day 30 – 1813 words

he drew his saber and walked steadily forward – unhurriedly.perhaps she heard his footfalls, crunching on the sandy grond, her perhspas it was the fluttering of the startled chickens. but teres looked up and saw him when he was still ten paces away.she froze in an instant of shocked recognition, then just as quickly as she froze, she zipped into action. she dropped the feed the bag of feed that she had been trying to open in preparation of carrying it over to the trough or scattering it on the ground in front of the chickens. she dropped it, she had just gotten one little corner open, and was clutching the two sides of the sack pulling the tear open a little wider to open the tear the hole to make it easier to pour and to get reach her hand in there to grab some and scoop it out with her hand and scatter on the ground, when she dropped it, it hit the ground with a thud, the grain absorbing the impact so that the dbag deformed a little bit and then sagged over onto its side, spilling out a small mound of seed of feed onto the ground next to the bag, like it was a small animal taking a little shit.
no, it did not scatter all over the ground and everywhere. naarka wuickened his pace just a little as he stepped around and over teh little mound of feed sack and followed her ethrough a doorway on the left. she was already running through the rooms, the barnyard little shed area opened off of the pantry, into which naarka was now stepping. teres was already through it and moving out of the opposite door into the kitchen, and she was already yelling the names of her sons – not in a frantic, panicked voice, but a clear, prepared-sounding voice,  avoice that carried without being overly loud – like a stage actor7s, or an opera singers – “Cal! Bil! CAL. BIL.” naarka could almost see them in his minds eye, looking up from whatever dirty hulking machine over which they were hunched, instantly recognizing the situation and their danger in it. naarka kind of sighed to himself. perhaps he should have shot teres from a distance with the gun. he was not a very good shot, but he might have at least kept her from rtunning. but oh well. th is is what felt right at the time. this was the way he wanted to do it. he had begun to form a personal philosophy in the past few years, largeyl through this whole experience with dal and his family, that if you did not follow at least some of your whims, perhaps the makority of them, then you were dead. or to put it another way, ifyou were only alive in the proportion to the number of your own whims that you followed.
he was moving into the kitchen now, he could still see teres, though she was moving a bit further from him, since she was running, and knew the house, and he was just walking, though wa;lking qwuickly, and he had to get his bearings with each room. as he stepped into the kitchen he saw a dirty blonde woman with dirty-blonde njaw line length frizzled hair look up from the counter next to the sink in a far corner of the room. this woman was watching teres run trhough the far door, and then this woman turned to look at naarka.  a look of intense anger crossed her face, distoritng it like a band of haot air distorts a summer road, she grabbed a large kitchen knife, and started rushing toward naarka, then stopepd, slowed, and started approaching more cautiously. in the fwseconds it took to pass through these stages for the woman, naarka, pulled the gun out its holster wiht his left hand and with his left hand he fired into the woman’s torso – or towards it. with his left hand he was an even worse shot, and the recoil he could feel spraining his wrist. however however the bullet weent into the woman, into the bottom of he rleft ribs, just aside of the top of her belley. it was enoghnto stun her at least. she stopped, and grunter, and her shoulders rolled forward in a clumsy, angyr-looking shrug. naarka stepped forward and slid his saber between her ribs above the bullet hole. “ah,”, the woman said and fell backward, knowking some flour off of the table behind her. she leaned back into the florand bumped her head, hard. naarka stepped over her, stabbed her again through the ribs, trying to aim in to the hard, and then pulled his arm back, and thrust forward again to stab her in the throat, jabbing at it two or three times for good measure. he wanted to be final about it, but he did not feel he had time tfor chopping anything off. he stepped back from the woman’s bodyt on the floor there and headed again toward the door opposite the pantry, the southern door. he had lost sight of teres. dammit.
he went to the door and leaned out through it. it opened onto the side of a corridor. teh hallway stretched left and right, to the east and west. naarka waited two breaths, looking up and down the hall. to the right were doorways, most of them closed with the doors closed in them, to the left were also a coouple of closed doors in the walls of the hallway, but then at the end it turned to the right, back south. whereas the right side – west side hallway ended in a awall.he weighed quickly, and finding teres wuickly before she made more preparations or prepared any strategy or strategem was heavier than caution, he qucikly stepped into the hall, paused one more instant,m then walked steadily at a steady pace to the left, and waround the curve the turn of the hall to the right at the end of this hallway, was somewhat cshort, it opened onto the factory. he could already feel the heat coming out of that room.  and he could see a red glow.he started to step down the hall and otoward out into the factory floor big room, when he saw a large gifure coming toard him, moving his way with a holding a large metal rod that glowed at one end, glowed a pink red. he stepped wuickly back into the corrideor, backing wuickly. he sheathed his saber, and drew the gun againm into his right hand
the figure appeared at the end of the doorway at the end of the hallway, and naarka fired, once again into the torso. he could not see where the bullet went in exactly, sinc etheis large man , who he now saw had salt aqnd pepper close cropped hair and a kneaded, acne-scarred face, let out a thoughful little sound, *mmm*, as if he were judging a cooking contest a tasting contest by taste. naarka brought his left hand to his right wrist to steady his hand, held thehis arms out straight and aimed at the man’s head,. and fired again. the man ha dbeen leaning against one wall, the bullet went into his forehead above his right eye. his expression went completely blank and he slid down the wall into a sitting position. naarka, after a furtive look past the sitting figure into the factory floor beyond, stepped back again and fed three more bullets into this gun. then he stepped to the doorway, leaned back against the wall and leaned inot the room. stepping carefully over the red hot poker that had clattered to the floor that had not clattered tot he floor actually, but was still held by the sitting dead man.
he could not see any more people immeditately, but the ere were a  lot of tables, anvils, the big furnace, and benches and tubs . he stepped carefully out into the factory floor. there suddenly he heard a clattering fro the far side of the room. he moved over to the eastern doorway, and kicked the big sliding screen open a litlte further, letting in more natural daylight. tyhere was a curtain on the southern side of the room, suddenly it was thrown back and a large older man, gray haired, appeared from behind it, tosing a bucket of some hot silver liquid onto the moving scren, he was holding the bucket with very thick, very padded, very rubber gloves. naarka was holding the gun with both hands now,. he took careful aim and shot then old man through the throat. behind the old man he saw a young teenager move backward in startled fear toward the wall. it was the woman’s younger son. bil.he mnoved forward to the edge of the cuttain, menacing the by with his gun, so that the boy retreated further, behind a large furnace and  to the south wall and westeard back along iyt, to where his mother appeared to be waiting.nearer naarka, on his northern side of the furnace stood the older son, about four paces away or five let’s say, holding another poker, but this one was not glowing red hot. cal.
naarka took a step bnack, and holstered his gun. he wanted some more emotional resonance than the gun cuold give him. and there was a small component of honor, though that had mostly been satisfied with the father for the rest of the family expediency was looked upon as justifiedy, but a certain flair was certainly appreciated. naarka drew his saber.and advanced upon the older boy. cal was keyed up though, or just nartuarally quick. he darted forward and with his own lunge knocked the saber to naarkas left with a hard swing from the with the pole, and then somehow wwuicker than naarka could figure out he had grabbed naarkas arm and was trying to wrestle hinm.. nsaarka struggled, he thought he could break free without injury, but the kid was not pressing advantage, the kid was pulling him eastward, that seemt o be his whole aim. narka tried to leverage ths and started running in the same direction, he could feel the kid become startled through the kid’s arms. from somewhere he heard a woman yell, “weait, there!”, which he did not understand, but the kid started digging in his feet, and pushing him back, then the kid tried to break free. he did briefly, but naarka managed to snatch one of the kid’s arms back, and that is ehen the latge blade came down and cut off naarka’s head, and with it the arm of cal’s that naarka had been holding. his left arm.
cal statrted screaming in pain, and then it became  a long, long loud yell of anger.

