Kalla nodded. “I see them.” Her sister signed that she saw them.
“If our agents are correct, those pods will be released today. We will have allies in them. You are to each follow a pod and help those inside. Guide them to The Beast.”
“What!” Kalla exclaimed. “I thought you had us set that bearing we could AVOID the Beast! We really are supposed to go to him?”
“Shhh. Quiet,” Raj replied, touching her hand. “Don’t draw attention. This is a very dangerous day for us. I know you expect to follow a drone. We have done nothing but train for that. I understand. But this morning’s prayer says otherwise. I will go to The Beast. You two follow the pods. You will bring the others there. I will be waiting there for you. I will confront The Beast. It will be safe when you arrive.”
“You? You are going to fly? All that way?” She jabbed at the map. “You cannot fly. Have they seen you, these ‘agents’? This ‘benefactor’ you speak of? Do they know what kind of shape you are in? I have seen you and I know. You can barely move your hands in the morning, and it will be even colder up there.” She flicked a finger to the sky. “Real cold, and colder still at the world’s edge. You won’t make it.”
Ishi sat with her perpetual look of sharp sternness and shook her head at him, agreeing with her sister.
He smiled at them. “They don’t know any of these things, Kalla. And I’m sorry to say it doesn’t matter. The agreement was that I would be prepared. I have trained you both to the best of my abilities. I have complete faith in both of you. Following those pods will not be easy. You are right; I cannot fly like that anymore, and that is why I am not even attempting to follow the pods. I couldn’t do it, but you both can. You will have to roll and flip the gliders to keep sight of the pods. The pods may gain great altitude with incredible speed, but you cannot lose them. Once it seems the pod has selected a constant flight path, record the direction with your optics. The gliders won’t be quick enough, so just stay on your last heading. The pods won’t stay aloft for very long, but they will be fast. Once you find and contact the people inside, bring them out there to me. Do you understand?” He tapped the map. “It will be a straight, easy flight for me. I have enough strength and guile to make it.”
They didn’t look convinced by his speech. He didn’t feel very convinced either, and to end the conversation, he picked up the map tube, rolled up the map, and slid it inside.
“Now, one of you take the little bomb. It may be of some use and better than leaving it behind. It is very light.” He slid the metal box towards them. It tipped on its convex bottom. The flat top lid was embossed with perfectly formed text that read, “DO NOT DISCARD THIS CASE! If found EMPTY, return to your nearest FD/EOD.”
“No. You’re going to The Beast. You’ll need it,” Kalla said, sliding it back to him.
“No. I won’t need it. One of you is taking it.”
“Did you ever find out what the colours mean?” Kalla asked and pushed it towards Ishi.
Ishi pushed it back towards her sister.
“No. Ishi, Kalla is right. You take it. You may have trouble getting people to understand you, but they will understand this. I also want you to put on the glide cloak that you have made.”
“It is stupid,” Kalla said. “It won’t work. She can’t fly with just that stupid cloak.”
“Ishi, you have made a good cloak. Unlike your big sister, I think you are light enough to glide with it. Maybe it will save you from a harsh landing. And you both have your flint and stone. If it is cold when you land, you may have to burn your gliders for warmth.”
“You are crazy. I would never burn my glider. I love it.”
“You have no idea where you are going.”