11,874
edits
Books of Sorrow: Difference between revisions
→IV: Syzygy
| Line 44: | Line 44: | ||
===IV: Syzygy=== | ===IV: Syzygy=== | ||
In this Verse Aurash reflects on all that has changed since they escaped. She tells of how Xi Ro and Sathona used their various tricks—the bait stars and cunning—enabled them to be free of the Drinkers, and laments the loss of her home. She mentions how Xi Ro hates Taox with a burning fury. | |||
Aurash thinks back to her expedition to the Tungsten Monoliths, of how she first learned the truth. The Timid Truth, she again says, was their philosophy of life, that they are the bottom of the Darwinian chain, "the smallest, most fragile things alive", and are meant to be prey. She adds with contempt Taox's teachings that they came here to flee a cold universe. She then turns to her dead father, of how he died afraid. Not because of Taox or the Drinkers, she knew, but because of what he saw. He told her—"screaming"—that physical law was bent and the paths of the moons were different, indicating a syzygy. | |||
She paints a picture of the Fundament's fifty-two moons—not all, she amended belatedly, but just enough—aligning together and exerting their gravity upon the seas of the gas giant. Her deepest fear, she recounts, is that this combined force would create a bulge that would pass over the world sea and annihilate civilization, and her species. She calls this a God-Wave. | |||
Aurash resolves to find a way to stop it, but despairs of getting back home, to her father's Royal Orrery, of learning exactly when this would come to pass. Then she recounts how Xi Ro comforts her when her fears become too great to handle, and how their growing reliance on Sathona's wit seemingly brings them good luck. She notes Sathona's odd and sometimes erratic behavior, but dismisses it because of the good it brought them. | |||
===V: Needle and Worm=== | ===V: Needle and Worm=== | ||