The ceremony concluded with several of the elders walking to the burning crater
created by both the snakes’ race to death and the sudden explosion. They chanted in low
voices for perhaps ten minutes. Lady Fayeth was only able to catch short phrases: life and
death, the circle of eternity, and the vanity of pursuit. She did not understand the meaning
or impact of these phrases, but after the chanting ended, the people dispersed back to their
huts.
As time passed, Lady Fayeth witnessed more rituals and only after several months
did she begin to see a pattern in the ways of the people. Their days were marked by
interruptions and busy activities. Their plowing was done in oddly angled straight lines,
and their pathways were curiously straight and seemed to intersect at haphazard junctions.
From day to day, their actions had no pattern, no regularity, no cycle. They almost
seemed intent on maintaining a randomness of jobs and timing. Meals were never quite at
the same time each day, and it was only by persistent logging and the mild changing of
seasons that Lady Fayeth was able to tell the passage of weeks and months. It was like
she woke up each morning to a different people - each day seemed drastically different
than the last.
Although she was rather bored during most of these days, she slowly became more
and more curious about why these odd people had such an intense desire to stray away
from predictable pattern and circular symbols, yet clung to the ideas of eternity, and
arching patterns and concepts in their ceremonies. Once, she had shown a child her
electronic log, which she had brought from her ship. The small boy had turned to her
depiction of the circular arrangement of the full moon ceremony. Upon viewing this
image for only an instant, he quickly but carefully placed the log on the bedside and bolted
from the door crying. That evening, the elders held a healing ceremony at the boy’s hut,
and Lady Fayeth received concerned looks and pale faces from the villagers for days
afterward.
After six months of ruling the people and trying to learn their haphazard ways,
Lady Fayeth began to lose hope in ever understanding the people. One night, in a fit of
desperation, she called two of her most trusted bodyguards, both accomplished hunters,
and wandered into the forest which bordered the village. She had no intentions but to
explore the wilderness, a random pursuit that pleased the man and woman that
accompanied her. After traveling for several hours, the trio stopped for a break by a
cluster of trees near one of Vergeslant’s sparkling streams. As one of the bodyguards
went to look for food, Lady Fayeth gazed around the scene of the forest stream, sitting on
the twisting, intertwining roots of the clustered trees. Suddenly, through the mist slowly
rising from the stream, she spied a clue to the puzzling natives’ rituals, and her mind began
at once to process the possibilities of planetary escape once more.