I saw moonlight, once, amplified by a distorting lens and focused through the dry and torn skin of an onion on my brother-husband’s altar table. I saw my brother-husband sitting, entranced by the pearlescent glow: thinking, perhaps of new uses for domesticated lightening, or of the homeland he’d never seen. He is Ůt’ēžen, and on each day of his life, he thinks—at least once—of the place his people once knew. Home. Utōrō. They will never return there. They cannot. The Kását have overrun those wet, boggy lands to the south, and from what I can say of my adoptive people, no citizen of Ůtef will ever attempt to reclaim what the Kását have taken, tainted, and changed. They will—as my wives and my brother-husband say—start over. They will change. This is their new home. Not Utōrō, but it is enough for them: who they are and who they are becoming. In four generations, they have changed. In Ůtef, they are desert people: wily and furtive like sand-snakes and long-legged sand-wraiths: cute and amusing little lizards. Ůt’ēžen children favor these creatures as pets, and they are useful as vermin insects are their diet. The Ůt’ēžen are like these lizards: pale (like orchids, or like the hearts of their sacred onions) and quick in their motions. Like these lizards, they are silent. Now, as I sit, staring (again) at lens-distorted moonlight through an onion skin, I feel the presence of my brother-husband at my side. Hej, like a large number of Ůt’ēžen men carries muscle of a bull, but the manner of something quiet. A poet, I think at times: gentleman, as reckoned in Elül. He is easy with our wives and their fondness for him is expressed in the cascade of breaded braids his hair becomes on holy nights and on days sacred in Ůtef for reasons of wordless significance. Tonight, with moonlight filtered through blue-tinted glass, his hair is a half-ordered, backswept mane. He is disturbed, I think; his silence, though normal, seems pensive. I want to comfort him, but I don’t know how. My silence, he often says, is comfort enough, and indeed, he seems to relax when (for whatever reasons) I find myself at his side. Silently or not. As glass-bent moonlight streams through the skin of a single onion, I imagine what thoughts must travel through his mind. He will speak of them—to me, and to our wives—later. One does not speak of troubled thoughts in the presence of onionskins or an altar, and so I am at peace with Hej’s silence. He has given some hint as to the nature of his dark thoughts, and I know—with all certainty—that they are focused on the rumors circulating south of the city. There is word that the Kását are moving. There is word, among those who work at Hej’s trade, that the Council may seek their aid in devising weapons of bewildering purpose. Weapons that make use of lightening. Hej is a peaceful man. I can see trouble in his eyes, and in my mind, I wonder at the blue glow of moonlight through onionskin. Does he see lightening there? Will such lightening leave Kását corpses in the rocky desert: food for hyenas and jackals, stoop-shouldered vultures, and strange, black beetles? Does the thought of such lightening—coaxed from Hej’s own future labors—trouble him and make him doubt his right to call himself a gentleman? He will tell me, in time, whether this is true or not, but for now, it is enough that I sit with him, contemplating moon-blue light and onion skin. Silence, with Hej, is always enough…. *** And still another onionskin with LED enhancement; this time from a blue bulb embedded in the rear of a laser pointer/pen. I just love 21st century thingies. No postwork except for resizing and a tiny bit of level adjustment. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great weekend.