In the Lion’s Mouth

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Planar projection of the Confederal Borderlands and the Triangles. View is from Galactic North. Not all worlds or roads are shown. Worlds are not all on the same plane.

The winds whistling o’er the breasts of the Dōngodair Hills carry much of the loneliness that can be found in those remote peaks and scatter it like pollen across the eastern plains, so that the Beastie boys, and the Nolan Beasts they tend, suck it in with every breath, and even the bluestem and inching grass, and the rip-gut in the wet bottomlands whose leaves are serrated knives soak up despair like sunshine and release it to the breeze. Thus it is that the rustle of the tallgrass can wring a sigh from a strong man and drive a lonely woman to weeping.

When night falls over the gloaming prairies of the Out-in-back, it falls complete. The city lights, such as they are, glow like hearth fires on the far side of the Dōngodairs; but their gleam does little more than limn the crests with a narrow pale-white band. Otherwise, green is simply another kind of black, and for half the year even the sky holds little more than a second pale band: the distant shore of the Orion Arm across the Rift of stars. It too, is the glow of distant hearths: the ancient home-stars of mankind.

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