Run East/With The Wind

Thirty-two slabs of granite, buried on the moon, etched with a writing so fine that it could only be read with magnification—the shapes and symbols represented stars, constellations of galaxies, and mathematical concepts. Next to these were inscriptions in the alien language. Under all the others was the smallest, a tablet.

“I have translated it.”

“What does it say?”

“It’s a love story.”

Autumn had begun, and the sun would not rise again until the end of winter. It was too dark for her father to see she had stopped working. Finally, Cyrellia could do some stargazing.

The brightest star was called Great Elder Sister, and every hour it was in a different place. It was shimmering white, and its small gray companion, Lesser Elder Sister, circled it forever.

When Cyrellia was an even younger child, her father told her that the Elder Sisters were her own sisters—her sisters that had disappeared. She even believed this for a while. One year, in the last hours of spring, her eldest sister vanished. Her other sister was gone two springs after. Since then, Cyrellia looked to the sky to find them, and that autumn, when the sun was down and the sky was clear, the Elder Sisters could be seen circling the heavens eternally.

Her father strode out towards her, his short silhouette protruding above the desert dunes. She looked away. She turned her eyes up towards the sky again. One last glimpse.

“You stopped working,” he said.

“I was tired.”

“Your mother died and your brothers left me for the factories, yet you expect me to do all of the farm work myself while you lounge around looking up at stars?” he asked.

She looked away, towards the east (the way the wind always blows). The dark jagged outline of the mountain peaks pierced the sky.

“Work! Now! Stop wasting time,” he shouted at her, “You think this grain harvests itself? All summer we toiled over this crop, and now you’re too lazy to even pick it up off the ground!”

Cyrellia sat up. She returned to the fields; she returned to the straining work, gathering endlessly. She did almost all the work because ever since her mother died, her father had grown smaller every year. He was now merely a third of Cyrellia’s height. She pulled the wheel-cart behind her, strapped to her hind, and her back legs ached, and she gathered up the bundles of graingrass with her teeth. At least it wasn’t summertime anymore, with its blistering heat and even harder work.

“Tell me the truth, father. Is Cynthia dead? And is Cassandra ever coming back?”

“You are too young to understand,” he said.

“But when will I see them again?”

“Never,” said her father.

Her elder sisters, gone forever! Her best friends—how they would play together in the marshflowers of spring, lie down under the stars of autumn, or tell stories and huddle for warmth with the winter blizzard raging outside! How they toiled together in the hot restless fields of summer! A friend made the hard, endless work somewhat bearable. But her father was no friend, and he was the only one left.

The worst part was how no one cared or even seemed surprised. When her mother died, they had mourned for two seasons. But no one mourned for Cynthia or Cassandra.

“They’re in a better place,” her father said.

 

In the 74.7 hours following sunset, the temperature dropped from 124° F to -43° F, per the measure. They had gathered what food they would need for the coming winter and the rest they buried. The autumn freeze would preserve it all.

The water that remained in the cistern had frozen over, finally. Cyrellia was afraid of deep pools of water, ever since she had tripped and fallen into the cistern one summer. It burned her skin like nothing she had ever felt. There was something about water, the way it transferred heat, that made it either burning hot or uncomfortably cold. It was never anywhere in-between. When water was cold, it was colder to touch than even snow. But when water was hot, as it became during the summer, not even fire burned so painfully.

When they had finally pulled her out of the cistern, she was covered in burns and her fur was corroded, and her underskin was pink from so much water, and she had to live in the clinic for 290 hours, and she couldn’t go outside or do any farm work, which she was supposed to start doing that summer, her first summer when she was not an infant.

But the ice didn’t bother her. She loved the ice; she loved the cold. She carefully walked down the long stone spiral stairway that lined the edge of the cylindrical pit. When she reached the bottom, she chipped and ate a few mouthfuls of ice from the base of the cistern, enough to keep her hydrated for the long winter ahead.

The hovel where they lived was deep and dark, extending far underground, with many dens where they stored dusty things; there were stacks of old books and leaflets and devices, never used. There were sixteen rooms in all, but they only used four of them, ever since her brothers moved north to the metropolis.

