Completely oblivious to her kind words the grazing creature shuffled off, still searching for the nutritious varma. Shana watched it go, wondering what it was like to be a simple grazing beast; not to concern oneself with thoughts that could not be resolved, questions that could not be answered. There was another thing that she envied in the dull-witted creatures – companionship. Although their numbers waxed and waned with the varma season there were always a fair number of them, trundling along in the coppery fields that held their sustenance.
They did a very odd thing at the start of the varma season; one that Shana had observed many times but still did not understand. At those times, when the first bronze shoots were starting to appear, two of the creatures would approach each other and position their rear ends so that each was touching the other. They would stay in this position for some time with their bodies shaking in a movement that became more and more intense. Then they would move away. Shana had observed that some periods later there would be a number of very small grazers in the herd.
Were the two observations connected in any way? Shana could not see how. How could touching rear ends have anything to do with the appearance of small grazers?
Where could they have come from? Shana was sure nothing like that could be relevant to her own existence. She had no openings that a small Shana could pop out of and in any case there wasn’t another Shana that she could touch ends with.
The grazer had disappeared into the green expanses and there were no others to stir her curiosity. But the feeling that it would be nice to have another Shana around lingered. Maybe if there was she could try touching ends to see if anything happened.
Another problem that could not be solved.
She determined to put these strange thoughts behind her – as for this belief that she should be going somewhere: where was there to go? There were only the verdant fields, the lazily winding river, the plains where varma grew abundantly. The world was the world. There was nothing else.
Just a world with nothing in it but a few harmless beasts and one foolish Shana, dreaming of things that could not possibly be.
She wandered back to her little camp by the riverside. It was just a simple affair of logs stacked to form walls with dried varma fronds over the top to act as a shield against the brightest time of the skyshine. There was no door for there was nothing in her world that had ever threatened her, nor did the temperature vary much, even in the time of darkness; no windows, for the scenery never changed except the colour of the varma plains. Her bed was just a pile of the same fronds as made up the roof; simply younger ones which were softer and more pliable.
A small log cut into a cylinder served as a chair and she sat down on it and opened the jar which contained her evening meal. It was another type of fish which swam so lazily in the nearby river that they appeared not to care if they lived or died. They were raw because Shana knew nothing of fire and they were perfectly edible as they were, the only issue being that they were somewhat sweet, which became cloying if one foolishly attempted to eat a great number. There were also a few brownish ovoids which were varma seed pods. These had a pleasant savoury, earthy tang which compensated for the sweetness of the fish. She sat there enjoying her meal, listening to the pleasant gurgling noises from the river and feeling the warmth of the day on her nearly naked skin. Her breasts hung freely but she had a strip of varma fronds around her crotch. She didn’t know why she did that as it was never cold in her home by the river but it just felt like the right thing to do.
She finished the last seed pod and wiped the traces of fish from her lips. Although they were crystalline, like nearly all of the living things in her domain, the crystals turned soft and pleasantly chewy when in the mouth. It suddenly occurred to her that she was the only living thing that she knew that was not crystalline. Was there a reason for that?
Of course not. It was just the way things were. She really must stop questioning everything!
She wondered what she should do next. To someone newly arrived in her world life would have seemed distinctly unexciting. There was just the river, the fish, the grazers.
Shana simply found it pleasant and just-right.
With the grace of a large cat, she rose from her simple chair and gave another great stretch. Another walk along the riverbank, she thought to herself.
But as she stepped outside she was aware of a change in the quality of the light. Looking up she saw what she expected to see – at the exact zenith a small black dot had appeared. The time of darkness was upon the Land. As she watched in pleasant contemplation, the dot became an ever-growing circle, swallowing up more and more of the sky until the glowing green was banished to the horizons. And then that thin band of emerald winked out and the Land was in darkness. Total absolute darkness. Vision was completely useless. All she was aware of was the pleasant scents of the Land and the liquid whisperings of the river.
She raised her eyes to where she knew the zenith was, straining to see if there was some structure in that ebon vault – something she had never done before.
There was none.
Despite the total, absolute blackness she felt no concern. This was normality and nothing in her world was any threat, in the time of light or the time of darkness.
And then she saw it: perhaps far away but in reality at some unguessable distance, there shone a light.
A light where no light had ever shone before.
Six
Shana stood watching the light for quite a while, experiencing the sensation of feeling her heart racing for the first time. This really was something new. Normally the time of darkness was the time in which all the Land’s creatures, including her, closed their eyes and entered that period of immobility known as sleep. It was the time that her mind appeared to break free of its body and go wandering in unknown lands, free of the bounds of logic. In those times she had seen many strange sights; once she saw a land where the ground had heaved up into mighty peaks which reached into a sky that bore an unusual colour, a colour that she hardly ever saw in her waking times. On another voyage she had seen a black sky, quite like her own sky in the time of darkness but pierced by dimensionless points of light, differing in brightness and hue.
She stood in the warm darkness watching the light. Once or twice it flickered as if some object had passed in front of it but eventually she grew tired of watching, as those events were not repeated. She carefully walked exactly backwards until she encountered her hut. She felt its contours and calculated in her mind in what direction she was looking. Then, finally, she turned, went in and allowed sleep to claim her.
She awoke to find that a thin greenish light had returned to the world. She rushed outside in time to see that the sky was now encircled by a thin band of light. As she watched, the previous day’s sequence was repeated in reverse: the horizon-girdling band grew steadily wider with the light becoming stronger as the blackness was banished to an ever-shrinking circle of darkness. Eventually it dwindled to a mathematical point and soundlessly vanished.
Shana had seen that process many times but it always fascinated her. But now she had another phenomenon to investigate.
She positioned herself exactly where she had stood in the previous time of darkness and looked out across the Land. She found herself looking at the exact centre of the range of low hills. So that’s where the light had been! She felt her heart beat faster once again as she contemplated the fact that something new and different had occurred in the Land’s placid routine.