It is pure here.
The sun staring down on you, the cloudlessness of the sky, the clearness of air that lets you see over a hundred miles away.
Everything is so pure here that it hurts.
The sun bears down on you triumphantly, jubilantly, indifferent to the drops of perspiration beading on the back of your neck and smearing into your collar; you squint blindly into the distance, shading your eyes.
Are you unused to purity and clarity in your own life? Perhaps you are used to the watery light of an impotent sun that insists on thrusting itself weakly into the spaces concrete jungles deign to leave in the skyline. Perhaps where you normally see the sun it is always filtered – inevitably, invariably filtered through trees, church spires, parapets, and smog.
No, here the sun is a different animal that tracks through the sky; it cuts across the rolling land like a disinfectant clearing the air, the vaunted sunlight that chases away superstition and vague night cruelties from peasant villages . The sun is invited into the Sekudui farmlands with grace and hope and goodwill.
There are so few places in the world where one gets the sense that it is absolute and immovable, but surely the Sekudui farmlands would be one of them. Placid, sturdy, stout-hearted...the natives of these heartlands of Barakka as well infrequently feel a need to question their identity or venture far from it. Man and land carved out their destinies together here and rarely strayed. Indeed, the towheaded shirtless boy standing barefoot on a plow following two similarly implacable Tuskow seems both curious as to why you are here and utterly uninterested in where you came from.
The air is pure too. Drawing in a deep lungful here is like the first time you drew a draught to drink from an icy mountain stream in the Roraldi Forests – the newness and freshness of it leaves you momentarily startled and slightly dizzy. And the taste. You hadn’t known there was a taste to things that didn't have tastes.
The Sekudui farmlands lie rolling and frank-faced, staring into a dazzling cerulean blue sky that can only be termed with the infinite. Leaning your head back to try to take the whole thing in leaves you with momentary vertigo. You wonder how people don't develop agoraphobia here.
The pattern of furrows combing across fields through incomprehensible miles towards the horizon -- the visual monotony broken only by the uneven checkering of fields allowed to lie fallow this season, fields with a dusting of light green, and the dusty dirt paths like the one you are standing on that scrawls between homesteads -- strains your eyes and you briefly close them, watching the sudden wash of color bloom beneath your eyelids as you press down the heels of your palms.
You open your eyes. What a relief then. Just inside your peripheral vision is a welcome spot of shade that nevertheless sticks out like an embarrassing smudge on a Sekudui farm wife's immaculate apron. Massed up against the sides of a hill is a layer of thick foliage that you can't help but notice for its virulent greenness in shocking contrast to the mild, unassuming colors of the rest of the rolling Sekudui farmlands. Even more astonishingly...the crops on this hill recede into a (pinkish? Purplish?!) shroud of fog that settles itself like a fur stole around the hill's shoulders. Even the sun has failed to burn away this mist. Fascinated, you head forward to take a look.
Drawing closer, you see a rusting iron fence surround the base of the hill. Security looks none too tight as a gate flaps open – despite the lack of breeze here in sunny farm country, or in the farmstead beyond the gate where the shadows grow more pronounced and the mist grows stronger as you stare up the path towards the top of the hill. You feel that you see the dark vertices of a house appear and disappear through the curling of thick mists. You look at the sign above the gate that reads "[name obscured] Company". You reach out a tentative finger to see if you can rub away some of the ruination affecting the sign. Your finger comes away with an oily green residue. You shudder, quickly wiping your hands on your clothes. Your fascination gets the better of you and you slip inside the gates and start walking eagerly up the path.
It is a steep hill and a long path. The air becomes heavier as you move, growing pregnant with humidity. Sweat pours down your face; the dry heat out in the rest of the Sekudui was nothing compared to this. But you see what is causing the pink and purples of the fog. The mist over here is so thick, you feel as if you can barely remember the sunlight that lies just outside these gates. Studded all over the ground where there would otherwise be sprinklers are giant grow lights lighting the broad undersides of leafy plants and exotic looking crops. For some reason, they are pink, their light refracting off the undersides of the water particles hanging in the air to produce a mist tinted as it hangs before your face.
The mist grows thicker as you head towards the house...and now you smell something noxious as well. Something of the tang of ozone combined with the sharp metallic taste of either blood or steel. In the distance you see the dim figures of workers toiling and tending towards the vegetation, their outlines obscured in mist. You wave eagerly. None wave back.
You are rapidly approaching the house, even as it flickers in and out of your sight between thick swathes of fog. Excited, you quicken your pace. What a strange place! What are they doing here anyway?
Suddenly you hear a twig snap and you spin around – but there is no one there. Funny. You had never noticed how silent it was before until now. Even the workers in the distance make no sound. You'd think in this silence, any noise they made would carry miles. You hesitate – and hear a soft keening sound. Startled, you cock your ear. Did you imagine it? No, there it is again...
You listen intently to the rising and then dropping wail as it fades in and out of your earshot...You are having trouble placing it...Is it a pleasing sound? Is it sad? One would think so but you can't tell...You listen...and keep on listening...
Unaware of it yourself, your interest in the house on the high hill is fading...your feet turn towards the gates...and you drift on downwards, intent upon listening to the wailing mournful dirge even as the sound fades from your ears...