"Yes. It is late. The light is near underfoot"

"Did you not say we’d arrive, 'when The Child rise'?"

"Actually, I said, ‘while The Child rise'…"

"I see. How clever of you! Saying one thing to mean such another…"

"And I also said, 'though we may stop'…"

"But, we are stopped!"

"Well, then, my judgement accords with the truth…"

"How nice! Your pericycle of judgement is a scattering, that we need not replace the mislaid. A judgement, Oh.. but though care! It may carry some burdens for the witless and trusting…

…For who better in Judgement to Stand…

"Yes, that’s good. But, you knew there’d be stopping, and I cannot tell for how long…"

"To declare yourself boundlessly ignorant is the noblest truth, but is hardly a judgement. By the beards that are growing in the mouths of a clam! Must your reason be a floral-ine maze, but which cannot put seed? Or, are you a vessel so empty that now, at the Burials, only six and more hours away! we might play for the fallen your skull in the mournful-ing tones of a conch, while Wiillagus here could blow sand past your ears, in a jest to the howl of your emptiness…?

"You ought not be confusing an absence of things for the presence of nothing, lest that day your Poetry should fall to its knees, and covering its lips in shame… refuse to say anything at all…"

"…well said…brother…"

"Must we now hear from the wise one again, Jesederea, who concurs as though words were not hard won inventions, but as air to be breathed up exhumed by another"

"And the hardest one, you…"

"The hardest won, me? Oh I see! Well, how frankly rudimentary, but you had an idea…"

"Quieten, sister… When we are stopped …we must all of us stop …Understand? That is the reason we stop…"

"Wiilligus. Only when I, Amphoraea, have stopped, will all things have then stopped…"

"If you must suffer the inner life, must all suffer with you?"

"The inner IS life …there is no more to suffer"

"Then …suffer no more…"

Amphoraea just stared at her brother, whose words, like the closing of a book, had forced her to silence.

"Is now everyone to be "

So Wiilligus was known as the Medium, Jesedrea the Reflective, her brother, Maac, was the Pure. And, Amephoraea, the Gifted.

Or, sometimes The Shield, The Lake, The Blade, and The Sky.

The siblings, Gerushula, which were Willa and Phrae, had wed to the two of the Apinnika, Markham and Sedae. And each of these pairs – whether sibling or spouse, or of gender, across or alike, whichever was one to another, they were always a crossing; each was a cardinal point. And if North face to South, then is East neither less or more West in some way, or another, to match for the others in wit, and intelligence, inspiration or courage, and of that which they lately were calling ‘the inner' Life, of which all knew that Life was as nothing.

What was this they felt ‘on the inside’ – that which had no such dominion to trees, which was barely a moments concern give hardly a moment of thought to the insects, to a bird or an animal – but to them was a rising mercurial tide, a crystalline myth too vast to see clearly, a flaming of blue and vibrating in constant confusion … a maze of entangled delight and illusions, a reef to the vanquished, the puzzle to a destiny feared too ornate.

_____________________________

From North of Aurora the skimming sun had spiralled to zenith in the Floodlands, where many like they could be found – all piercing of look and intent, as all-knowing of wonders unseen, as the truths that are held in the hand, and examined – the made-things, ‘machine’, they were called, things made of things that would do… well it seemed whatsoever was desired;

They had seen the a jaws that could snap shut when stepped upon, and a turning wheel lifting up

Fall there and deliver to my mouth or my side, or lead me to hence, but this way or that Take up this mountain and form it to a semblance of order that only I see within –

While fleeting such objects are seen as the air over there, sand – tell something all to know true… This one. That lines can be moved with great speed to form things that have never been seen – will never be some of them.

But those who had seen on the inside… behind …in the space where the inner life thought to reside; where the eyes… from a chamber of sunken repose looked out on the sky …had found to be filled with the same greyly softness that in all things preside – in the furry and feathered the sleek, and the …purring – did they all have …of the LIFE? No. For they would be making 'machine', or to endlessly stare at the lights in the top of the high, and where hugely the grander machine could be seen – the night and its wheels of proceeding that tell of so little and tell it so slow… because of so much.

Lush is the garden of earthly delights …but the garden 'within' is a forest of riches and flame, such that all which is here underfoot and from this day to end, can flit into being or be turned about light in the blink of an eye.

And stranger, the fruits of the ground that consumed made the INNER explode into radiant fields of …despair and finely, with some one another to share with the teeming and sunnier regions… to dwell there …awhile ….far from the places that are seen with the eye…

None can say much to these wonders… And though we may fairly explain… all of us know them as naught but so others before us have claimed…

__________________________________

So morning would come; the Dog before set had brought bluer and cooler their shadows, they picked up their things – things they were somehow required, but never quite now – and had borne away South to the Burials where a great many others would show – with the lost of last season whose bones would be stately prepared for the long and mysterious stay.

As customary Amphorea would take up the play upon words she found so much delight. While Maakus having come to a point of concern would pause and pronounce:

"It would seem that the world to each one is their secret alone…"

Jesederea turning, concurred, "That is so… and all of the truth you may know…"

Amphorea: "So then I will tell you… of my world … if you me of yours… Agreed?"

Wiilligus, thoughtful and laughing "That is well. For none may know others, except by the things that they tell us…"

And then later…

"Look. Will. There are signs of a place… do you see?"

"Smoke… that is hard to replace… we may not be too far…"

"This is well excellent! Let us press on and … insistent, "

"Though we shall… in the footfalls of voice …to that clamour embrace…"

So lifted in spirit, they were nearly arrived.

To the East of the most-Eastern end of the Sea parting North from the South, and beyond which are said to be fields without end, and men who had travelled on horses, the edges of the Diamond Sea were host to the seasonal gathering of the Near Peoples, being all those that dwelt to the West and the North and who numbered by popular reckoning as were both hands to one finger fully six times over was as finger to one hand; a number too large to contemplate except as a seething of insects are numbered.

To reckon such amount was to place in a pouch, a 'two hand' of pebbles – this number was that of the fingers of one person – and then to assemble this same many pouches to be emptied in a vessel. Now, after one such of these vessels prepared for each finger of two hands were this total now poured into an earthen jug. Next one assembled earthen jugs again for each finger and the contents transferred to a single amphora. After gathering as many amphora as before there were jugs, the pebbles numbering one finger to two hands of the large number to reckon many things.

And of Near People there were one hand and one finger of this large number.

It was useless. Even in this way, no-one had yet claimed to 'see' how many pebbles there were in two hands of amphora, much less in two hands of those.

Willigus had talked of a girl – full with the 'inner life' – who had made up a word for 'two hands' – she had called it a 'tan'. So, to go from one 'tan' of these pebbles, through pots and kettles and so on and what not, was simply to say there were "tan by tan by tan…" and the number of 'tans' to her more important than pebbles – as though any one could be peered into and seen to contain yet another 'tan' only but smaller. And like so, that any such 'tan' could be seen as a part of the next greater plan

How this poor girl's head must hurt when finally she manages to see that tower of 'tan' reaching skywards, and filling the whole world, while downwards that smaller end threatening to close frightening closer into nothingness… It was a road that never end, and wherever the traveller they were never any nearer to their destination.

Somehow like the circle was how many times the pebbles were exploded in number…

It was better… The numbers of things had become a the pebbles exploded in