In far-flung Mousk the doom of Hyuri's flame is not yet known. Women still love according to the Attar Laws; men work and drink and covet, and love the women out of spite if not out of need. Bronze bells and the night's murders herald the dawn; noon's heat is pacified by the wind from across the steppes; twilight's spark is a scintillating jonquil buoyant in an indigo mere - that same color as the velveteen chitons worn by Diagne's hierodules.
The slums reek with the fetor of fertility, like a pond teeming with algae, while the heights are as clean and arid as a desert; and both creep across at uncertain borders.
Lissome willows that blossom crimson in middle-winter curtain Rivern Street - a two-story defile vivisecting the din and press of the Aestival Court - but the galleries of the goliath-tree in its center are all azure windowed, selling talismans of hubris, trophies filled with the pith of greed, and icons of the motherland's quondam glory.
The worship-places hum and nod with rituals of meditation, beds laid out for the ascetes to drink the poppy-milk of torpor and transcend misery. The flesh-houses sweat and roll with their older arts, parlors made murky with jasmine-smoke for obfuscated strangers to couple, slither, and fuck.
Spice has become more valuable than gold. The death of a prince is celebrated. Virgins are fungible with slaves. Tomorrow, a handsome vagrant will come in by the west gate. He carries only a coat, pack, and walking staff.
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