ꙮ You are of the City, for the time being, Salme, but your Work here is wholly your own. What have you been getting up to, since your successful experimentation with Yazhn Dyu and Archie?
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has mostly been wandering, asking questions about textiles and plants and ancient marble buildings, trying to get a sense of what this place is like, really. She eventually ends up asking where all the citrus comes from—she expects, she thinks, espaliered trees climbing the austere buildings, or tiny lemons potted here in there. Does she see any of that?
ꙮ She does not see any of that. There are a few climbing vines, and there are indoors plants - there’s a fuzzy-purple-leafed plant that seems really common as an ornamental - but when she asks about where the citrus is coming from, the answer’s always going to be the same - outwith the City’s walls, in the first and closest fields. They planted fruit first, she’s told, long long ago - citrus, date palm, fig.
feels a little kick of recognition in her chest. She thinks of her—the house she grew up in, the stories she learned: Kavela’s first pomegranate seed that laid the roots for a sprawling family. She finds her steps turning towards the walls, walking away from the City, towards the orchard. It has been so very long since she’s seen an orchard.
ꙮ A few humans and Kin, headed the same direction she is at around the same time. Must be shift change, at some of the closer fields and orchards. She’s gathered, so far, that it’s much less work to maintain the fields than it is to terraform them in the first place; the hardest Work is always at the outskirts, the leading edges of reclaimed or cultivated land. The most danger, too - the Elementals stalk the boundaries. But here, close to the City, it’s perfectly safe - ⁂
ꙮ There’s a gate, much smaller than the grand Desert Gate by which you first entered the City. Beyond the gate - an etrog orchard, perhaps a little more carefully manicured and presented than the rest. The First Field.
looks at the less-carefully manicured fields, and she almost turns towards one of them, but the careful grooming of the First Field calls to her. She walks towards it, though the first thing she does is kneel down and run her fingers through the soil or sand. Whatever the etrogs grow from.
ꙮ This close to the City, everything‘s reasonably well-manicured, really- but the First Field clearly holds ritual purpose for the City and its Work. Every field and orchard has a stele commemorating the field’s consecration, first planting, and first harvest; the First Field’s is re-dedicated every year. (There were some people Salme overheard, while people-watching near the Temple, who were reminiscing about this last year’s re-dedication ceremony.) ⁂
ꙮ Soil, not sand - although Salme’s fingers and expertise tell her that it likely was sand once, and the desert, were it able to, would claim it back. It’s incredibly rich with gnosis, although it’s oddly hard to tell which type - they’re mixed together, bound into the soil itself. Definitely some flourishing, at least; it sings out to you as you hold it.
holds her handful of soil for one more moment, before letting it slide between her fingers back to the ground. She wonders, briefly, if Xilai was using the same soil trick back on the Beast, and what the right gnosis-mix would be for growing things, but that’s a problem she can’t solve now. She goes over to the stele to read about this field.
ꙮ The stele was carved fresh, for its re-dedication ceremony. Every year, with great honor, and great joy. This year, it reads: THE FIRST FIELD. AS WE TAKE THE SACRED FRUIT OF OUR WORK IN HAND, LET US REMEMBER ALL THOSE IN WHOSE STEPS WE WALK. And then, under that: CONSECRATED ON THE THIRTY-THIRD DAY OF THE TWELFTH MOON. 279,930 YEARS HAS IT GROWN, 6 YEARS WAS IT IN THAT FIRST AND UNFORGOTTEN STRIVING. MAY OUR WORK CONTINUE UNTIL OUR GOD’S AWAKENING.
frowns at that, considering. She looks up at the sky, careful to avoid looking directly into the sun, scanning for any moons at all.
ꙮ The Zvahr must just be very, very good at reckoning when months would start and end, because there’s nothing in the sky but the Sun itself, making you thankful you’re standing in the etrog tree’s shade.
pulls out her tomestone and types a quick question and hits send, and then turns to look at the etrog tree nearest to her. There are trees on Almachadta that were as old as the cycle itself, still healthy and strong and flourishing at the end of all things. There are such trees, but there aren’t very many. Fruit trees tend to grow old and brittle. She places her hand on the trunk of the etrog and tries to get a sense of its age.
