Herein lies a city encircled in mists and sands and its people live in equal luxury. War is not a word in their language. They have no stockades to hang their murderers because there are none. Their largest structure houses those without homes while they build them new ones. They are governed by a chamber that holds seats for all over the ages of sixteen winters. A river runs down a high waterfall and floods the plains once a year. If they have ever experienced drought or famine then not a single living person remembers it nor do their detailed histories recall of it. If there are disputes then they are resolved in a public court. This court needs the hinges on its doors replacing as it hasn’t been used in decades. Conflict isn’t their nature.
Here comes a man wandering in from the mists. He walks with a limp. His head hung low. He collapses into the sands and is chanced upon by some riders from the city. No one ever ventures into the mists. There is no need. No one ever comes out of them either. This man is not of the city. He is a stranger.
They give the stranger water and rouse him from his faint. He wears strange metal clothing. Attached to a belt he carries a length of long, sharp steel.
When he is able to sit by himself, the people from the city ask the stranger, ‘What is that? What is it for?’
The stranger speaks no words. He answers only with his silence.
Paddy Dobson
26th April 2021