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day 29 – 1741 words

nsaarka walked back down and rolled up his sleeping back again, put it in his pack. he briefly thought about leaving it there, but then quickly thought better of it. he would take it with him as far as the building, and stash it by a corner or something someplace easy to find again where he could either get it on his way out, or come back for later. he shrugged the pack on over his shoulders and on to his back and set out again. wallking continuting the course he had begun in mid-day or during daylight i should say. he was pretty jmuch direclty north east of the compoound. he headed south west, aiming for the middle of the north wall. he walked, calmly, casually, not really feariung detection or anything at all, for that matter. soon enough he reached the wall. trhrre were no distingusihing features. no hadnholds, no dunes reaching up to the top of the wall. no dooreway or other entrance. he decided to check the western wall. he walked west. he reached the edge, and peacked around, stepped around the corner. same thing. featureless. no dorrrway no entrance. no feasture of the landscape reaching up to the top of the wall. he stashed hi s pack with the sleeping bag at the northwaest corner of the building, and decided to continue his circuit counterc-clockwise around the wall.
he reached the south wall, and turned the corner. same thing. no features. no entracnes. no holes no holes whatsoever, no holes! he walked on eastward to the end of the wall. he paused slightly, cautious but still unafraid, and looked aronud the corner. nothing and no one stirred. he stepped around the corner, then stepped away eastward from the wall a bit to get a more encompassing view of the eastern wall with its gate, a wider angle of vision, if you will. two big woodeen doors in a big stone wall. that was it.. he walked northward along the wall, and stepped closer to the gates, the large wooden doors . the looked prtetty solid. no easy way in. hmm. well, fuck. he obviously had not rhought this through very well. the way he saw it, he had two options+ mait for morning, when they would probably open the gates again, or try to climb the walls or doors with what tools he had. both of these approaches had serious problems. as far as waiting, well that had the same problems as walking up and going straight in yesterday afternoon,. had not he rejkected that approach already? hmm, well yes, but he still might be forced to take it. and besides, now tht he was already this close, hem might be able to sneak in even through the front gate more easily.
the problem with the seoncd method was, frankly, that he did not bring many tools at all.  boy did he ever NOT think this through. *sigh*. he basically had his weapons:gun slash slingshot, saber, hand knife. then he had his sleeping bag and pack. he walked he continued his cirtuit around the building until he cam to the opposite corner where he had stashed his pack. he runmmaged through it,. maybe there was a ropoe or dsomething? hwe ran his hand over the wall, to see what , to see if maybe it was possible for him to gouge hand and foot holds in it using , for instnace the handle of his knife. no, not reallly. he sat down for a while and seriously considered cutting his sleeping bag into strips, then tying them together to form a rope. maybe he could tie one end to a rock, and then use his gun slash slingshot to fire it over the wall. ove r the wall? then what would anchor it for him to climb up the rope? maybe he couldfire the rock into the wall, near the top, and that would anchor it enough for thim to climb up. he thought about it , really he did for a full five minutes or so, before he rejected the idea.
he didn:t really rtust his aim to put him within range of the top fo the wall, within reach of it I should say. and he didn not really trust that it would be anchored stronlgy enough in the wall to hold his weight. reluctantly he came to the conclusion that really, honestly he knew he would come to before he even walked back over here to his pack. he would taske anothert napo, and wait for daylight, for thwen the gate would be open, and he could try to sneak in. he got his sleeping bag out of the pack, unrolled it, and climbed in again., he was hungry, and ate the one food bar that he had broguth. good thing i ddid not leave this sleeping bag back there where i took nmy other nap, he rthought. son he dozed off again.
he slept fitfully, waking sevewral times. but finally he woke in a twilgihlight twilight. it was just befor edawn. the sky was greying out of its blackness of its night.naarka was hungry again. and thirsty.. wait a minute, am i saying he left his bijke wihtout water? let:s not say that. let:s say that i go back in and put in that he takes a flask of water. he sat up in his sleeping backj, reached over to the pack, and took a swig of water. it was still chilly, but he could tell that it was going to be a hoit day, when the sun did come up, he immediately felt its heat.. he squirmed out of the sleeping bag, roled it up and put it into its pack. he laid it carefully against the western wall of the compound, just at the northern corner.  he cheked all his weapons, took one more swig of water, then put the flask too in the pack. he walked east to the edsge of the wall, the north eastrn corner of the compound, and peered around the corner, stuck his head out to look at the  eastern wall.  it was suddenly batherd in light. he looked east, the sun was just coming up over the horizon, which seemed unusually close.
he looked at the east a little longer, adjusting his eyes until his eyes were adjusted tot he light the brightness over there. he loooked at the road. he could see no one on it. he lokoed back a thte eastern wall. was the gate open? di it look like the doors weren:t there/ he coldn not really tell. did they open inward? he started walking south to the doors. he stuck close to the wall. as he got closerr he could see that yes ithey opened inward, and they stood open. he pciked up the binoculars from where they were hanging aorund his neck, hanging on his chest he grabbed them, made sure they were in infrared mode, heat sensing mode, and looked through them. he say no heat source near the doors. he put them down and moved closer, right next to one, and stuck his head briefly past the edge. he looked into the courtyard, and could see no one. he looked again with his heat sensing binoculars. he could see a large heat source right in teh  middle of the building, must be the furnace that lises below the large chimney. there was also a heat soruce almost as large off to its left, more to the side of the factory. he saw what he thought were the shapes of people moving inside the building, they looked far off. he put the binoculars down. he coulds not see anyone, at least nmot clearly. qucikly, and as siletnly as he could he stepped in past the door on the right the door closest to him, he stepped forward around it it and then behind it, in the angle  inside the angle it made with the wall of the compound.
from behind the door he looked at the building again. he saw the large doorway into the facrtory. the door the huge sliding door only stood a few feet open. he looked further tot he right, there were some windows high up on the wall, but no more doors on this side. the building seemed to stop, drop off into a side yard though some ways from the northern wall. he looked again through his binoculars. he could see some vague shapes moving inside the building, but nothing definite. he walked slowly along the wall to the north, until he could get a good view of the teh yeard beyond the edge of the building. it seemed to drop back to a little barnyard, where some chickens were scratching in the dust. he quickly sidled forward so that he was against the eastern edge of the building, bon the corner right before it dropped back into the yard. there was an open troof above some what looked to be a barn, he could see soem of the chicken coops, and what looked like they might be small stables. maybe for goats.
hen saw some movement in the back of this shed slash cum barn. he couyldn not make it out clearly though, it was still twilgight sort of dusky here beind the wall, though the sky was bright by this point in time.he looked down at his binocluars, switched it to optical mode, and broght them up to his eyes for a closer look. there was definitely a human figure there. it was moving behind some things, some stalls and equiopment. now he could tell it was female. he kept watching. now he could tell. it was teres. from the photographs he had seen, the face matched. he leaned back, turned, and put his back against the wall, facing east. he took a deep breath. he putnhis binoculars down on his chest, then snapped the buttons on the strapps that held it tight against his chest, so it would not swing about when he moved. he took his gun out, and reached into anothe rpocket of its holster to take out some buillets. he loaded it with four bullets, which was a full charge for what was really an accessory. he put the gun back in its holster. he drew his saber, and turned back to the barn yard shed.

day 28 – 3035 words

so, where were we. he had shot the green glass globe on top of the pole, marking as a sign post would the access road to the glass factory.
now i have done some research on the glass problem. it turns out that the modern process for making glass, called the float process, involves pouring molten glass, glass when it is molten, that ius, onto a bed of molten tin – that is the metal, tin, like the tin man, only this tin has been metled.  the tin is very fluig – it is not viscous at all – that is, it flows freely, and quickly. ,molten glass, on the other hand, is very viscous. it flows very slowly. note that cooled, hardened glass does *not* flow – look it up, asshole! on snopes or something.. so the higloy visous glass and the higly fluid tin do not mix – they are like oil and water, though i think the reason they do  not mix is different. with oil and water it has something to do with the way dissolve things, does it not? anyway the glass floats on top of the tin, giving a veryu very smooth surface as it cools, still floating on this bed of tin. it is floating you see, thus the name – the float process.
according to wikipedia this process was first thought up and patented in the late nineteenth century, and the last patent – that is, the final industrialization of it on a large scale – was in the fifties. so did it take that long 0- into the fifties, before we had large panels of smooth smooth plate glass? maybe. before that the process of getting plate glass was to pull it up with a roller – pull the glass up? from a molten pool? i guess i don:t get that. or, a big bottle was blown, cut in half, then the halves were flattened. or a circle was blown. both of these methods involved grinding the glass aftewrwards to get a smooth surface. grinding is a time and labor-intensive process. it takes a lot of time and a lot of work, so it is very expensive. an expensive process. so this guy, ferr, at this factory, what is he trying to do. he is trying to make plate glass. he has been doing it with the bottles and the circles for almost ever, but of course it is very expensive. no one on this continent makes plate glass with the float process. there is some glass made that way around, but it is all imported – a process almost as expensive, especially for glass, as the grinding of the blwon glass.
now ferr wants to make the real smooth plate glass. he thinks the market is there for a locally produced source. he has found some books on the process from long ago, and deciophered them. or a foreigner has visited him, wanting to know the blowing techniques foir his hand crafted stuff. ferr is afraid that this foreigner is going to go back to his homeland tand then mass produce the little trinket stuff and ruin his business, well if he sat down and thought about ithe porbably will not be driven out of most of his markets – the huniting lodge to the west, the frou frou restaurants and so forth. maybe the markets. anywaty he thinks that he can sell the plate glass to builders, to the contractors that are p@utting up new buildings and renovating old ones. he tin the city to the east. he thinks the city is standing on the cusp of a new wave of technological improvement. i was about to say modernization – but there is no revolutionizing, no reworking of the entire culture – it is one more layer added on top of all the others that have piled up milenna upon millenia. the way that in japan you can do everything on a cellphone you could do on a computer , but if you try to rtent an apartment good luck finding hot running water.
so anywar, ferr in his efforts – he had tried the rolling process. but he did not understand it anymore than i do. he could not get it to work. so he was trying out the tin thing. so in the factory, on the factory floor, was a small set up just to test the concept. a pool of tin, and a conveyewr belt leading out of it. a big cutter on the conveyer belt. does ferr need to give everyone makss? are there fumes dangerous huymours and vapors involved with haveing a big pool of molten tin lying in a corner of the room? he had to divert some of the heat from the big badass furnace tto keepo the tin moltern. or build an adjunct furnace, with an adjunct chimney, cork screwing and piping and bent ducting into the main chiney? also ferr delt with the suppliers, bringing in teh raw material, silica – and what else, some kind of carbonate? some kind of coke? these were rough men, coming from the mines in the middle of the desert. they always stayed a day or two and told some great great stories after the big dinneres that ferr would fete them to. fete for them? what is the proposition there? or is it an indirect object – dinneres he woul dfete them?. when he knew they were coming he usually brought in a few prositiutes from the city. – from bobcat:s catually. how about that.
okay, back to naarka, standing at that pole. indeed, as he looked know, having calmed down a bit, there was a road leading off to the west. it was not in the best repair. it looked like it had been lain with large flat stones, some of which were broken. it ha dporbably been laid by a private contractor, a private road lauying company – if not by the owners of the factory itself, perhaps the factory’s original builders. perhaps they had hired a private road-laying company and then helped them in the laying of this road. some of the large flat stones qwere broken, and they had not been replaced or repaired, and some of them had not been put back in the road. perhaps the current owners proprietors of the factory ahd lost tjhe  any whatever road laying skills there predecessors might may have had. the dunes here were low, anyway, more like loe, short, drifts of snd than full-fledged dunes. hnaarka walked over to his vehicle, and swung his leg back over it, he stepped first ion one of the stirrups, and then swung his leg over the fuselage and seat, he settled himself in the seat, then flexed his shin muscles to press the pedals in the stirrups to provide thrust to make the vehicle go – to move it forward. he started out slowly down the westward road, and steadily picked up speed until he was going a comfortable fifty kilometers per hour.
he started to see it in the distance, after about twenty minutess. it shimmered into being abocve its own mirage – or is that possible, or likely. it happened in lawrence of arabia, certainly – but here – i do not know. anyway. he saw it in the far far distance and slowed down. know he had to decide how he wanted to do this. on the spur of the moment, just then at that time at theat pricecise instant and not ever before he decided he did not want to approach direcrtly. let us observe sisscreetley if we can for a while observe discreetly for a while first, ifd we can, he thought. and how would he do that. he stopped the vehicle. he leaned back and dug through another bpack, on the back, hanging off of the back of his vehcile off the back left side. he pulled out the binoculars – oh can i not think of some cooler future-slang shortening sounding word for binoculars? what if they are electroing, mechanical binoculars? long-range specs, long range viewers, distance viewers. bringing them to his face, to his eyes, and peering through them so that the rest of the worlds disappeared exdepot for th whte wind playing with the hair at the back of his head, and it was replaced by a far away image of a sand-colored awall against sand-colore dsand hills – dunes, below a pale, white-washed – almost sand-colored ssky – no, a pearl blue sky, turquoise sky? lapis-lazluli sky? azure? anyway it was blue – makbe pale, maybe darkening troward dusk by now, you think? and in the wall he could see a gate, though it was open. hmmm. if i don:t want to approach directly that means i don:t want to go through that gate. that means not coming at it from this side. from the front here. i will have to see if ic an approach it from another die. and i beter try to do that starting from out here. he turned his vehicle north.
he went about fifteen minutes before he hit sand dunes big enough that he realized circling in a big way with his vehicle was going to be terribly dificult without a road to circle on. walking the rest of the way would give him more cover, maybe he would have less to hide when he got up close. he might have more options for how he approached., from what direction. he would have to park his vechilce at some point anyway. the only wuestion was whether to  or rather how long was this long going to take him? would he even get there by nightfall? hmm. maybe it would be better to just go in direclty, gns blazing if he had to. but that might give them warning, if they were in the back, he could be delayed by the people there, and they could slip away again. he didn not want to thave to hunt them down again. this woul dbe it, god damn it. okay. if he got there at night, then so mucn the better. but he might have to camp out. he would have to think carefully about what supplies to bring from tehe vehcile. god, he was oging to wind up looking like one of these fucking fugitives, hauling a big pack around. oh well, it could not e helped. there is a price to be paid for sdoing things the right way, as his father dear old daddy used to sday – or did he. he might have, anyway.
he gunned the vehicle’s engine till it made up over the enxt dune, then banked it to a stop in the valley there. he would have to make it easy for him to find this thing again, too – but moderately difficult for others to find. he went to the. he parked the thing, and went to the packs hanging off the baqck of it. he pulled out the tarp to cover the thin. a bit camouflage-colored. desert camoflauge, natch. he poulled out a line-of-sight radio finder -sdlash-homing beacon. he pulled out a sleeping bag, a thin one mylar or some shit.he poulled out a backpack. he pulled out the gun, and a holster for it. he pulled out his short sword, really a really long knife. and his hand knife. he pulled the comaflaged tarp over the vehicel, hooking the hooks that were on its edges to the edges and corners and wires of the vechilce itself. he didnot stake it into the ground or anything, it was one unit with the vehicle they could both blow away together. he made sure the sleeping bag was rolled up and put it in the backpack. he had some food bars, he put those in the bag to. he strapped on the holster for the gun, and the scabbard the short saber. his hand kniofe he always had in a holster on his leg.
he slid the gun into its holster. the saber was already in its scapbbard.he picked up the two pieces of the line of sight radio finder slash homing beacon. this had to be a line of sight thing, he looed around. he could, or could he? could he put the home unit on top of the of one of the dunes and expect it to stay there, in line of sight? uh, probably not, he would have to rig an antenna for the dish to sit on top of, an antenna coming from the bike not a dish, but some antennas anywy. the portable unit was s dish maybe? hmm have to do some research on that. it would mark out his vehicle, which he had justn tried to hide – but there weas no hope for no help for it. or was there? was this a good idea at all?hen maybe he should jus ttry to makrk his position some other way. ah, fuck it, he undid the tarp on the bnike again and puled a tripod assembley our of one of tethe opacks, then oput the taro back again.he climbed to the top of the dune he had crossed to get here, the one to the south, and planted the tripod assembly there. fuck it., he would just have to he would just take his chances. if the trpod got knocked over, moved, or byuried, he woul djust have to find his way back to his vehicle on his own, using his own personal sense o internal snse of direction. he set up the tripod, put the bas eunit on it, swithced it on, and then tested put the portable unit. he flipped its switch on to silent light and then waved it at the home antenna saseembly., the light went on when it was pointed directly at it. okay, good. he set out walking. to the east.
it was slow going, walking up and down the dunes. he did that because at the top of each dune he coudl check with the binoculars, which he waore ona  astrap around his neck, with a cap on them that he could unsap just one side of, so that it jus hung down underneath the lenses and was still attached , he used those to check the position of the factory. plud, the vsalley went north, south, and he wanted to go west, dso he had to climb and descend, ascend and skitter down one dune and its valley after another. he moved in a southwesterly direction, toward what he hped would be the middle of the north side of the factory. what he figured it would be, not hped, he was checking at the top of every dune, for movement as well as for his position, picking up more detai lin the factory at every rtime. every look he ha dat it. the detail he was getting was not heartening, though. it didn not look like there was anything other than the one gate on the east side. and it looked like there was a fairly tall wall surrounding the compund. did he have anything with him that he could use to scale the wall?> he had not  thought to get anything forom his vehicle before he set out. he woul d have to improvis,e or something. perhaps the dunes would pile right up tot he wall, and he could jutst walk up one like a rampo to the top of the wall. but then he noticed that the dunes were getting smaller.
he sanned further with his binocuears. there was a naturla wall of stone a kilometer or so away from the factory on its west, acting as a natural windbreak, which made the dunes break to etiherr side, like a breakwater at the edge of a harbor diverted  the waves of the sea.hmm. he had reached an area where he could use his vechile again, easily. he had to stop and think for a while about how to best approach the compund. he decided that the ground was too open and exposed. he would wait until nightfll to approach. he had his sleeping bag after all – he might as well use it. he unrolled it and climbed in, making sure he was out of sight behind a dune, the sleeping back had a kind of hood-canopy-mini-tent that went up over his head that gave him cover from the sand that might blow during the night. it was a fine mesh, like mosquito netting or smeomthing like that. it was still daylight out and thus rather hot. he lay, looking up out of his mesh little canopy head canopy, and thought about the confrontation to come. man was it hot. easy to become drowsy when it eas this hot…he drifted off to sleep. when he woke up again it was dark.
when he woke up again, mind still stuck in molasses from a long nap, it was night, it was darkm and thousands and thousands of starts were scattered in froint of him, since he was still laying face uop  staring out of the transparent screen of his head canopy. there weas not enough wind during the sunset and earyly night to cover  or even build up against his sleeping bag. that was good news for his rang finder slash homing beacon. he undid the canopy and crawled out of the sleepoing bag, there was no wind at all that was even better news. he quickly and silently climbed to the north-easter dune top and checked the range finder slash homing beacon. it was still working,. good. as the little red flash in his palm told him.. he skittered back down the dune face to his sleeping bag, and rolled it back up and pu tit back in his pack. he took out his binocuolars and climbed to the top of the south0-westerly dune. he swithced the binoculars to infra-red. there was nothing. the  chimney glowed a fading heat, but the walls were blank. he couldn not see through them to ssee any heat signatures of people or anthing like that.

