False Rocks

First Written    Thu Apr 12 06:54:00 2018
File Modified    Wed Feb 14 18:32:26 2024
Latest Upload    Thu Sep 19 03:09:54 2024

"Cronchim, Protector of the Gardens."

She looked at her reflection in the water running down the smooth, false-rock lining of the temple fountain. Four bright green eyes circled her trunk. She blinked them one at at time, mouthing the syllables.

"Cron. Chim. Shish. Drau."

The title suited a warrior. A humble warrior had known that no garden could be preserved its entirety. A brilliant warrior had known that that all the gardens in the world could be regrown, if only from a seed and some water. A strong warrior built this temple to save the water. A holy warrior gave his life to save the seeds.

Cronchim was none of these things, but she sure liked hearing the stories. She knew them well enough that she could race the runners when it came time for sermons in the temple square. She would recite a whole tale with ease, sacrificing not a single drop of tone or phrase for brevity, before even the youngest eager-to-please temple child had returned from the library book in hand. Having once been one herself, seeing them struggle gave her no small pleasure.

She stopped the water with her forearm, leaving plain rock where her face had been. Was she really reminiscing? Reminiscing was for old people with nothing to do who walked around in gardens they had already grown. She was still young. Just not that young, as the growing plates of bark around her joints had proved. The perfect gardener, her mother had told her, was as fast as a child and as strong as an elder. The poorest fool was the opposite. Fortunately enough, most people in Cronchim's world were about half perfect in a ratio that swung from one extreme to the other as they grew. Apparently, she was no exception.

"Teacher Cronchim," a hurried voice called out as it drew closer, "I have- I mean, Protector Cronchim."

"Spit it out, Lilishid. News before title, please," she reprimanded. Lilishid was a good student, but no one would ever hear her if she spoke such stammered Dodrau.

"I have a paper for you," Lilishid replied, reaching into her satchel, "I don't know if it is good news or not but I hope it is."

Cromchim looked the youngster over as she knelt to grab her balance stone. Lilishid was dusty. Her skin was darker than Cronchim's. The fledgling bark-plates on her arms and legs were the same shade of dark blue as the night sky and in moments of pride, like after having delivered mail to a favourite teacher, she stood tall as if the sky wished to pull her back up into it. As a temple gardener, Cronchim knew not to think in such a way, but she couldn't help but note that Lilishid was one of the few she would have been proud to mentor.

"Lilishid, unless the paper you brought me has been cut into sheets, bound into a book, and filled with stories, I'm afraid it cannot be good news. I will read it though, of course. If you'd care to join me for some drink, I wouldn't mind reading it to you."

Lilishid reached for a bowl of tea from Cronchim's lunch tray. She did yet not need a balance stone to keep herself from falling.

"Please, Protector. Read it before you make riddles. It's important."

Lilishid's arms flinched back as she realized what she said. Cronchim raised her arms disapprovingly. Lilishid knew better than to read mail that wasn't hers, and though they both knew what had been done, neither acknowledged the fact. Cronchim held her balance stone with two arms while grabbing the letter and her tea bowl with the other two. She poured the tea into her mouth like the water poured from the fountain, but Lilishid was not amused. As a Protector, if she fell in battle her ashes would be kept in a bowl before being returned to the gardens' soil. She had hoped the juxtaposition of morbid and comical would ease Lilishid, but Cronchim was barely a comedian, let alone a warrior.

"It's from the crusader general's office. A letter from my sibling. That in itself is of no note, but this, this is not his personal stationery. It's not even addressed to me. Lilishid, what is this?"

Lilishid had not yet sipped her tea when she replied, "Look again, Teacher. It's addressed to the temple, and you are now, you know-"

"Protector," Cronchim finished, quickening her voice, "I am Protector of this temple. I am Protector of this temple and of its gardens and recipient of its letters and this, this is not a personal correspondence! This is a letter of warning! Warning that an outsider has been spotted at the outskirts. That's what this is, isn't it? My paranoid sibling saw a trader, a desert trader who got lost, and is telling us to keep watch, right? Because we have an agreement with the desert people and, and we need to look out to help them and, and that's why you're so dusty, Lilishid and-"

"Protector, Cronchim, I know you never misread," she spoke, slower and clearer than Cronchim had ever heard from her, "but I must give you the benefit of the doubt and tell you you are not seeing that word correctly."

"Oh," replied Cronchim softly, "it says Outsider, not outsider."

Lilishid, perhaps due to nerves or perhaps due to not knowing where to place it, dropped her tea bowl as she raised her arms in salute. This, Cronchim knew, was not a salute for a teacher. Suddenly, she felt as though all the balance stones in the world were not enough to equal out the weight of the tea bowl and letter in her hands.