All dragons, Hej says, are born in Tápá-vá. It is, he says, where their common heart belongs. Hej knows something of the common heart. Though born in Ůtef, his heart is older than he is; it was born in the onion-swamps of Ůtōrō. His gods live there. His gods are onions. Ůtōrō is a sacred word. Its meaning is direct. Unambiguous. Ůtōrō, when Hej voices that soft invocation means but a single thing. Home. I was born in Elül. I don’t live in Elül now. It has been a year since I have kept house there. I trade with Elül when I must. Hej has taken to journeying with me. Our wife, Borá finds some comfort in this. We have made arrangements—sacred agreements—and I have taken a wife as well. Hej—the brother I have taken in accordance to local custom holds rank as both brother and co-husband. My wife Lÿtsi is second-wife to Hej, and co-wife to Borá. We are—by local standards—an average family, easy with laughter. Borá and Lÿtsi are like sisters whose only real ambition is to vex protective parents. They are inseparable: sharing everything from chores to gossip to trips to market, and quiet, lazy evenings eating peaches on their favorite bank of the river. They laugh like girls at temple, and encourage Hej and me into competitions at swimming, or wrestling, as they clap in delight and mock us with flower-petals, thrown at us. Where Borá and Hej are true Ůtef’ēžen, I am Elüli and dear, beautiful Lÿsti carries the blood of Tápá-vá in her veins, though her mother is as Elüli as I am. Hej is gentle in his acceptance of our new wife, and he speaks to her at length in his sonorous, poet’s voice. At one time, Lÿsti feared him for his bull’s muscle, his honey-strand hair in cascades that touch his shoulders and his back: cascades woven into a neat, back-swept spill of braids, beaded in the colors of husbandry and brotherhood. Hej, in taking care to speak at length, has becalmed Lÿsti’s misgivings, and she has taken to speaking with him. Of poetic things. Of dragons. Of onions that are gods. I heard them, once, chatting before the house shrine. I still bring onions from Elül. Hej and Borá remain devout in the manner in which they save the husks. And now, Lÿsti—in quiet celebration of her half-Tápá-vá blood—seems to take some delight in relating tales of dragons to Hej. He listens—so she says—with the rapt attention of a child. She says that she loves him for that. In Elül, her Tápá-vá blood was considered inferior and suspect. Here, among people who live far from their ancestral home, her blood is rich with dragon-tales. Hej respects this, and he encourages her tales before the house altar. In exchange for her tales, he teaches her how to listen to the onion husks he and Borá so scrupulously save. I think she is learning to hear what the onionskins whisper when they are brushed by a breeze. I think she is learning to enjoy what she hears. She tells me, sometimes, of dragon stories—stupid Tápá-vá folktales, she says, mocking our shared Elüli lineage—and I listen for them in the whisper of onionskins. I saw a dragon’s heart once. With Hej at my side. He’d lit a stand of candles. The altar-room was dark, and something in the glow threw impassioned, redness through the enshrined husks. I sat entranced, thinking of dragons, and wondering how an onion knew the shape and color of a dragon’s heart. I asked Hej. He smiled and put his arm around my shoulders. “Brá’áti,” he said. Beloved Brother the word means. “Onions,” he said, “know everything.” *** I had no idea that a whole world might come out of…well…dry onion skins, but there you have it. As with the other onion shots, this contains no postwork other than cropping and resizing. And as always, thank you for viewing, reading and commenting, and I hope you're all having a great week.