day 27 – 2671 words

so naarka walked out of the tent, squinting in the bright sunlight – he had just eatend lucnh – and walked over to his vehicle, the sand and gravel crunching and shifting beeath his feet. he swung his leg over, bent down his head to take the leather string from around his neck and slipped it over his head almost tangling it in his long, messy, tangled, almost clumped but not really approaching dreadlock dirty hair, and slipped his key all four prongs of it into the fuselage of his vehicle, about a decimeter in fromnt of his crotch, where the fuselage started to bulge out and up and to meet the steering columna dn to covere the front apparatus, the front hover foot pad thingy.the vehicle jumped up m,adnt the light that was autiomatically rtunred on in front naarka couldn’t see, but he knew it was there, the cehilce jumped up, and bobbed in the air slightly, the air around the hover pad, immediately below it, became alightly clearere, acted as a prism, or a lens,a dn the air around it became slightly more fuzzy, fuzier, and the light shinging through it the air within it and under it grew clreaer, so it lokked as if the gravel right under the hover foot pad was slightly large,r like loioking through the water at the botom of a fishtank at the little stones and gravel that had slowly sunk there if disturbed. you got the feeling, naarka had the feeling that if he kicked that gravel underneath his hover foot pad it would drift only slowly to the ground back to the ground as if it were just like the gravel a tthe botom of a fishtank immersed in water as it is don’t ya know.
he stood up in the stirrups and leaned his whole erect body to add extra guidance to his turning of the steering column, and arced the vehcile leaningwards leaning it through a sharp turn through the gap in the prope around the citizen’s parking area that we aleready went over yesterday and out of it, then down the lane of the parking lot the large poarking area with its caravans to each side and smelly pack animals and et cetera, slowly so as not to hit a helot stumbling into the traffic aisle and into his way, slowly so as not to hit an aniumal or helot that might stumble into the traffic way lane, or a rolling cart that might have slipped away and gotten away from its animal puller or human tender minder, or god forbid a child wondering from the adults busy with their meal and unknowing felling its way into the path of his vcehicle. he didn’t want to damage his vehicele after all, or waste his time with disputes over damage or injuery to anyone elzse(s property either, no sir.
then he swung it left and out into the road heading south.he pulled his wollen scarf up from around his neck where it sat baggy and loose moset of the time and he puklled it up over his mouth and nose. it had special pads attached to the insides that stuck comfortably to his face.. he reached into a small thin rectangular holster on his bellt, unbuttoned it snapped the button open and pulled out his driving glasses, goggles really, and put them on as well to protect to finish the protection of his face from the dust and sand flying in the wind and off the road, kicked up by what other traffic there was and mainly by himself and his very own cvehicle, streming alone and lonely but expectant down the empty road to the south. it was going to be about forty-five minutes before he reacehed the turn off to the access road which led to the factory wherein lived his prey, maybe. he had some more time to settly the volcano of thoughts inside him, the tornado of idead swirling inside his cranium there, doc.
but nothing came to him. he thought no big thoughts, he had no big ideas on the ride down there. a lot of it was just pure anticipation. and when his mind could no longer handle that, when he grew tired or overloaded or bored with it, he couldn’t tell wh ich, his mind just drifted. to the landscape around him. he wondered about the physical laws that underlay the formation of the poarticular wshapes of the dunes around him. were other shapes possible, and by what means? differently shaped granules? were differently shaped granuels possible? could you have a a desert made of needles of sand rather than grains of sand? what kind of phsyical process would produce something like that> flakes> what if the sand were magnetic, or had some property where it was very viscous when acting as a fluid, like if the grains stuck to each other very well but didn’t stick to a ything else well. or vice versa. would the shapes of the dunes be different then? what about a different kind of wind?
he saw a few scraggly shrubs and flowers by the side of the road and wondered what their names were. how long of a ride was this? how far away did that stupid helot man say it was going to be? he should start to be on the lookcout for that stoupid pole with the stupid colored glass at the top. now he had to look for it, and look for it, and loof for it. god this was gonna wear him out. it was already wearing him out. looking for this damn fucking thing. what a stupid thing to put there what a stupid way to marke the road, what a stupid way to advertise your fucking business, for that matter. was that it? was that it ahead? a long thin vertival object? no, that:s a tree. it:s not long safter all. stunted, ai should say. stunted and twisted in the desert. i wonder what its name is. i wonder if i give a flying fyuck. i wonder if anyone in the world cares. he felt like stopping to take a piss on the tree just to show how pissed he was at it for not being the gad-damn pole with the fairy-ass-fucking blown glass on top of it.
but he kepot on going.was that it? yes. yes, it had to be. naarka slowed and approached the pole at a crawl. it was a long pole. but there was no glass bowl a tthe top. non sphere. there were no glass shards or debris on the ground near the pole either. it looked like it might be a flag pole. there was a metal divot or whatever you might call it to wrap a rope around. there awas a rope, or the remains of one he could almost see at the top of the pole. he looked to the west. it didn:t look like a road. it just looked like desert. slightly flat – i mean, lower dunes than you night see elsewhere, but still fucking dunes. hmm. fuck. the dunes were only two or three feet high. heis vehicle could drive across them. maybe they turned into a roard? maybe someone shattered ththe glass spohere long ago, so that the glass was buriend by the sand? maybe they stoel the fucking thing like that guy was bitching about? rfduck. naarka figured he had better give it a try. he rturned his vehicle to the west and started moving slowly over the undluations that made him lean back and then far forward in his seat slash harness.
he did’t go far, I’ll tell you that. i will tell you that. he did not go far.he didn not go far, only a couple of clicks – that is ckilometers to you – before he gave up. there was no fucking road that way. the dunes quickly grew very large, large enough that driving his vehicle over them grew more and more difficult to ewll nigh impossible. he looked right and left – to the north and to the south, he couldn not see any where else where he should have or could have turned to find a road in this cacaphonic madness of featureless waves of sand. he jus thoped he couod find his way back, for road, he wa not that totally fucking lost, after all. btut he was sure was pissed again, his pisedness, his anger, was flaring up now fresh again here now. but so was a dreaded dreadful sense of uncertainty that was kind of akin to dread, in a way. supposedly led to his prey, if the man who told him about it was wrong, mistaken, or had misled him in some way, then what about his destination, the glass factory? was he mistaken about that.? was he wrong about that? was he misled aboiut that? would he have to go back to that ewatery and kill that stupid helot for a fucking liar? what a fucking pain. what a bother, as they say. these thoughts, these doubts, they swilred, swept sidewaays through his mind, through his body almost, pusshing him bodily phycisally almost physically . uh, no that ws the real wind. it had gotten iwindy. didnnot look like a storm though, just a spellof strong wind., he hoped. oh wait, he had been distracted by the weather, of all things, but there it was. look. a pole with something round at the top.

