Naalwake

Nine years after the landing stone.

The wheat at Ky'thaal Sek went gold the way a held breath goes gold. Jyteek Rhalen stood on the south ridge with a sickle and watched the river Aen braid light toward the mill. For the last nine years it had looked, against his better training, like a future.

His father still moves with the economy of a man who learned that wasted motion is a kind of dying. Julta keeps the slate and the sling. Orren, nine, loses arguments with grasshoppers and writes return...