She retrieved her wheel-cart, with the fresh bushels to eat, and she returned to the main den to eat the last meal before the hibernation, the largest meal of the year. But her father had taken nothing to eat for himself.

“Father, will you eat nothing?”

“I know what I’m doing,” he said, and he ate nothing.

That year, she slept for the whole winter uninterrupted, but she didn’t enjoy it. She loved the cold, but even better than the cold were her sisters beside her to give her warmth.

 

When she awoke, her father had molted again. He was the smallest she had ever seen him, less than one fourth of her height. Did he care nothing for her? And was he leaving her, too? And what would become of her, if her father molted to nothing? She would go to wherever her sisters went—that was what he was planning for her, she was sure of it.

Still, there was more work to be done, and her father made her know it. The time had come to gather the winter snow into the cisterns, so they would have water for their crops for next summer. It needed to be done quickly, before the sun rose and the snow began melting and then evaporating. When she was done, she covered the cisterns with vegetable oil so the water would not evaporate.

The sun had not risen yet, but she could already feel the warm wind coming from the western sky where the sun would rise. The twilight of morning was already visible, giving light to the world again. Where the snow had melted, the marshflowers had already begun budding.

 

Ice-water flowed from the peak, and marshflowers grew on the banks of the seasonal river, and the canyon filled with water, with marshflowers on its eastern wall, colored blue, violet and ultraviolet. The sky was streaked with red, orange and yellow, the sky of springtime. The sun was half-visible above the horizon.

Water from the melting snow formed a lake in the valley to the west, with marshflowers on its banks and the sun reflecting on its waters, and the lake teemed with life, and living things hatched from their eggs and rippled on the surface. The gliders returned, and she chased them off the marshflowers. When the gliders rose from the ground in fright, they were taken east by the wind.

She walked west, against the wind, towards the sun, and she could almost feel it getting hotter the further west she walked. She found a snowbank and she ate snow and marshflowers. Her father was out as well. She could barely even see him over the grasses, he was so short.

It was an especially leisurely spring. She sat at the bank of the seasonal lake with her front legs crossed, lying on her belly, her mouth resting on her back. As the hours passed, the water level dropped, and evaporation cooled the ground where she was sitting.

But summer was coming soon. Like the marshflowers, her respite would be short lived. She looked east. If she ran that way, the spring could last longer. If she ran fast enough, the spring would last forever. She could eat marshflowers for the rest of her life and run in the endless spring, with not a chore or a care ever again.

 

Every hour it became a little hotter, until the temperature reached 150° F. The snow on the peak melted, the river dried up, the marsh turned to desert, and nothing was left of the lake but a muddy crater. Her father came outside and called out to her. It was time to work, time to plow and plant, and to dig up the still-frozen food buried underground. She couldn’t bear it. Something was different this year. She couldn’t take it anymore. Her insides were spinning; her visage felt flush.

Her father felt it too—something was different about Cyrellia.

“Are you coming or not?” he asked.

“I can’t,” she said.

At first she felt ashamed of herself, but her shame quickly vanished. Clarity came over her mind. She looked east. He walked towards her, but that only startled her. She ran east with the wind.

 

[Translator’s note: Here, the paragraph structure changes. Before, the symbols are organized in rigid columns. After, the symbols are free flowing and larger.]

 

She ran east with the wind, across the deserted dunes, over the decay of the withered marshflowers, over the vast sandy desert that spanned the whole world. If she ran fast enough, she would find spring again. She looked behind her, and her father did not chase after her. She saw in his visage that he was not ashamed. No, he was proud of her.

 

She ran east with the wind, across the hills, past the peak, and she found the ice on the eastern slope of the peak had not melted, and water flowed down through a river towards the east. And there was another river and another lake, and marshflowers were there! But they were dying; they had already lost their colors. She ate some off the ground, but she found them stale. She would need to find better marshflowers! Her instincts possessed her again—she ran east with the wind at a speed that frightened her.

Gliders flew above; she raced them down a hill, running past footprints in the sand. The footprints converged towards a bridge of stone, and water flowed under it. Marshflowers grew from the hinges of the masonry; their roots stretched towards the water below.