he slowed, and stopped in front of it. the wind was a mildy medium but respectable strenght now, blowing dust but not yet blowing large amounts of sand. some, but not a lot. it didn’t obscure his vision much. he slowesd to a stop and stopped inf ront of it,. did he slow and stop facing it, or did he turn his vehicle slightly so that when he sat staring at it he was twisted somewhat sideways in his seat.? he slowly completed a circuit around the pole, looking at it all the while. he stopped . he did not urn the vehicle off, but he swung his leg oiff and stepped off of the vehiucle, poulling his leg quickly off of the thing as he felt the recoil from his weight moving off of it being removed from it. it bounced and bobbed, gettign slightly asekw but wuickly righting itself with its internal gyroscipes and whatnot that it had inside of itself. wonderful thing, this foreeign engineering, naarka thought. he stepped over to the pole, and pulled the front of his pants down and took his dick out. then he let her rip, pouring a steady stream of urine toward and on the oile.
he played the urine stream back and forth and side to side over the pole. he didn not move about himself though., he stood in one spot, and aimed the stream with one hand – his right hand – on his cock and the other holding his pants down. finally the stream poetered out. he shook off the last droplets with a few flicks of his right wrist and stuffed his cock back and let the waistline of his pants snap back up, and pulled his pants up over his cock again. he racehed down to his crothc to h is groin and from the outside of his panst re-arracnged his cock fo r comfort for a little more comfort. well, he thought to himself, that was a pretty childish thing to do. was he less angry now? yes. yes he was. yes he was less angry. because he was more embarassed, more ashamed. his shame had crowded out his anger. and now he felt himself starting to grow angry over the shame. why should he be ashamed f something like that. it was just stupidly funny. fuinnily amusingly stupid. wny should this god-damn situation, these god-damn helots, drive him to such infantile behavior? fuck them. god-damn them , the motherfuckers!
he stood there, not moving, and looked up at the top of the pole. now he wanted to do something to that glass orb up there, that spheroid or whatever it was. objet d’art? sign? signpost? calling card? whatever the fuck it was, naarka felt that it was presumtuous. arrogant most of all, pretentious. he felt it had to come down. he felt a breif pang of -what – remorse? premature regret? trepidation? what if someone found out? couldn’t they figure out it was him? what about that helot back at the eateryu? after giving that speech he would know that the next person to go there would be him. what about the people at the factory. they would surely knwo it was him who done it if they had seen the pole happened to see the pole untopuched and then asaw him and then wikth no other visitors in bewteen saw it again with the glass spehere gone or smashed. but he felt this opang only very briefly not oall not all of it was articulated in his brief pang, and what part of it that was articulated was nmoty particulary wel uinderstood.
he walked back over to the vehcile, looked around for the right pack, looked around the bodyt, leaned over it to look at the other side and then until he found then the pack he was looking for. he unzipped the pac,ack and reached in and he oulled out a gun. a projectile-launching weapon of some kind. a gun of some kind. a agun a pistol. . iut had both a chanmber for launching bullets that were made especially for it, and it was also a slingshot, it had a little box on top where you could put a rock, a buttoin, what have you, and it would be lau ched out at vioelnt speeds toward the target. noi where near as accurate, as forceful or the range of the actual bullet tyoe bullet part of the weapon, but still very annoying if you were in its way.naarka looked around for a rock on the ground., he found a rock on the ground near the pole. he put the rock in the box. he made sure there was enough charge in the explosive fchamber feed to laucnh the rosk. he aimed with one hand, his right, and held his right wrist with his left hand. pointing them up at the green smoky, orb with white milky streaks running through it. he pulled the trigger and instantly the orb smashed, it shrugged and hung in the air indecisively for a second or rtwo then all the many pieces which he realized it had become came falling to earth, faster as they dropped.
they came down in something like a shower. naarka instinctively raised his rm to cover his shield his eyes with his right upper arm, and thought, oh shit, wow,. that was stupid to do that while i am standing under the fucking thing. howevfer he was not injuerd, and he did get a chance to see osme of the pieces hit the sand ans splash a little bit as if they were hitting water, except then there was a small fog of dyust, like a morning in early spring except it was all beige boring instead of green interesting. the little cloud qwyuickly drifted away in the wind that come to think of it had died down coinsiderably, while he was taking his little pis on the pole. he had though, before hie shot the fuckling thing, that he wouldbe picking yup a large pice to appraise it, to look at the craft the handiwork that went into ti, to see or feel hi senemy or possible enemy to be through his works. but no pieces were really big enough to be worth picking up and liikiung at. and now right now after shooting it he didn not particularly fdeel like cuttin ghis fingers on any of it. fuck it.

