Wandering Spark - Part 64
Varan felt a little chilled as he didn’t sleep at the night and, worse, he hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. At dawn he was taken to the pier; here worked some familiar pods - tilled placed under the sun seagrass, collected dry branches. From them, Varan learned that his father was on the screw here last night, asked about his son, even went to the headman of the berth, but didn’t recognize anything and achieved nothing. He promised to raise the next day afternoon.
"He doesn’t screw the screw enough," said the young worker, whose name Varan didn’t remember. "Barely clings, at the last gasp. Berths say - there is no good wrapping, it's too fast. He will come one day and will break our pier and the mechanism itself will be broken. Here, remember my words...
Soon after, there was almost a fight. The worker, in reality, didn’t understand what he said; The Varan was dragged, ransacked with rude words and ordered to sit quietly until the screw rises. They didn’t offer food, but thanks the Emperor, there was a barrel of water on the pier and an iron mug on the chain...
Varan, who has long been bored with a pier with its labyrinth of smelly holes, tight warehouses, and arrogant dockers, didn’t wait for the screw. All the same, the father will rise not "in the afternoon", but the earliest in the evening: with a half-ready spring he cannot go so quickly... Varan carefully replaced the soot layer on his glasses and went to the world of Gorni, under the sun.
The stone road climbed to the hillock and dived down, getting lost from the eyes. It seemed as if it was leaving just beyond the horizon. Varan half-lowered his eyelids; it was nice to imagine that you were traveling. That he can go and go, from dawn to dusk, and rejoice because there is no end to the road...
He walked a hundred paces. He stopped at the hillock. Now the edge of the world opened before him - a veil of clouds below. The road descended downward and broke off where the extinguished flashlight hung over the abyss and smoked.
"Or maybe I should jump," Varan thought for no reason at all. "Push off from the edge - and fall into the sea... Pierce the clouds. See for a second the rain-drenched tray. And forever get rid of all the disappointments..."
He was horrified to his own thoughts. Probably, hunger and lack of sleep, and that he couldn’t get the determination and come closer to the homes of Gorni. The season makes all equal, but the off-season widens the gap between the upper and lower world. Nila is half-Gorni, which means that everything that happened in the summer - snakes, caves, the smell of dry algae was Varan’s dream. The season is to blame - it casts strange dreams...
The red-yellow butterfly wing, crushed by a shard of the clay vase, twitched in the wind like a living one. Varan, without thinking, picked up the potsherd and took the wing in his hands. The palms covered with pollen, the pollen soared with a bright cloud, which immediately melted. The wing remained in Varan's hands as a gray, slightly transparent cloth.
He let go of the wing, and it flared into the wind almost solemnly, almost beautifully, on its last flight...
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