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With her hands clasped at her waist and her head bowed, Leash makes her way elegantly along the jostling line of worshippers. The very image of humble contemplation, with her hair bound up at the back of her bare head into a chaste bun, all the better to defy the corruption of Nature.
A short, stocky woman, broad in the hip and the shoulder, she is not beautiful, nor exactly plain. Her hawklike nose and ramrod posture are too distinct to be ignored, but her only attractive qualities lie in her hair - when loose, a fantastic tumble of chestnut curls - and in her hands, small enough to do a Renaissance sculptor proud. But the hands are usually concealed by coarse shooting gloves and lapped by the broad sleeves of her coat, the hair pressed beneath a greasy old fedora. Dark glasses normally obscure the large, dark eyes and half-hide the proudly arched nose.
But all have been left off for this sacred day. Hat and coat lie unheeded and rumpled over one of the two armchairs that grace her apartment; the glasses are gone, leaving her blinking and feeling slightly naked in the harsh light.
But she doesn't think of that. All her thoughts are deadened; stuffed away from the light of this growing excitement in her breast. With faint impatience, she watches the line shorten, aware only of the priest at the door and of her own breath, hissing between teeth and lip.
This is all for the best. But oh! how she wishes Dogstar were here. Litte is here - she has seen and exchanged glances with him on the way to the Church. But Dogstar is stubbornly resisting every word that should leave her mouth concerning the beauty of the Church, of Neuracomp, of the Transcendent One's Dream.
She feels so sorry for Dogstar: his heart is deep in Nature's grip, and his mind is not strong enough to resist her. In many ways Leash still sees him as a little boy; a younger brother, staunchly refusing to do something at the admonishment of Elder Sister because Mama doesn't say so. This stubborn defiance would be admirable if misled in others: in Dogstar it is only plain pigheadedness, and prejudice. Poor Dogstar. Poor, poor man.
But never mind. With a little shake of her head, she puts him out of her mind. She'll bring him around. He doesn't see how unhappy he really is, but she does, and she will be able to make him see it, too.
Lifting her head, she sends a smile of spiritual kinship to two men just in front of her: one slightly older than the other; both quite young.
The ceiling is dirty. That is the strongest thought that manages to make it through the turmoil reeling at the back of Dogstar's mind, becoming clear enough for him to identify it. The ceiling is dirty. The damn thing's covered with cobwebs and the white paint is now a dark grey, encrusted with soot from the smoky habits of a generation of lodgers.
He shuts his tired eyes to block out the sight, and the dim browny-red now occupying his sight seems to encourage the roil of thoughts like salmon fry to draw closer to the surface.
Trees. Now that's an odd one. The memory of trees is a feeble one, rising from the shallow reservoirs of juvenile thoughts long battered by adult bitterness, but it is there. Dogstar is probably one of the few people in Kiyonis who's seen trees. Oh, not the brown and dying saplings that are sometimes to be found in the outer limits of the city, or the pruned and manicured hedges and fruit trees that the people who live in the Garden enjoy. The trees he remembers are enormous pines and cedars and tamaracks, clinging to existence alternately on windswept rock and in swampy, acidic ground. Pelted with icy, pure rain driven inland by gusting ocean winds, their tossing, furry limbs all shrouded in fog and looking twice as gigantic to the eyes of a little seven-year-old boy.
His conscious mind does not accept the additional parts of this memory: strong, earthworn, female hands clasping his shoulders; a strong, deep, female voice telling him about the people who live in the trees.
Leash must be at the Church by now.
Damn. He was hoping to avoid that thought.
She must be at the Church. She must be sitting in the pews, or benches, or chairs, or whatever the hell they use in that place, gazing raptly at some chanting minister, or leaning back into darkness with a plug in her temple, as affected as any pathetic druggie. Maybe Litte's next to her, his dark eyes as unfocused and faraway as hers.
Involuntarily, his teeth clench down on a painful-looking gash on his lower lip, opening it anew.
Dogstar doesn't like Neuracomp. He detests anything that gathers people up and turns them into sheep, bleating for their next feed. The fact that he detests the people, too, has nothing to do with it. He doesn't like the Church, he doesn't trust it, and he can't see what others see in it. And for a man of such an unstable temperament, these factors are more than enough to shove his cold opinion of the Church over the rift-edge into the pit of black hate.
"It's fucking unnatural."
Completely unaware that he's spoken aloud, Dogstar suddenly catapults up off of his rumpled bed. Boots thumping on the worn carpet, with barely a pause to snatch up his old jacket from the hook by the door, he strides out of the dingy little apartment. He doesn't meet a soul in the hallway as he heads down to the carpark where his bike is parked.
Just seconds later, the echo of a starting engine and a lingering smell of exhaust is all that's left over in the dark cement carpark to tell of his presence. He's heading for the Flying Goldfish. He needs a drink.