Something in the first person

The Story of Tiber

But I suppose that’s how it was. Autumn was always longer than summer and spring, and winter came with a different sort of longevity. Everything would stretch for miles, even in the autumn and the summer. The colours were different here than they were in the east, the lines of coast wearing livid greens in the summer, ashen reds in the fall into winter as the clouds started to announce their permanent stay.

And all through out the autumn, into winter and spring, it would be a foggy dusk, resting over my shoulders. I learned quickly that the fall and spring were the time to paint, but even then, it was a bit of cinch, because the sun set early and rose late. And then through the winter, the sun would set one day, and not rise the next. One day – or night, I don’t really remember which – was called the Constellations’ Day, or something that translated similarly, because the stars would be very bright, very close to the ground, and you could almost touch them.

And then, the Saephers would stand on the top of the rise, light one of the multi-coloured fires, and tell stories about the stars, and the people who walked from them, and the people who walked from the sea, and the people who were born from the mountains. There are, also, they said, people who are born from the River Forests (or something that translates similarly,) but that they are very rare.

I remember sitting, waiting, listening, trying to pick up on the rises and falls and trills of the Saephers’ words, trying to figure based on what I could understand what I was “born of.” But, there were a lot of people of the sea in the Och that I lived in, and I got on fantastically with them, so they all assumed I was from the mountains, because the seals and I didn’t get on so well.

The seals, though, were like the Saephers. I could not grasp them, and I could not understand them, and I would not touch them simply out of fear. They (the seals and the Saephers) sat on a rock and watched me with big brown eyes. Sometimes they’d say something in a bullhorn voice that I had tried again and again to develop, but my voice as a teenager didn’t crack much. Often, they looked like they were laughing at me as I tried to sing to the nearest bear. (I think the bear liked it.) They moved the same way across the rocks, in that halting, heavy fashion, always watching the sky, seeming to mumble about the position of the clouds and Kids These Days.

I had the impression that about half of these (from both the seals and the Saephers) were about me. I was the strange, dark invader that was a bit too gangly, really, to fit in, but my hands were too small, a bit more delicate, and by far more awkward. I spent my days painting; not fishing, not carving, not doing something that could really be considered useful. My fingers would always slip, cutting them, or the fingers of the person next to me.