- You would not understand. Those that fell here never strove to sate their hunger for glory, power, or personal gain. They were not forced to fight this war by their superiors. No-one had any deeply-held convictions to protect, nor ideals to enforce. This is not our way. Any reasons we might have had to take part in these battles were secondary…
- To the very act, yes… But still, your condescension towards the Artless, Vrtra, is insufferable, and so is your wish to resort to abstraction despite all that both of us have undergone. So let me take over for now. The story has to be told, known, and kept alive, even if by the new litter.
On this Side, it was all different before the Tremor. Nothing much was known to exist aside from the Pillar Cities, of which there were yet five, - Kao and Shmym the largest among them, and the most irreconcilable in their differences. The society of Kao disdained abstraction – to the point that the very name of their pillar came from outside, as they themselves refused to give names to anything. Kao had no writing, no signs for numbers; their tongue had no nouns. Their claim to fame was the magnificent murals that covered the great upward home of Kao to the last cubit. These documented all that was ever seen: creatures of Land, Sea, and Weave, forces of nature as they manifested themselves to our Side; scenes from every other pillar’s life except their own, glorious battles of times past. Everything apperceived by the eye was worthy of depiction, anything that transpired entirely in the mind was dismissed as abstraction.
Shmym, on the other hand, embraced abstractions to ridiculous extents, as you know all too well. Their extant philosophical texts are as arcane as they are famous among those of the new litter that now tread a like path. Their myths are enchantment itself, full though they might be of superfluous ramblings. Me, I came to see things in a different way and left for Mzeba just in time to outlast the Tremor, but as a whole, those of Shmym were born for words and died for words. Their favorite pastime was writing – individual as well as collective. There were multiple leagues – for prose, poetry, natural philosophy, weave essays, and tenet tractates, in the rising order of abstraction and refinement. The everyday greeting at Shmym pillar – “Mgoshel Kebuyum” – translates as “Outcrop of Matter is Seen and Known”. Some way to say “hi”. This still annoys the hell out of Vrtra – had you looked at him just now, you would have noticed him wince.
- I did not. You wouldn’t have. Here he goes again, trying to read my face instead of looking, - Vrtra sighed quietly and let his shoulders droop towards the fire.
- Oh well, - Zaveer patted Vrtra’s shoulder, then fell quiet and gazed toward the distance somewhere to my right. - Look at us bicker even now. In retrospect, the whole sad story wasn’t something we could reverse or avoid. We were never even meant to try.