day 26 – 2250 words

9so, now, i believe, narka had his directions to the glass factory.
meanwhile did i mention what jobs the boys – cal and bil – were doing? i think they started out cleaning up the place. the started in the kitchen peeling potatoes, taking out the trash, feeding the barnyard animals that were kept int he yard. then they were madet to asked to pick up stuff in the factory. bil spent about a week scraping gunk burned on to the inside of a mold that had been in the runace? what? does that make sense? what kind of molds would a glass factory use anyway? none, i don:t think. or would they? would they pour glass into molds? filled with sand, that would then burn, turn black, and stick to theinside of the molde, from whence it would have ot be scrubbed off with a small chisel-like tool? bil stood at a large tub of luke-wardm water, trying to use the water as an aid to scraping this black carbon scoring crap out of these molds. molds for glases – is that how htey make them so regular-like, every one the same.
finally he had to go to ferr and say, uuh, this is fucking stupid, scraping this sht off with this small fucking chisel.
“well boy, you got a better idea?” ferr asked him
“no, what the fuck do i know about burned sand. but what if you heated the mnold again without no glass in it, and then sprayed it with water, would that knoc the burned sand off? would that knoc  the burned silicon off? the detritius? the debrris? would it just fall off if you heated up the mold again?”
“maybe. but space in that funrnace when it:s hot is a precious commodity. a precious, a scarce resource. we make more money when we fill space in that hot furnace with molds that have glass in :em?” molds that have glass in em? how the fuck does that work? that doesn:t make any sense/ they heat up the glass, they boil it or something, the heat up sand? how is glass made anywar? i:ll have to find out. do the molds ever go into the furnace?
bil had another idea though. what about pressure washing the grit off this thing?
“pressure wahing it?”
“yeah, or steam washing it?”
“with what?”
“you could rig a tub or pipes above the furnace couldn’t you? i mean that furnace throws off a lot of heat that you’re not using. could’nt you use some of that heat to make some steam or turn a turnbine for power washing or some fuckingt thing?””
wow, thos are all good ideas, kid. but do we have time, people, materials, to put them into plkace before naarka comes in here and kills you and everybody else? i don’t know. i just don’t know.
cal, because of his slarge, strapping, young body, was put on some of the more arduous tasks of the factory.
since most of the other factory workes has assigned jobs alread,y ferr put the two boys to work on new projects – the stuff he couldn’t spare his other workers for. and what was his newest project? why, the cut cylinder pkate. he had rigged up some kind of cylinder over which he poured moletn glass. somehow he got molten glass to stick to this cylinder – or he had a mold which ws a cyulinger, and a little slit in the side which dripped the glass in a uniformly thin sheet onto a conveyer belt. when it:s cooled off a bit, but not completely, a huge blade comes down and slices it into lartge panes. by adjusting the time of the cutting, he can get panes of varying lenghts. the width was determned by the length of the cylinder.
currently ferr was expermineting with different compositions of glass to get a stonger pane, something that wouldn’t collapge under its own weight.
so this is the bigs cutting tool that is going to take cal’s arm. now how am i going to set up this scene. naarka is coming at the three of them, and he is about to get bil, but teres somehow interposes cal in between naarka and bil so that cal7s arm is lost, she either pushes cal in the way, or yelss at him to jump in the way. probably the second, sincne that adds a layer of self-regret to cal’s bitterness.
bullets start flying into the house, so she runs into the factory to warn bil and cal. or somehow she is chased onto the factory floor. or somewthing.
naarka rides down the road, searching for this landmark. and how did he leave the eatery>? was he calms? was he rushed? did he flip a coin to the proprieter, did he pay at all? did he blame the messenger, was he emotional at all towards the people or person who gave him the information of this glass factory, where a middle-aged woman had sold him some cloth  some fancy cloth for a dress.
i think he was calm, at least on the outside. i think he could feel the excitement rising in him lik eboiling water, but cold as ice. does that make any sencse. is that the worst similie you’ve ever fucking read. so what who cares. the excietment rises up ghoes up every bone, like the miniscus )hey your favorite word almost favorite metaphor~ rising up a graduated cylinder as it’s being filled with a highly viscous )ormis it non-viscous~ fluid, like oil. frising like thea film of oil, like the surface of oil  like a film of oil on rising water,.
i tihnk he calmly asked his questions of this non-citizen – gotta think of what kind of non0citizen he was – let’s just day he was anhelot too. why compliczte things, right? he calmly asked his questions and , but the helot cold see the cold fire in his eyes growing brighrter and slowly, steadily brighter ewith every passing question and answer with each further additional question and answer.then, when he had enough information, i think he walked slowly back to his table, calmly figured the bill, and even waited patiently for change.
waited and tried to plan what his next move was. inside, see, inside in his mind, in his very own th9ougts, they were tumbled and he was frenzied. what should he do what *should* he do any way, what *should* he do? he waited cause he needed the time, even. he needed time to cal;m his thoughts, his inner turmoil the tornado raging through his cranium. he was excited, you see.
but what could he plan, really? he was giong to go down there, that much he knew. what would he do when he got there? well, how could he know until he got there? he woul dhave to evaluate the situation once he was there. on the groundm, in situ aas twere. .
he took his change, scooped it up as teh yound boy waiter came and gave it to him – young wiater boyu in cotton leggings, colored beige, and the sdark brown sweater. slightly greasy hair, which was actually failry unappetizing kind of killed naarka’s appetite, i want to say.. he leftt a medium coin for a tip even and got up, showing his chair back, the chair a fols of metal that looked like it had been extruded and then twisted and pressed in a tortuous kind of way – like the metal had sufferd actual pain to be out into the shape it dound itself in now. the metal might still have been in pain, sacrificing itself tin order to give naarka comfort there, that’s great, good on ya little chair, or metal farme f the chair i should say.
naarka turned and walked to the door., rubbing the grit on the floor under his boot. he could almost feel every grain of the light coating of sand that covered this tent eatery, feel every grain trhough the any millimeters of rubber and then the cotton of his sock as well, like the princess and the pea. the darkness from outside – ws it dark, outside, or did it just feel like that because this fucking tent of this god-forwsaken eatery was not well lit at all, and it ws dark. it was dusky insife the eatery, which was basically a large tent, the daylight could be seen through the strands of the weave of the tent in places of its roof, where it was obviously beginning to go bare, thread-bare that is. but the light of day of the sun daylight didn’t seem to filter through those patches enough to actually illuminate the insde of the tent. it waws lit with electic lights over by the counter and coming through the flap leadiung to the kitchen, which the waiter boys kept scampoering in an out of, and, for mood – if you could call it that – from candles onm the tables and from oil lamps on stands.
naarka walked through this dusk or rather under it, since the light inside seemed to only illu,minat3e the bottom half of the psace inside the tent, so that there was a cloud-like cover of darkness hovering over the dining patrons. he walked under this cloud, almost subconciously ducking underneath it as he walked underneath it, and walked he did to the fflap that was the entracnce to the eatery, the entrance flap to this tent eatery. the flaop was pinned open, so that a triangle of brightness was thrust a little way inside. he stepped into this triangle, which he thought would somehow prepare him for the brightness of the full-on day, but it didn’t he found as he lifted the flap even further, or unconsiously grabbed the edges of the flap to steady himself to duck under them ror to know what his limits were to know how far he should duck by knowing where his hadn was you see he knew he had a sens eof the space he woul dhave to duck through, he jus thad to get his body underneath where his hand was. i’m sure there7s an elegant way to say that.
and out into the yard of this tent eatery. there was really nothing else within easy alking distance fo this thing. it  was mcuch far north of where the warehouses along the river had ended, they had ended long ago, because here was past where the road curved west. well no, all right it was headed in a decided northwesterly direction, maybe north northwest but definiteyl the direction of the road had a westerly cast to it there was no denying that especially when you saw the sun rising or setting and you wewre walking slightly to or away from it instead of directly parallel.  although if you were far enough from the qeuator then you would be walking towrd it at , i mean it wouldn’t be in the direct east it woul dbe slightly north or south depndgin on what hemipshere you were in and wehether it was summer or winter. right? or something like that.. anyway the yard was scttered with the pack train of this buyer, and the vehicles and animals and retinue of sevall the ret of the customers too don’t ya know,-
there was a swirlk of sights and sounds and smells was there in that lot. the lot was so much bigger than the tent for the eatery. his vehilce was parked actually near the tent. there was a litle area roped off near the tent flap for single passenger vehicles – well, for citizens really. most citiens had their own single-passenger or perhsaps family veshicle, even if they wer etravelling with a caravan, o0r with a retinue, which actually most of them were – yteavelling with a retinue that is, but their own personal vehicles for their own personal persons would be pakred in this little area reserved for them especially. there two or three other vehicles parked rthere – not a lot. the eatery sat several dozen, and only about half the seats werte filled inside. there weren’t a lot of citizxens eting there,m then but guqite a few helots. and a lot of retinues were out here in the parking lot. some of them cwouldn’t even be allowe dinside the eatery – chattel slaves, barbarian foreigners and so forth. some of the caravns that were parked in a sprwal in the field really not jus t ayar, but a great big honking field – it looked like  dead show there was cooking gong on, in fact a lot of cooking as the citizens or main head healots helots rather dined inside the chattell, the underlings the peons cooked their own food out in the prking lot. in the wagons, where awnings weere poked up unfolded and stretched out and propepd up hanging off the wagons wiand cookiung tables set up, portble burnes fired up, even some wood and chrcoal fires started on the ground or in makeshift brick or stone pits that were either wret up ont he spot with bricks and or strones that were carrie dwith the caravan or rtetinue espciallay for the purpose,. or in nmasoned pits that were there in the parking lot for the use of the commonors, peons and underlings for this very purpose. put there by the management maybe even.

day 24 – 1673 words

20061124.txt
so they rested for a few days. and then what sort of worek were they gicven to do. what sort of work… i wonder…
teres worked in the kitchen for a while, then did the laundry, was working the laundry for a while. she bagan mending clothes, and then sewing. she was doing stuff with their clothes, you know, clothes stuff. she started making new clothes for them. and with the cloth that they had broguth  did they want to start using that here, or did they save that for further travels they might have to do? i think they saved it. yeah, they saved it.
cal and bil both started out by cleaning up – around the house, around the factory floow. bil starrted reading the textbooks he had brought with him, and he was helped by one of the men who worked there, who took an interest in him. a man whose name was … den. he was rthe man with salt and pepper hair whom they had seen in the cafeteria the night of their arrival, the night they first arrived there at that factory compound there.
everyone at the fatory seemed to know their situation, and to be sympathetic, no, there wasn:t really any real danger of their being turned in or reported by anyone at the factory acompaound. they woudl get deliveried from time to time of goods – groveries, and other supplies – like soap, cloth now that teres was there – shoes, et cetera. occasionally ferr and med would go out shopping and come back with a big cart-load of supplies. and then there were their customerts. they would come to the factory to negotiate orders with ferr, ad then pick them up later later they would come to pick them up.. the buyers were either people from the markets, or peoplefrom the restarurants, or restaurant supply houses.
one fo these buyers may hav einformed on them. i:m trying to figure out how naarka may have come to find them.
naarka, after his night at the whorehouse with the prostitute – what did he do. he came back to that ferry crossing in the morning. and crossed the ferry with his vehicle. he went south first, he stopped at every hostel and most eateries all the way south for several kilometers. there was a waystating? toll plazewa? guard house which he stopped at, to inquire whether they had passsed? there was a bridge over a gorge. which collected tolls. he inquired there to see if they had crossd the bridge. the first person he talked to didn:t know. he waited, camed out nearby or stayed at a hotel nearby, until he was pretty sure he talked to everyone on every shift of working that fuckig toll. none of them remembered seeing a middle-aged woman and two-teen-aged sons. just becasue they didn:t remember didn:t mean they didnt: in fact cross the bridge. but he had had no whisper f them anywhere he had stopped. so it was beginning to seem unlikely that they had gone south. time was running out. he had already lost over a week – maybe two by this point.
he turned back north. gunning the motor of his vehicle in frustration.he began looking suspiciously at every private home now. but he really couldn:t stop at each one. i mean, just logistically it made no sense. so he raced back to the ferry stop and then began working his way north, stopping at every eatery and hostel and hotel, asking around. he was getting discouraged. he was actually almost far north not far north but north of the little accessroad which led to the glass factory compund, when he stopped at a factory and overheard two travelers talking. they were discussing the glass factory. and they mentioned that now one of them had also managed to buy some cloth there. yes, teers had started selling some of the cloth she had broguht with them to build up a purse of hard curebcy for thwen they had to set offf running again. something about the mention of cloth seelling tugges at naarka:s under thoughts, and when he saw the cloth that one of them brought out to show the other traveler, to whom he was walking, naarka knew immediately that he recognized it, but he couldn’t recall from where he recognized it.
then it suddenly hit him. he had seen it in their booth at he market – teres’s booth, her stall, their stall.
he wa;lks over and starts questioning the two travelers ab out the cloth about their conversation, “what ar you two talking about now?” are the two travelers citixzens? no, they are not. they answer his questions politely., because he is a cityizen and they are not.
“yes, this cloth i bought it at a glass factory. ” they have slightly foreign accfents. the one buyer is a buyer for a welthy estate in the mountaisns to the west. there is a hunting lodge there. he is sent by the citizen who runs the unting lodge to the glass factory to buy vases and plates for his lodge. he is sent there once every two years. actually he is sent to the ceity, to buy several things. he goes here and there in the city, he buys rugs, sometimes he buys furniture – that heusually arranges to have shipped later. why did he buy this cloth? rteres could not have had enough for him to do any sort of supply of the hunting lodge – table cloths, curtains or anything like that.  she solde him something for one of the she sold him some material for a dress, for one of the owner:s consorts. a consort that this buyer may have some kind of relationship with? yes, he is her son – or brother perhaps. her brother. after she became consort of the owner of this hunting lodge, she was abe to bring her brother on and convinced the owner to give him a job as a buyer.  he may have had some previous experience as a buyer – acuallty he travelled as an assistant on caravans, so he had a lot of experience dealing with the security on these kind of long-distance shopping trips.
he saw some cloth that he knew his sister would like, so he bought it. and actually teres had told him that she could sew too, had actallly pointed out to him some of the outfits that she had sewn for med and for some of the workers at the factory there. she was hoping to angle for a position at this hunting lodge herself, you see. it was another stepping stoner – if she could make herself useful as part of the household of an actual citizen  – that would be much more protection than the household of some other helot or other barbarian or resident foreigner.
“so you bought this cloth from a woman? do you know her name?”
“why do you ask, citizen?” – no. “citixen. i do. her name was teres.” is there any way that he could ask naarka why he wants to know her name, without asking directly? is there any way he can prompt him while being servile in his speech that would prompt naarka as I said to tell why he wants to learn this womanm’s name?
no, i don:t think there is – not if this man is not a citizen. not the way that i’ve portrayed the relationhip between citizens and non-citizxens so far.
“do you know if sthis woman had any sons?”
this travelling buyer, whose name was … oref, was beginning to suspect naarka’s moticves. by the intensity of his startes. by the ferocity of his qwuestions )maybe reverse those two~ maybe by the ferocirty of his stares and the intensity of his questions? the clenching of the muscles along his jawm and possibly within he cheek of his itself. actuall it was pretty easy to suspect a citizen’s motives for asking about a no -citizen – about a helot, expecially. so he decided to be coy about the sonsactually he didn’t actually fucking know anything about whether she had any sons or not. it didn’t even come upvut couold he lie and say she actually had three, or smeomthing like that? yeah he could do that. if he wanted tpo get fucking killed he could do that. eh did what the only thing he could do. tell the truth. “citizen, i do not know. she did not mention her childrenn  in or converation, and i did not ask about children in our conversation.”
“and where did you say this glass factory was?”
“citixen, go about four kilometers south. there is a n access road that opens west off of the main north-soth coast road. there where it:s going north- south, which we know it:s going orth south we don:t need to call attention to it, like i:m doing here, the access road is markedby a long pole sticking out of the ground with a piece of blownglass sitting on top of it. the pole is red – or white and red striped, in a diagonal barber-pole pattern, and the blown glass is a large green globe, with an interesting swilr of darker green color in it. they often have to replace the glass on top there, because it gets blown down by a windstorm or sand storm, or it gets stoelen, if you can imagine such a thing. stealing from a roadsign! would you want to have that in your sitting room. what kind of a man would proudly display such a thing on his mantle. would he declare to his friends and guests, look! see that? i stole that from the fucking sid eof the road. it was on a pole to direct weary travelers, but i fuck thos ewearyu travelers in thae ass becaus ei want this piece of shame on my mantle to brag to you about right now here.

