Wild Terai, Then The Milky Way

Orion Shall Ride, CHAPTER NINETEEN.

This post covers three of our four viewpoint characters. See The Four Meet.

First, would you like to meet survivalist Terai on a dark night? He is:

gaunt

weathered

scarred

unshorn

unwashed

wearing pungent woolens and untanned skins tied with sinew

changing them only when they become stiff

grasping a rabbit stick

a pouch of cutting and throwing stones at his waist

food in a woven carrier on his back

shocking even to the poorest outback savage

 

Elsewhere, Iern and Ronica, now a couple, walk under a clear sky:

 

"The Milky Way shone aloft, and again in an ebon mirror of water. Brilliances crowded around it. And mightily over the eastern range came striding that winter constellation called Orion." (5, p. 344)