Through the River

A.N. Umm yes...

Was wondering if I should go ahead with this or scrap it while I'm still... not ahead



The words in bold are placeholder names, I'm not sure what I'm going to replace them with but oh well. And yeah, the story is actually untitled as of now.



Grammar mistakes- I know there are a lot, but then English is not quite my first language -wince- so please read, review, comment ^^ 







The curling delta of the Defezi river lies in the badlands east of Seilun city. It is a sluggish body of water, too rank and sour to feed the parched earth surrounding it. And still people have settled; various nomads and tribes of the desert after being pushed out by their stronger cousins in the last Great War. They bring with them dying livestock and culture until a mere generation later, everything has shifted together into a cultural melting pot they have beget in the nameless village they call home. There is no rain here and life struggles to survive. If the rains ever came, they would flood the plains and wash away all trace of society. People stopped farming a long time ago and now survive on the skinny animals that wander the deserts, marauding insect swarms seeking their next meal, warty toads that live in the swamp-like river and roots of leafless plants that thrive as pale tendrils through the thick mud. Children often gather to play on the riverbank, but then disperse. They know better than to drink from the snaking filth.



He does not remember when it all started. If one asked the eldest residents of the humble town with no name and no place on the map, they would have said that the man was as old as the time itself, an ageless aberration, a god with no earth to call his own, a star that has been abandoned by the skies. If one had asked him, he would have said those were all lies and he stays simply because the life he owes to the temple. But on a good day he would have replied that it is because he is the village itself and no rumor big and small could ever be able to unearth the tree of life that binds the fickle humans to this plot of land.



David is a name that has been given to him, something he is called by because he has no identity of his own. But that is not his name though he is not quite where the certainty comes from and he never offers this as an explanation to as why he will never answer the high priest’s calls, only feigning deafness when a higher ranking attendant comes to berate him for his laxness. The only thing he has of his past is a leathery skull of an unknown material the high priest has yet to sell off. He feels no emotional attachment to it though it is what the former high priest swore he rode upon in the sticky mud one morn when the rains had come to strike against the newly built temple.



There was more, he had said. Overlapping scales of pale leather connected to the base of the skull. It had been sold off because it had been so fine and rich, until only a skull remained. It ensured David’s stay within the temple; he will never go hungry or cold. But he wonders what it might have been like, to have beheld the remnants of an unknown creature that had bore him through a storm and deposited him at the foot of the ruined temple and its high priest.



John the newest high priest is young, as in David is older still. He is the fifth in a line of succession within David’s conscious memories though on the papers he is written as sixth, the most auspicious number by far. He is dark-haired and dark skinned in the colors of his people. Dust coats his hair as it does the best of them though he takes care in the mornings to douse his hair in oils. He will not let the grease from the fats of toads to touch his royal head, only the finest stocks of perfume when the merchant cart passes through the desert towards Soura city on the eastern end. He is impudent with youth. Not quite ready for the bridle of power that has been passed down through his father.



David does not care much for him. Rising donations, decrees make little difference in the long run. It is like the big cycle of the sun, the moon, and the stars. It is how during the balmier winter months, the Defezi river swells like a pregnant jackrabbit. Everything must come to a close, the end and the inevitable beginning of the circle. John will learn once he realizes that the eternity of David’s flesh does not extend to his own. Maybe the younger brother, Peter the priest in training, will succeed his brother in later years with knowledge and caution that often comes with aging so quickly. Perhaps Luke, John’s first cousin and already wise beyond his years, will relent and take the responsibility of being a high priest. Or he—this is just a passing fancy—can become a ruling priest for always. Whatever happens, when the new priest is to take up the mantle, this will all be forgotten, reset to point zero in their solar clocks.