day 23 – 1682 words

20061123. txt
where were we again? sutting dirnking kaf in the kaf-eteria, ha ha ha.med was going to find some workt for teres and her sons to do  to earn their keep don:t you kow. ters jhad agreed to eat some breakfast, now she could finally think about food.
sausage, yea, that:s right. sausage, baby! med suggested some sausage, or med said that:s what hthey had for breakfast, if she would like to eat some. that was it. maybe some eggs. and spomebread. yeah, mnaybe with some jelly.
amd after a while the two boys got up. or teres went to wake them up while med went to prepare some food for them. most of the other – wait, all of the others had already eaten. they got up early round there those parts. but teres and her two sons, they were so exhausted after walking through a fricking sand storm, thank you very much. oh and by the way, was there any damage to the factory due to the sandstorm?
uh no, there wasn:t they have a hyuge honkin wall surrounding the building, don:t they. all they knew was it got a little darker in the middle of the day yesterday.
teres went back to the room where there beds had been set p on the floowto see if bil and cal, her two sons, were up yet.
bil was up, he was awake, sitting in his bed, sitting on his bedroll, staring at the woven wall hanging above the couch.
“you’re up.” said teres, opening the door and walking into the room.
“yeah.” said bil rather listlessly.
“are you ready for breakfast? would you like some kaf?” bil didn:’t usually drink kaf. not at home. but ofcourse, he realised once more at that minute, there was no home anymore.he suddenly felt an urge to cry, but he swuinted, tried to squint it away. he looked up at his mother and saw that she was actually in a better mood. she seemed somehwat cheered, a little relieved, in a better modd than she had seen him since they had started out, since he had run up into the stall with the news that their house was burning, their life in that city was over, and that hours or minutes away, unless they ran, and even maybe if they did, was their death, their death was chaging them.
he swallowed, and nodded. teres stepped into the room, leaned down over cal nad gently touched his shoulder. “ca;.” she said softly. cal opened his eyes. he must have been probably was sleeping prety lightly. he opneded his eyes and looked directly up at the ceiling, just where his head was when he opened them, he didn:t move his head at all to look at the voice that woke him, that:s what I:m saying. “val.” she said again. “are you ready to get up? can you get upo? did you sleep enough?are your dreams ready to release you? to let you go?”
cal brought his arms up out of the covers and rubbed his eyes, rubbed the mucous out of nthem. then he sat upright, and stood  or rather, sat still for a moment, staring into space blankly )how many people have done this in the past few thousand worsds?
“yeah. I’m up.” cal said
“com to the cafetaeria.” said teres # ell, first let me talk to you two. i just had a ..conversation with med. i :m certain, i:m pretty sure, it:s clear that they knwo  and understand our situation. i think med knows the risks of us being here, but she is still i bleieve willing to let us syay. here. i thinbk we can stay here for several months if we want. i:m not sure but this place may be out of the way enough for us to be able to do that safely. i told here f course we would wearn our keep, but i don:t yet know yet what kind of work they would have for us., but we know that we have to do whatever is in front of us, right. b ut, anyway… what do you boys think? do you have anything you want to say about it?”
bil hadn’t expected to be asked his opinion in any decisions that would be made regarding what they woudl do. he had expected hi smother to make all those decidions. he trusted her to make the decisions, and in turn he didn:t have to make them. bugt now that she asked him, it made sense. it seemed natural only natural. but he looked to cal first.
cal felt bil’s look on him, as well added to as well teres his mother’s.”i dont’t think i’m awake enoigh to think. i thik this is a huge stroke of huge luck. i think we:re lucky to have run across this place, that:s what I think. though i don’t think i’m aake enough to think anything very cleary.” then it was cal’s turn to look at bil and expect him to say something.
“uh, yeah” said bil, scratching his head. ” i don’t thgink i have anyting to add to that. if you think we can treust ’em, mother, ”
teres looke dserious. she knew the weight of her responsibility. “yes, i think we can.” she looked from bil to cal and back again. “all right then. let:s go eat, shall we?”
the three of them got up and walked down the hall to the cafeteria slash dining room
med was in there and had brought out some plates of sausage, bread with jelly, and three plates of fried eggs – one for each of them teres, cal, and bil.
they ate. they ate ravenously., and then it was time for med to show them around the place, and show them some things to do.
or would she give them a day at least to rest?
maybe they needed to work to get to work immediately to take their minds off of the doom that was stalking them.
ferr passed through soon after they were eating, he passed through the dining room like a wind, and swept them up behind them in a whilrl wind tour of the cfactory.
“this is a glass factory,” he explained he tookt them first onto the main shop floor, which they had seen thorrugh the big nhangar bay doorsfrom the courtyard there where they had sat on their packs the evening before previous there.
he showed them the big furnace in the center of the gass factory  man i need to do some research on the web or something about how glass factories are laid out. he showed them where the craftsmen workedm each had their own separate little area where rthey could concentrate on their own separate little specialty, but they all all their separate little areas had easy access to the big red furnace at the center of everyhting.
“tyou see how we make a lot of small household items, the plate s that you all hav been using in the dining room – cups, glasses, anbottles, vases and so forth. that gives us the buld of our income. we sell to little shops in the city throughout the scity and soem of the surrounding towns.. it:s a bit of a toursist item, but we also supply some restaurants and hotels and that sort of thing. now but i have a little pet personal project of my own that i:m working on. what i:d like to do is supply windows., yeah thats:s right supply windows to a lot of the building around here. in thecity.  to do big large paned windows, doors and so forth,it:s really difficult to do that as a single craftsman, by blowing don’t you see, there’s almost a limit to the surface area that you can do. and getting a uniform thickness , that’s really reeallyu difficult when you’re blowing glass the way you would to mnake a bottle or something like that. what you really want to do is produce glass by rolling. ususally that’s done in a amuch mobigger and more techincally equipped facility than what we have here. but i would like to sdee if we can do it. we would probably be the first shop our sie to produce rolled glass. that’s wohat i would like to see us tryto do, anyway.”
teres, cal and bil were impressed, but didn’t reall yfollow aht he was talking about at all. he let thewm go back to med and went back to supervise some stuff he needed to get to on the shop floor. med showed them aroudn the ktichen, and the stables )?~ animal garden, the barn, the place where tnhey kept the chickensm, goats, sand so forth – the animal producys that they didn’t bu from the market in the sity or have delivered to them. they learned a little bit of the geofgraphic situation of the factory as well, it was sewt far back from, the road, abot three or four kilometers. the road wasn’t very well travelled – they were the only thing on this ide little detour, this east-west access road off of the main north south road.
where they were was just a little north of the city of the east wst line that would have gone through the center of the city.the north south road at this poiuint was actually pretyy far west of the city anyway, sice the river curved a little east of it and the road started to curve away west before it hit the coast about a hundred kilometers to the north and swung completely wqest.
yeah so med showed them around, and then left them alone for the rest of the day to get settled and whatnot.. they were assigned smaller rooms – ters had her own room and bil and cal shared another. they unpacked some of their things. they bathed. they dd laundry. shit like that, and they rested from their phyiscal and mental and emoitonal exertions aof the past two or three days,

