End of Semester Means Writing
Not necessarily good, but a first step in a new direction.
“The first time I saw the Chief, it was before he was a chief at all. He was surrounded by youths, over whom he mostly towered. A cigarette was held at the corner of his mouth, and it seemed romantic then, though vulgar to me now as I remember him later, disease-riddled and dying. In his hands he held a hunting rifle, a little bolt-action coilgun, and he displayed it to the throng, most of them little more than children and none of them practiced in taking their food from anywhere but the field and, on holidays, the hog pen.
“What made this more amazing was that nobody understood what the Chief was saying. These were Marascas displaced by the Legalists, and Chief Halthus spoke Athabascan like me but he did the best he could. And in those days he was often speaking to those who couldn’t understand him, and listening more often to those he likewise could not understand. And he proceeded in all these discussions with a smile, never pretending that he followed until they had worked it out, as we all did, with nudges and shrugs and tone shifts and handshakes (except for Marascan women, as we learned with difficulty). It was the only way we knew to bridge planets, and people forget that we did just that, if briefly, before the worlds fell apart and we found ourselves floating, still free but terribly alone.”
“The first time I saw the Chief, it was before he was a chief at all. He was surrounded by youths, over whom he mostly towered. A cigarette was held at the corner of his mouth, and it seemed romantic then, though vulgar to me now as I remember him later, disease-riddled and dying. In his hands he held a hunting rifle, a little bolt-action coilgun, and he displayed it to the throng, most of them little more than children and none of them practiced in taking their food from anywhere but the field and, on holidays, the hog pen.
“What made this more amazing was that nobody understood what the Chief was saying. These were Marascas displaced by the Legalists, and Chief Halthus spoke Athabascan like me but he did the best he could. And in those days he was often speaking to those who couldn’t understand him, and listening more often to those he likewise could not understand. And he proceeded in all these discussions with a smile, never pretending that he followed until they had worked it out, as we all did, with nudges and shrugs and tone shifts and handshakes (except for Marascan women, as we learned with difficulty). It was the only way we knew to bridge planets, and people forget that we did just that, if briefly, before the worlds fell apart and we found ourselves floating, still free but terribly alone.”