By the river
Welcome to my first post on Substack. My intention with this platform is to present stories from my long rides and fictional tales inspired by them as well as related observations that might come to me in current times. I’ll start it off with a fictional bit from an ongoing tale.
By the river
Before coming to the river, we stopped to rest and to prepare for our journey to come. It was going to take five or six days before we passed through the worst of it. Where we could drink the water without concern and where anail, an caonach and uisce could browse at ease.
I took an elk and over the next couple of days prepared the carcass.
It vas hot and arid and I managed to dry a lot of the elk meat; more than I needed for our journey. I pounded most of the dried elk into a course meal and rendered as much of the fat as I could collect. The two I mixed together and made little cakes for me to eat.
For anail, an caonach and uisce I gathered great piles of grass and tightly tied them in bundles with laces of the raw elk hide.
The hide, I soaked for a day and a half, frequently changing the water. I did this that the hair could slip off easily. With the now hairless rawhide, I cut a bunch of circles a foot or so across as well as some long laces as I mentioned earlier. Around the outer edge of the circles, I cut small holes for the lacing to go through.
The circles, I wrapped around the feet of anail, an caonach and uisce, securing them around their fetlocks with the lace. I left them on their feet for an afternoon while they grazed on soft footing. Enough time for the hide to partially dry and thereby hold their shape for the time that we would need them.
The little boots are to help protect their feet from absorbing the poisons left on the ground by the river. As well, I made muzzles for each to keep them from eating the grass and other forage along the way. I hoped that at times we might find a small inlet where we could drink the water and perhaps find a small amount of fresh greenery for all of us.
The river had long ago been destroyed when after years of abandonment, the banks of the made lakes broke. The lakes were filled with the effluent of the great digging for power that had long ago been abandoned.
Many years after the abandonment, great storms and spinning tornadoes started to come where there had been none before. The banks became weakened and over time they crumbled.
When the lakes spilled, they killed everything along the river’s route downriver and even upriver for a short ways. The sea at the mouth of the river was a dead zone a long ways out.
We de not want to follow this river, but we are forced to it. The land behind us is dying and the river route is our only option. The land to the south and east is blocked by those unfriendly to us.