A male, larger than her, was behind her—he also ran east with the wind! His visage glowed with visible music, colored with the rhythmic patterns of song. Before she realized it, she was singing along with him. The song carried four emotions: joy, longing, excitement, and apprehension.

How handsome he was! She passed over the crest of a hill and lost him, yet she could still see the light from his visage pierce through the hill, and he made sorrowful music. She thought he was silly. If he wanted to catch her, he would have to speed up, because she would be embarrassed to slow down! She ran so fast that her legs hurt. Then she saw him appear again over the crest; it seemed he was only kidding about not being able to catch her!

But when he came closer, she recognized him—it was Herbert, from her schooling years. Suddenly, she hated him. He reminded her of home, and she hated home. He recognized her too, and he stopped and turned around.

 

She ran east with the wind. She didn’t think; she only felt. She never questioned her instincts. By then, she couldn’t turn back even if she wanted to. The wind blew harshly, and that way (west) was miserable summer. Home was too far away now; she could never return to where she came.

She ran east with the wind, across sandy plains, past canyons, mountains and valleys, across the marshlands, covered in snow and grass, and the marshflowers bloomed blue and violet and ultraviolet. As far as she could see towards the horizon to the east, the land was covered in white and green. Muddy water swept across the land, and her feet were wet, but she didn’t care; she hated water, but not anymore. She saw the deep red sunrise behind her, and the sun fell lower as she fled from the rising sun, until half the sky was red. She crossed a seasonal river with a single jump, and she thought, “Is this the most beautiful world in the whole universe?”

It was, indeed, the most beautiful world in the whole universe, in the present, in the past, or even in the future. In all of Andromeda and the Milky Way, we never found a world quite like it. You probably think that Great Elder Sister is more beautiful. You are wrong. No waterworld from the future will ever be more beautiful than was Cyrellia, the second planet from the sun, in her youth.

She sat down among the marshflowers, eating them as she pleased, at the banks of a seasonal lake, near melting snow, and she ate snow and rested for hours.

 

She awoke with daylight in her eyes; the summer was back. She ran east with the wind. If she ran fast enough, she would find spring again. She found a tended field with a family plowing for summer. The matron—it was her elder sister, Cassandra!

“Cyrellia, is that you? I see you are finally an adult!”

“Elder sister, where did you go? Where have you been?”

“I ran east with the wind until my true love found me,” said Cassandra, and she nodded at her husband, who was working the fields behind her.

“But why?”

“You know why,” said Cassandra, “There are some things you just know, without having ever been told. Go, Cyrellia! Run east with the wind until your true love finds you!”

She ran east with the wind, with the sun at her back, past the fields of Cassandra, and she found spring again, with its lakes and rivers, and there were marshflowers of different colors than before—these marshflowers were white, red and yellow.

 

She ran east with the wind, and her true love followed. She was running fast, but he was running faster. How handsome he was! It was Herbert—he had caught up to her again. He galloped and swerved, and she ran straight, yet he was still faster. His visage glowed with visible music, the colors of joy and solace and anticipation.

She wanted him to catch her, so she ran faster. She ran so fast she felt her soles would shatter, and all four of her legs were in pain, but there was happiness in her visage. She looked behind to make sure that she hadn’t lost him, and she saw that he had sped up as well, and he had nearly overtaken her.

His form was bright and glowing, a stallion so virile and healthy. He caught up to her. He cut off her path by running in front of her. She stopped.

 

[Translator’s note: for the final paragraph, the style of the text returns to the original, and it is organized neatly in a rectangular section at the bottom of the tablet.]

 

“Where do you run, one most beautiful?” her true love asked.

“I run east with the wind, through the endless spring, until my true love finds me,” said Cyrellia.

“Come join me. I will give you a block of fresh ice to drink, preserved from the winter.”

And she was thirsty, and she followed him to his hovel, walking west against the wind. It was her father’s hovel, and all her childhood things were there, just as she had left them. Her father was now too small to be seen, but she knew that he was still watching over her.