day 22 – 1877 words

20061122.txt
she stepped out of the room and then walked down the hall. she didnt: know where else to go, so she went back to the onl place she knew how to get to, to the cafeteria or dining hall or whatever you want to call it. she stepped down the hall, which was cool in theis early – but not too early – morning, probably about 7+00 o:clock a.m. or so.. the floor was polished, reflective, the color of wet clay but with a sheen of reflectivity on it, as if it had been wavd. the walls were the color of wet cement. i suppose they also looked like wet clay, but as the floor had more of a purple cast, the walls were more purely gray, a dark fgray a dark wet-in-the-rain kind pof gray. it was silent; there was no sound, or there was a faint sound of the factory working, coming from the shop floow somewhere to the south, almost beyond perception, almost beyond what she could think about. existing in a distance, in a little cantomn of something she could possibly thin about surrounded by the miasma, suffering uncertain darkness of all the things she could not think about. the doors, in their pale blond woodness – psome of the doors themselves were dak wood, but all of the frames were blond. and most of the doors too.
she steped quioietyly down the hall, tentative a bit in her seps, in her foot falls, not wanting to make too much noise, but not wanting to sn eak up on someone who might be startled by a silent walker.,
she tunred left at the small hallway she remmebered from the night before – small hallway i said, reallyt it was just a doorway directly into the dining room. the door was open, slightly ajar. teres pushed it slightly, and at first, loking at first sight into the room beyond she thought it was empty. no one was at the western tables that she could see. she took one, two steps forward to be half in the door, and then she saw that med was sitting at the south easter table, the closest table on the right, sipping kaf out of a cup and looking through a stack of papers that she ha dspread out in four or five piles in front of her on the table. teres took two more steps into the room before med noticed her standing there.
*oh, good mrning,*|said med with a lift of her head, a widening of her eyes, s slight smile broadnening and lifting her mouth the look of a concerned hostess. “there is kaf if you would like it,” med continued, starting to get up and looking toward the counter, where a hot kettle, a samovar if you will, had been set uo and was waitnign there sitting there aiting for custome3rs.
teres raised her hand plaintively, *no, don:t get up. i can get it, and turned and walked toward the counter. med sat back down and sat looking steadily at teres and considereing her. finally now that the morning had come, she did have some questions to ask, though not the ones that teres feared. but she waited until teres had gotten her kaf and sat down before shwe woas going to ask them.
teres walked over to the counter. ceramic cups were stacked in three or four columns, two or three cups high.she took a cup, lifted it off its stack, turned it over in her hands, makring its heft, dropping it into her hand from its vertical revolutions, its wiehgt its heft distended her figners a little bit. the weight was conforting in its familiarity. how different are coffee cups in the world, in all different parts of the world ,or throughout the unvierse? she took it carried it , lifted it over to the spigot on the fron of the samovar. the valvae on the spigot was kind of a corkscrew – she had to twist it, more twirl it kif of like, and it moved upward slightly as she did though, and the hot waterfell out the bottom of the valve assembly. when her cup ws about two-thirds full, as she gagued correctly, she started twirling it closed again, the valve. next stop left to right after the stacks of cups and the samovar was a bowl of kaf capsules. shee took two and dropped them into her cup. after that was a bowl of clear granules, in large, millimater long crystals.
“if you like sweetwater, there is some sweetwater crysals in that bowl,” interrupted med. teres didn:t even shake her head, she just turned and brought her cup over to the table where med was sitting, and sat down opposite med smiled warmly again “what can i get you for breakfast?”her.
teres smiled too, and shook her head. *nothing, really t, thank you. at least not now, not yet. i:m still too sleepy even to think abotut food.* she sat still for a full minute, and her smile faded as shee looked blankly, stared blankly at the table top. she brought the cup to her lips, pursed her lips, and tipped the cup just enough for the liquid to kiss them briefly. she didn:t really want to sip it, she just wanted to test the temperature, and to see if any of the kaf had yet dissolved.
“i hope you don:t mind not having the sweetwater already in the kaf. i don:t really like sweetwater – i think it:s bad for my teeth. i realize it:s a bit of an inconvenience to have the kaf capsules dissolve that much more slowly, but i can deal with it. i figure most people can.* med explained, somewhat purposelessly.
teres smiled a worried smile under deply tired, deeply worried eyes. she blinked slowly, and siad, “no, of course i don’t mind. no, i don’t mind. of course i don’t mind.”
“so,” said med, getting down to the point, and teres tensed up, tensed visisbly in her shoulders. “how…” began med slowly, “how.. long do you think you will need to stay with us?”
teres looked into med:s eyes, and knew that she knew. she was certain that med knew exactly what their situation was, and that med would do what she could do to protect her, without endangering her own family. she wasn:t, teres wasn:t, sure how far she could exactly how far she could trust med, but she had a pretty good rough idea. she thought carefully about what to day next.
“well…” she bagan just as slowly as med had begun, “well.. we would of course be grateful to accept your hospitality for as long as we could…” she wasn’t sure where to take it next.
med obviously knew her problem – knew the generl al situation she was in, and thus understood the specific dificulties she faced in this situation right here tright now – she understood te why’s and wherefores of how teres was having difficuty coming up with what to say next. med tried to help her out with some subtile or not-so-subtle prompting. “do youthink you will need to stay here for more than a month?”
teres locked her gaze on med:s eyes. truly, med understood her position weell – very well, perhaps even better than teres herself did. *it may be wise for us, that is to say, it may be the ebst thing the most beneficial cololurse, a smart move for us to stay here for that long, if…”
“if your presence here isnot advertised?”
“i think you understand our situation well. of course, we could not accept charity for that long. if we can make ourselves useful, and earn our keep, we would be happy to impose  we would be grateful to impose on yor for that long.” translation: we will trust you to hide us for that long.
” have you… traveled… ar enough… that you could stay longer than that?” translation: how close is your pursuer? how much of a lead do you have on him?
“i think if we found ourselves here for more than wo months that it would be time for us to move on, then at that point we should probably start thinking about moving on.” translation: he is very close. we still have a ways to travel before we can starth, we still have to build our lead over him to a substantial amount before we can start thinking about stopping running for any considerable length of time. and, of course, this puts you )ned~ at risk., if he:s that close behind us, he may be able to do some investigating in this area and learn where we are – in which case, if we are discovered her being sheltered by you, you would be in danger – of retribution, among other things, such as just being destroyed because you were in the way and you ndeedto be ddestroyed, cleared like brush, to get to us.
med undwerstood all thof this – she got the whole message.
” i see,” she said, nodding here head and letting it soak in. well, she had made her decision. she thought about, felt like doing, rfeaching out her hand and touching teres’s. but didn’t. she felt that that would somehow violate or break the code they had built upm or slipped into , over the past several few minutes. “well,” she finally continued, ” you are welcome to stay here until you feel you need to leave. this house wewelcomes you., this family welcomes you. this factory welcomes you. this business welcomes you. this community welcomes you. this workshop welcomes you. thjis commubity of craftsmen and craftswomen welcomes you.”
“i…” teres hesitated, then went on, “realize how much of an imposition this is..” she glanced up from the tabletop where she had been looking when she had started wthis sentence, looked up to med:s eyes again to make sure she got the uinderstanding, acknowlegdement, maybe even empathy for which she was asking.  she found it there, in med’s eyes.”of coursde we cannot stay wkithout earning our keep, as I said.”
med beamed, finally smiling as much as she had wanted to, finally welcoming her as much as she had wanted to welcome teres, with the mutual understanding that she ha dwanted to establish with teres. “oh, don’t worry. there is popolenty to do here. it won’t be difficult at all for you to earn your fare share of your keepo, and then some evebn, and even more besides.”
“now, will yo think about soething to eat?”
teres let herself feel the relief that now flowed through all her aching muscles and joints nmow that she had let it be released from the dammed reserves in which her n ervous fear had kept it locked for so many hours now. sdhe nodded, blinking and smiling, “yes, thank you.” she sipped the kaf which was now fully activated, the capsules having been fully dissolved during their tense conversation, which because of the tensions had lasted longer than it seemed, though it had seemed to last forever  i mean longer than you would have thought bsed on the number of words spoken.

day 21 – 1813 words

I:m trying to remember the last thing i wrote. i know it won:t be good, wasn:t god, who cares if it:s good or not – i just want to write.
i believe they were taking the bed-clothes into the room. yes, they were spreading out the bedding. they had just spread out the bedding. and now the question of food comes up.
*I bet you:re hungry* said med. *you must be hungry* said med. *are you hungry?* asked med.
“we have some stew almost ready. in fact we were just about to sit down to dinner. would you join us?”
“you are very kinds,” said teres, “but we do not want to distrub your evening meal. you have already been too kind to us. we are imposing a terrible burden on you, in fact we may yet impose even more. you don’t know what kind of burden we may end up imposing on yuo. we may have tom impose on you even further. i do not want to disturb your family meal.”
“it is not exactly a family meal,” said med. ” the evening meal is prepared for everyone who works at the factory, and lives in this compound. it is eaten in a large dining hall, and there people can take what they like in terms of portions, they can take the portions they wish and eat with their friends together with their friends, or later or earlier alone, or foff in another corner of the room, at a different table, alone or with a smaller group. if my husband and i want a smaller more intimate family meal, believe me, we can retire to our private quarters the private faimly section of the compound. so i want to say that the meal we offer you is no great feast, and i cannot say rthat i am welcoming you into the bosom of our famioly by offering it – in fact it is rather a mean offering, a mean feat, a mean table that i offer you at which to sit?? but, the food is not unhealthy. and there is plenty. come. leave your cares with your things for a while and come with us to the dining hall, let me show you where it is, at least, and you can spurn itand reutrn later if you feel like being alone. come.”
teres stood up. shee looked at her sons, one after another, each in turn, first at Bil, and then at Cal, and it was understood between the, , it was unspoken between them, understood without haveing to be spoken, it weaas in the looks they exchangeed – she strongly – that is *strongly* suggested they go. and they both acquiesced int heir looks, glances back to her, and looked at each other breifely as well, to commisserate, to confirm that the other was also obeying. they stood up too. ferr retreated ibackwards into the hall, and waited there for them all to exit the room so that he could bring up the rear. med turned and stepped into the hall, turning back east tje way they had come dsown the long east-west corridor.
but instead of going all the way all to the end and turning south, they turned north at a doorway, another hallway, a door in the north side of the hall about midway down its length. they went north down a short, small hallway and came to a large, mediumm-hiehgt-ceilinged room. several tables, long tanbles – actually ‘several’ means four long tables, maybe a fifth which was round at one end of the room. benches were set for seating on either side of the long rectangular tables. there were stools around the ciruclar one.
at one side of the room – the western side, there was a counter, and on this counter were the wooden or plastic or woodplastic woodstic, pasten plates, and metal utensils. actually you know what would ber cool – if the plates were *glass*. and there was a large tub – a large cauldron, a large pot. it was polished metal – steel, or chrome. it had a lid on it, with a single thin handle i the concentric circular depression in it smiddle. it was ronud, 20 centimeters across, thirty, maybe forty? centimeters in height. a cloth lay on top of it – a potholder, a protective cloth that let you grab the metal lid without burning yourself – yes, a potholder!
there was one group of people sitting at one of the rectangular tables – the one in the far right corner as the came in – the one in the north-eastern corner. a groupo of about for or five people. they turned their heads from the bowls over which they were hunched – briefly. they had heavy wollen clothing, strands comingf loose at their necks and the ends of the sleeves – the fcollar and cuffs, some might say. some of the strands, some of the cuffs, some of the collars – were burned. that seemed to be what was holding some of the strnds in place, sothe stands in place for some of the cuffs and collars of the irish-looking sweaters.. they all had short hair, three mena dn a woman, the men all had hair shaved, cropped in a buzz close fitting to their skull. the womanhad hair a similar color to med.s similar body to it too. similar length. like they were *sisters: or something. her hair was tied up in a scarf behind her head – like a hipppy helmet, but more abigger knot, a bigger cloth, tying up her hair, keeping it out of the wai and pushed back like a pony tail trapped in a rigid red cone.. they all looked like tyhey had good upper body srenght. especially in the shoulders. they all had really buff shoulderrs. one of the men had gray hai, or at least salt-andpepper. with a blad spot right on the crown. another had thick black hair, and the third had thick blond hair. they turned their head from the bowls over whcih they were hunched, to look at the people coming in the room. they held their look a full minute or two, for thewse were strnangers coming into the room, for which they had had no explanation andf no warning. but before the staring became absolutely rude they went back to their meals, their heads and gazes went back to their bowls. if they had been talking, it must have been wquiet. if they went back to talking, it must have ben quiet. they stspooned soup or stew into their mouths in relative quit, quiettitude, silence, with only occasional glances over at the htree newcomers and the married couple in charge who were escoprting the strangers.
med stepped over to the counter and lifted the lid off of the stew pot. “we have goat stew tonight,” she said. i hope you find it palatable, at least*
teres smiled. *thank yoiu.
*med grabbed, lifted up, took, took up the ladle and a glass bowl from the stack next tot he pot. “we will join you, if that is all right?”
“of course,” answered ters. bil and cal onyl stared blankly at the pot. their exhaustion had carried them beyond giving a shit.
again, ferr stood behind them, while med served herslef first he was last. the three of them , their little fractured little family, holding rtight at the core, followed med:s lead, ladled two ladlefuls of stew into a glass bowl and grabbed a spoonj from the pile a metal spoon from the pille by the bowls, then followed her and sat down at the enar rectangular table, the one in the south-west corner. the south-western one. med sat on the near, western side, on the bench there, and teres, and then following her cal, and bil, sat along the bench on the eastern side.
they ate in silence. med and definitely ferr asked them no questions, and they of course volunteered no answers. they also did not ask ferr or med about their factory, about themselves, or the other people there. they were too tires. it was evident that med just wanted to make sure they got something to eat, and wanted to sit with them rto make sure they were comfortable eating in the same room as the other four who were already in there when med and teres and them came in, and that they weren:t bothered. ferr ate in silence beside his wife. hew seemed to be following her lead in this, though obviously he was the one who had first greeted them and had probably made the initial decision not to throw them out or report their presence to whomever he could or might.
they ate in silence, and when they had finished eating, med reached for their bowls., and said “don:t worry about cleaning up. you are tired. please rest as much as you need to.”
teres and following her cal and bil, rose, thanked med, and theanked ferr also, in a separat egesture or utterance, and left or walked toward the door.
med stopped herself from offering to show them the way back to the room where they would be sleeping where they had laid out the bedlcuithes the one she had offered them for their rest.
teres, cal and bil stumbled into this back sitting rom, closed the door, and slumped down on the bedclothes, exhausted and sleepy from the heavy food they had just eaten, taken, ingested. they each srtared at the wall or ceiling for a while, contemplating the conversation they each felt they should start, before they fel backwards onto the blankets and dropped off tro sleep. tere. wooke breifly after a few minutes and got up to turn off the light, then she lay back down and instantly fell into slepp like a stone into a dep deep pond.
i just have to write ten more words to be at the minumin daily requirement, ike a vitamin.
when they woke the next morning the main concern was washing up, then trying to do something usefl around the house, finding a place where they could help.
teres was the first to wake. she rubbed her eyes and sat up, stared stupidly at the sunlight streaming in through the high windows in the northern wall far away their in the middly far distance of the room.fs she felt the dirt on her. careully crawling out of the covers into which she did not remember crawling the night before during the night, careful not to wake bil and cal, she stood up carefully, swaying a little bit, and quietly like a churchmouse crept the door open, eased the door open, just wide enough to slip through it, athen eased itt shut again silently as silently as she could