ꙮ It’s almost like methexis, in a way, now that you think about it? Inasmuch as a tree has a mind, thoughts, memory - gnosis pulses in its heartwood, as simple as the patterns may be. This tree is, definitely, not nearly 280,000 years old - closer to a century, you’d guess.
thinks that it’s exactly like methexis, really. A tree does not have a mind in the way Spoken Wood does, but it is a living thing, and any living thing can be understood, can share and be shared-with. The sharing might be less complex, but it still is a sharing.
pulls her hand away and moves on to the next nearest tree and asks the same question of it.
ꙮ Precisely so. Each tree responds in turn - some as old as the first tree you touched, some significantly younger. Towards one row, you notice a tree that’s still practically a sapling - it’ll be years and years before it bears fruit. Etrog are a slow tree.
wonders if … she kneels down next to the roots of the etrog nearest her, and sends a question deep into the soil looking for dead root-matter. It probably would have decayed after all this time, but it’s worth a look.
ꙮ They did not decay, after all this time. Although everyone who manages this orchard - perhaps everyone who manages all the orchards - were very careful, and very good at what they do, and there is not much to be found. But, no– the soil on Almachadta vibrates with the complexity of death. Decay, itself, as an extant form of life; being nourished, and nourishing in turn. Here, there is none of that vibrance; no little soil-bugs, not an earthworm to be felt.
almost draws her hand away in recoil at the wrongness of that, but she doesn’t. How old, how old, are the dead roots buried still in the soil?
ꙮ Old enough that you wouldn’t have a concept of the depth of time, were it not for your journeys with and through the Mask. Some of them might be as old as the inscription on the stele claims the field to be, or close to it.
nods to herself or perhaps to you, and then stands. Something feels—strange about all this. Perhaps, perhaps it’s that with so much time she’d expect Mu to look very, very different. Perhaps, a little of it at least, is something like envy—that the records were kept, that the story was unbroken, that she can stand in an orchard this impossibly ancient and know that her entire cycle is an eyeblink next to it.
considers plucking one of the ripe-looking etrogs from the branches. She’s unfamiliar with the fruit, but she’s met a citrus before. She’s sure she could figure it out. She’s just not sure it’s not sacrilege.
ꙮ Well, they did say that each field took an incredibly long, and arduous, time to reclaim from the desert. Such is the Work. But the soil here is strange, to your fingers and to your mind and to your mundane familiarity - it doesn’t smell like soil. It’s– clean, it’s a pleasant smell. But it’s certainly not what you’re used to. But then again, neither was Samudra, I suppose. ⁂
ꙮ But, while you’re here, you’re of the City, and its fruits are yours. You’d be completely within your rights to pluck a fruit! Etrog are strange - extremely fragrant, almost floral. Not a lot of juice or flesh to them, really - a ceremonial fruit, in a sense, although there’s things that you can do with them. They’re incredibly pleasant to hold and to smell, in any case.
is going to trust you and pluck one of the fruits then, though before she does—she looks at the leaves of the tree. Leaves can get scorched too, you know. Water a plant under the Centrelight’s full force and its leaves can become crisp and streaked with brown. Under this sun that hates and scowls from above, are the leaves still green and shaded?
ꙮ There is a gnosis, woven carefully into each leaf - perhaps not individually. Certainly not individually. Without it, they would surely perish under the Sun’s light, or at the very least, they wouldn’t last upwards of a century.
blinks at that, at the enormous amount of care and work that must entail. She pucks her fruit, and takes a moment to rub a leaf between her fingers. Can she tell anything about the weave used to protect the leaves?
ꙮ You could take a few with you, and study it. It’s enormously intricate and complex- and probably easier to study outwith the Sun’s light. The tree won’t mind.
plucks one, two, three of the leaves, careful to pick a variety of them—one directly in the sun’s light, one shaded deeply by the other leaves, and one new one just emerging. She then takes a moment, and presses her hand to the tree again, and sends a carefully vining thread of gratitude through to it. She would gift it some of her own gnosis in return, but she doesn’t want to unbalance the delicate gnosis-work latticed through it.
: “Thank you,” she says, and then makes her way back toward the City, to which she belongs for the time being.