Gil is marching through the desert.
To Gil, the Danyu Desert had always been a vast, blank, yellow blur beyond the eastern wall of Libri. In the midst of the desert now, he sees that it has a history as complex as that of any human city.
In the desert, the wind is the grand architect, sculpting the soft rising and setting of the dunes and scraping clean the few rock pillars that litter the landscape.
When Gil was little, the priestesses took him and the other kids all the way down the canal to the ocean for a whole day. Now Gil realizes that the desert wind is much like the ocean wind. It just works on a longer timescale. Each moment in the ocean is like a million moments in the desert. The sloping dunes, with their crests and valleys, are simply slowed-down waves, made out of sand instead of water. You can even sink into dunes in the same way you sink into the waves of the ocean—just slower.
A flowing column of native men lead the way, carrying tent poles and clubs, marching single file through the vast dunes like a trail of ants. The men are followed some distance behind by a column of ghostly, indistinct blue shapes—the native women. Their robes leaving swishes on the sand astride their footsteps.
Far behind, Gil follows the natives’ trail in the sand, along with Kiddu. Jaruna and Ayan bring up the rear. The four of them are quite segregated from the rest of the natives. The nearest native woman is a good bow-shot away.
Gil is glad for the separation, though. He can talk to Kiddu without worrying about offending the natives. He also quickly sees why Jaruna has to hang behind in the rear of the procession.
