The red sun rose over the hills, the day already humid and warm. The chanticleers of the Joyful Throng sang their greeting to the sun, dressed in their red and green costumes. Observant members joined in, families coming out onto the street and adding their voices. The neighborhoods each had their own colors, the flags rising up with the chanticleer’s song. And each neighborhood had their own morning song. It was mayhem. But a joyful one. People laughed and waved when they were done, heading back in for breakfast. The Joyful Throng were a weird bunch, but not a bad one.

Mazelton looked out over the gun pits and artillery, over the earth walls, bunkers and trenches. He knew what war looked like when fought with these machines. Mazelton greeted the sun with grief, not a song. He then wiped his eyes, and hopped into the wagon next to Duane.

This was it. They were leaving the plains and entering the mountains. The mountains where Danae lived. A tiny place, hidden away from the world. A place where he could finally find the peace, love and acceptance he had been looking for his whole life. And if all this was willful delusion, then the hell with it. Mazelton died in a bone hut in the catacombs of Old Radler. He would refine himself in this purgatory, and see if there was anything left of his soul when he was done.

A whirl of kids turned up, handing out little candies made of sweet sap. They made sure every child in the caravan had one, and a hug, and a promise that if they ever came back they could play together.

“It is just possible that I am a gloomy prick and the world isn’t as bad as I think it is.” Mazelton said to Duane. Duane just shrugged.

Mazelton thought he saw a perfectly round head at the edge of the caravansary, urgently looking around. He sat back in his seat, pulling his hat down over his face. If the cook needed a life taken, they could send the core. Otherwise, he didn’t really know what to say to them. A totally spontaneous moment, but the sincerity of his feeling troubled him.

He might just be more messed up inside than he thought. Not good. A Ma strove to cultivate an unbreakable heart. Not invulnerable, the Ma knew such a thing didn’t exist. But unbreakable. Able to take the abuse and bounce right back. Mazelton watched the sun clear the horizon, knowing how it did its trick. He wasn’t a very good Ma. He took a deep breath and calmed himself. What was broken could be mended, or turned into something new. He might not be a very good Ma, but he was a Ma and could manage at least that much.

Policlitus ordered the wagons to roll out, the drums sounding the advance. The aurochs wheeled out of the yard and began plodding northwest. They would cross the bridge over the river a bit, clear the bounds of the modern city in less than an hour, and clear the ruins of the ancient metropolis that used to stand here around lunch. Mazelton decisively opened a sealed canister of toasted seeds. No, not toasted, fried. Fried, salted and seasoned seeds. He scooped out a few and chewed with relish. By the grace of the Great Dusty World, he would appear before Danae as a man, not a skeleton!

He belatedly offered some to Duane, who accepted graciously. Duane didn’t want a second handful. Seems he didn’t like the seasoning. No matter! It would help him build mass. Mazelton crunched the seeds, swallowing them with determination. Duane was right, they tasted pretty weird. He probably should have tasted them before he bought them. He sighed lightly, and had a final handful. That would do for the morning. Still a long way to go.

The city rolled past, then the little ripples and hillocks that covered old buildings and ruins. Here and there would be holes in the ground, old cellars still filling in from the last time someone dug them up. Another couple of centuries and it would take quite the expert to find them. Until the next time. Cold Garden was in just too useful a spot, sitting on a good sized river where the mountains meet the plains. So long as the geography didn’t change, humans would settle there.

Mazelton tried to sketch as the wagon jolted along. The roads were still pretty good, this close to the city. He got the chanticleers in their silly costumes, and the little kids with the candies. He spent a good hour drawing the cook at his griddle, and a somewhat more frantic twenty minutes drawing the children eating the chicken. Drawing Xiatoktok only took ten minutes, then another forty filling in all the little details on the clothes. Exhausted by the effort and feeling childishly spiteful, he then drew a pair of fangs coming out of his mouth and horns growing out of his head.

He made his lunchtime rounds, hoping to refill some of his brutally depleted funds. Faint hope. Most of the emigrants were broke, or near broke, before leaving Sky’s Echo. It costs a lot to buy a place, and even more to buy all the things you need to get there and build a life. It had been a minor miracle to earn as much as he had. Some were even “kind” enough to mention that local polishers in Cold Garden were much cheaper, so they were all charged up, thank you.

