Storytime: The City of Karthai

An incomplete snatch of story. Just something channeled while listening to music from Dune​.

At night the desert is cold and bright under the starlight, and the sound of her feet in the sand feels softened in her ears. A gentle shush as each step is taken and the grains tumble down the little mound around her wrapped feet. The black cloth of the foot wrappings muffles her steps, and the polymer buckles do not jingle. The Woman in Black moves as a shadow moves through a desert where no one watches and everyone watches.

The forgotten city of Karthai lies an indeterminable distance ahead for distance in the desert is difficult to calculate. Especially when the desert is prone to grow, or shrink, depending on who is traveling it and whether or not they already know it. Still, it is ahead, and she knows she will reach it eventually. Her friends would tell her to use the rangefinder as they all do, but she is primitive when she enters the desert. She forgets. She becomes something else where technology is but a puzzling toy. Unneeded. Extra weight to carry.

Karthai was once a glistening trade town in the world of the living before it was absorbed by greater Cairo to become just another suburb. Now, in the land of the dead, it is a memory of itself stands alone as if Cairo never was. The warm light of thousand of oil lamps glisten like a dream, but she knows this is no dream.

"Ayu-su-suk! Rapati dintada shaka!" cries the merchant. It waves a bird in one of its eight arms, the sides of its bulbous, rust-colored mantle bulge and contract with each breath. Eyes both remote and intelligent observe each passer-by. "Ayu-su-suk!" it says, turning its attention to a young boy of 15 who pauses and gazes dreamily at the octopus. "I have something you will like," it croons, reaching with two other arms to open a drawer and extract a ball of tightly wound roots. Its other arm continues to wave the bird.

The boy rubs his eyes, not sure of what is happening. He takes the ball and vanishes.

There are many like the boy in the town. Dreamers who move through the streets only halfway there. A gang of rat-shaped shadows pickpockets one unfortunate man of 50, who later will find himself in a nightmare where he cannot find his wallet. An eagle that looks like an afterimage sits on a roof, eyeing a woman with heart problems. It will chase her to the desert later and consume her heart.

But the octopus, who is more solid than most here, is often the one to return the lost wallet or offer the medicine to heal the heart. It is an entity that is very good at getting things.

"You are late, and I heard you coming," rumbles a voice from the shadows. A panther the shade of deep space steps out from behind a building.

"Yes, I was delayed by events in the world of the living," replies the Woman in Black.

"I heard you coming."

"So you did."

"I should not hear you coming. You have been too long out of this work."

"But I am here, Sókā."

"Yes, it is good. Let us see this..." and Sókā makes a growling sound for a word, "and see what it has for us."

The Woman in Black and Sókā pad their way into the city. The woman walking cat-footed in her wrapped feet. The panther padding on his great paws. No one notices them, even though they walk right through the crowd of beasts and dreamers. They become as shadows under ever being's feet.

--

I thank you for your time. Adiamas.

--Kyriel