day 20 – 1759 words

the man introduced himself. “My name if Ferr. This is my wife Med. We eolcome you.”
Teres spoke. “My name is Teres. These are my sons: Cal, and Bil. We thank you.”
Med looked at Teres, steadily, with her dirty blonde hair blowing gently across her face, across her eyes. single strnad of it, double strnda of it , small clmped strands, bands of it, floatin drifiting gently past her eyes like scratches on a film. Med spoke. “You are weary. and frightened, that is plain. you may relax here. there is nothing for you to fear hear. we welcome you, we wish to give you relief, sancutary.”
teres wanted to say, “you cannot protect us. you do not know who or what hunts us. when it comes, if it comes – it will probably come, you do not know what resources it will be able to bring to bear. so what defences will you erect to counteract a threat of which you know nothing? you are fools.” but she didn’t she didn’t say any of those things. what she said was, “thank you.”
“come” said med. “bring your things inside. she half-turned, then stood there, waiting for them to gather their belongings.
the mother teres and her two sons bil and cal turned and walked back over tot heir packs. there was no real way, no artful no pragmatical way to carry the packs in to the building without in fact strapping them full on again. so that’s what they did . picking them up heavy, slinging them over their shoulders with a gyration of their bodies. they were too tired to use only one muscle, but had to relu on the built-up centripetal force of their twirling whole nbodies to position the packs, get them up and over slightly pas aposee in their arm-sling-limited / defined orbits around teir torsos as the ‘jupp’ed tiup, syrating their from the waist their upper bodies. and then what the hell might as well go whole hog they leaned forward to drop the forehead strap where they could reach it, then fumbled behind anmd above their nbowed heads until they found the dangling forehead strap, grabbed it, then dragged it and then nudged it into place – dragged it across their hair over their scalp to their forehead, then nudged it into place. standing up erect again the adjusted it one more time. adjested the weight of the large pacls on their waist and started walking toeatrf the woman med.
ned turned then, full, and without looking back at them walked toward the building, toward and into the large airplane hanger entrance, entranceway, doorway, openeing. the man, ferr, dropped out of their site. he was walking by med’s side, to her left, u then he dropped away. i was difficult to look to either side, to look anywhere other than straight ahead was diffociult, so they did not follow his movements. they had to concentrate on following med, and carrying the heavey load of their packs after having grown used to sitting in the shade without them for several minutes. siting in the shade or rather in the easy gathering cooling twighlight dusk.
then they realized he must have gone off to the left to pull closed the huge wooden frame door, with it’s woven slats. one of them managed to look sideways to see him moving over there, to see him moving slowly toward them like old video footage, like a ghost, like he was walking a cow, walking , treading slowly next to the slowly drifint wall as it crept forward along its track.
they took a right turn once they wen through the doorway, and into the differently lighted interior of the building. i was about to say darker – but it’s freaking dusk, isn’t it. is it really that brighter either – with the harsh direct light coming from above off the nakes light on the side of the buiolding, versys the indirect light coming from shielded lights, bounding aoff of multiple surfaces, seeping in from around corners, the subtle low mood lighting of a residence in the early evening. the mellower, more familial, welcoming, comfortable lighting of interie=or living quarters.
med led them right quickly to the right wuickly off of what was clearly a shop or factory floor, striahgt out of this gloom, gloomy even with high over head lights on hanging from the ceiling, hanging close to the cieling, their cords not so long, not so bright that the flood the room with harsh light, or they were on a rheostat and they were only at half strenght. maybe there was a step control 0 not a rheostat but defined quantum states, artificially imposed by the clickjs on another knob. quickly straight off of this floow, through a clear narow path but off hte flloor litteres with detiritus, random equipment, debris, work in progress than could easily be tripped over by people wearing large packs who can’t really look from side to side to nimbly avoid obstacles.
and into the living quarters proper. even though the factory floor had the big glowing red furnace inn the middle of it, the light there had a yellow a large yellow ting to it probably from the overhead lights, and the ligfht in the residential rooms semed more rede – mayb ebecause of the fireplace lighting, and some candles, the light wasn’t as strong, the weak end of the spectrum, reds.
past the kitchen, and trhrough the side of it, what sideways glancing they could do revealed to them the pantry to the left of, to the west of, the kitchem, stacked cans, large cloth bags lying in a group on the ffar floor, paper boxes. down a hallway, past an indoor wash room. turning left. down a long corridor, and at the end, a door on the right. med opened it and it was a large room with a couch along the west rwall, weaved carpet on the floor, some tables. she stepped in. “you will sleep in here. this will be your room. you can sleep in here.” let me push these tables out of the way. please put your burdens down.” the three family members, the mother and her two sons, walked some ways into the room – a few pacesm a few steps, four or five depending on the person, stepped or walked sideways a pace or two to plop down into a sitting position so that the bottom of their packs rested on the floor not their waists and thje weight was of of them. they reacjed up and pushed the forehead straps up off of their heads, then shrugged their arms out of hte shoulder straps. they stood up and walked over to where med was pushing the tables toward the wall and against them, and helped her. they pushed table s against the walls a large round table, went into the corner. some side tables, rectangular, were tucked easily against the wall on either side of the couch.
“i will go get some bedding for you.”
“we have bedding in our packs,” siad teres.
“you will enjoy fresh bedding, i am sure. and you will have the opportunity to wash whatever you wish in the laundry if you want you fcan do your laundry somehwere here at some point in the next few days if you feel like i. uh, yeah.”
she stepped out of the room, med did. the three of them looked at each other. bil walked over and sat on the couch. cal and teres wanted to say something, start a dialog appraising the situation, but could think of nothing to say to start it off with. could not find the words. words that would be appropriate. and they both looked at bil and knew that he would soak none of it in. their needs, let’s face it, were immediate. they had wlaked through a sandstorm that dayt, had not had very much to eat at all, they were exjausted, hungry, terrified. better to at least minister to two of those needs before strategizing to meet the third.
bil sat on the couch, along the western wall, and stared out into space. he stared against the opposite wall, the eastern wall. the room was rectangular with the eastern and western walls being longer. the room strethed out to the north. above his head on the western wall, as he leaned back completely with his head resting on the top of the back of the couch, there was a wall handing a long strip of cloth with am abstract pattern woven into it. the colors: a beige background, darl brown figures and shapes, gray shapes, and, breakingup the pattern a bit, strands of pink sinously curving here and there between the other shapes. on the wall opposite, the eastern wall, where biul was staring, there was nothing. simply a plastered wall. dark gray in the gloom of the dimly lit room. there was a small pattern, a diruption in its empty regularity, cause by the brush strokes of whatver workman or craftsman or guildsman had laid that plaster. hjung that plaster, brushed that plaster into place. the irregularity, or rather the pattern the regularity – the irregularity rturned into transofmred into mprphed into regularity, its own patter, and it expanded out invisibly to the rest of the wall, laying itself over all the rest of bil’s visual field as a reference, to which all other shapes and distortions from the regualrity of nithingness of what might be physical objects had to be compared.
he was dead tired. he soon drifted off to sleep, as cal and teres stared at each other from other seats in the room. cal was sitting on the packs. teres was perched on the far northen arm of the couch.
and that’s when med came back into the room, carrying a large overflowing armful of cloth beddings.
her husband ferr followed here with more. they dumped it on the floor in front of the door, and bil reluctantly was pulled back into wakefulness. he gulped, sat up, and rubbed his eyes and face iwth his hands. the three of them got up to help. the spread thick wollen mats onto the floor, which would serve as thin mattresses. over this they lay coarse blankets, then somewhat finer- more finely-woven sheets, then another layer of sheet, and anothe rlayer of blanket. they also brought small bags full of crop shavings, chaff, to use as pillows.