What could he do but shrug and move on? Soon enough, they would need him. Though there were fewer people in the caravan, yet again. Cold Garden really was a nice place to live, if you didn’t mind living on the edge of a continental scale war zone. Well, that might just be him projecting. A regional war, perhaps. One that might not happen. Maybe.

The people were nice, the food was pretty good, the land very suitable for farming, and really cheap too. Settling around here wasn’t a bad idea. It just wasn’t for him. He looked up at the hills, rising and falling ahead. They would lose even more people at Shale Snake Ridge- the Bissetts, members of their coven, others. Did Madam Lettie say she was leaving the Caravan here? He hoped not. He would miss chatting with her and Loranne. They were good company.

A day or so to the actual ridge of the mountains that was Shale Snake Ridge, another half day on top of that to the settlement. Interesting place, in a quiet sort of way. A nothing settlement, but it was next to Ghost Lake, and that meant it was next to an east-west river and a river that ran north AND the caravan trail ran right past it. The farming was decent, the fishing was very good, there was some good timber stock too. The water powered the saw mills, making production fast and easy. The location would have been gobbled up ages ago, were it not for the fact that it sat on the edge of a hot waste.

Mazelton took a look at the Bissette’s heavy wagon. Shale Snake Ridge was already a Dusty Canton. Now… just what would a renaissance do for them if it reformed a big piece of that waste? Hmm. Well, not like he could do anything with the information. Mazelton strode back to the wagon with the confident gait of a man who has decided that something is not his problem.

That night, Loranne pulled him away from his polishing. She wanted to take a walk. So they walked. Twenty two miles that day. Loranne would have done most or all of it on foot, pacing the aurochs and guiding them. But she wanted to “take a walk,” so they went.

Mazelton took the chance to really look at her. Late teens? Early twenties? He didn’t recall. A grown woman. A bit surprising that she wasn’t wed, but she hadn’t found someone she fancied in the Caravan, so she would have a look around the Ridge. Thin, if not as thin as Mazelton. The long march had worn her down, same as everyone else. What was left was sheer strength. Someone able to walk that far and survive what she survived was anything but soft. Mazelton still favored Danae if they came to the dueling sands, but she would pay a bitter price now.

They wandered out around the pond, away from the wagons. The elevation was a little deceiving- it felt flat, but looking back east, you could see that they had been going uphill most of the day.

“You know what Ma is going to do, right?”

“The renaissance? Yes. Brave of her, and selfless.”

“Pa is going with her.”

“I… if I knew that, I had forgotten.”

“He says he doesn't want to be parted from her, and it makes no odds if he goes a little sooner or later. Ma’s got the practice, of course. All those previous lives. Death ain’t nothing to be scared of for her. But for me, you know? It’s kind of… I’m going to be an orphan in about two days. I can more or less count the exact hours until my parents, who I have seen every day of my life, just… won't be there.”

She wasn’t crying. It seemed like all the tears had already come out. What was left was just sadness. Mazelton nodded.

“My parents are already dead, though I didn’t have to face the prospect for months. It’s not… easy to overcome. Like a gap where a tooth was. You learn to live without it, and sometimes you even forget it’s there. But soon enough, the memory catches you again.” Mazelton tried to console her.

“It was the knowing it was coming. The way you couldn’t escape it. Every step we took west was one step closer to Ma and Pa just… not existing any more. Scattering every little bit of who and what they were so finely that they can never be put back together. No more lives. Just being part of the Great Dusty World in all its glory.”

Mazelton reached over and squeezed her hand.

“Would you do me a favor? All of us, actually, though we can't pay you what it’s worth.”

“What’s that?”

“Could you… be the Ancient? They say it’s lucky, and a lot safer, if a polisher is the Ancient.”

“It’s true. I’m not trained up on building Holy Beacons, but I can at least make sure it’s working properly before the day. Ah, we do tell everyone that we charge for this, and by “we” I mean most polishers, not just the Ma. But actually, every polisher I have ever spoken to about being an Ancient agrees that it is catastrophically bad luck to take payment for it.” Mazelton lied. “We just don’t want people taking advantage. I would be honored to guard the Beacon and lift the colors.”

Loranne squeezed his hand hard, sniffing.

“Liar. Thank you.”

Mazelton just smiled. Maybe she knew him better than he thought.

“Danae is a lucky woman.”

“I hope so. I’m enough to test the luck of anyone.”

Loranne just laughed and tried to shove him in the pond. They parted, smiling.