THE SETTLING OF JAY ALT

“HAIL KING JAY ALT, OUR LIEGE, OUR LORD!”

“HAIL, HAIL, HAIL OUR BIG FACE, OUR SAVIOR AND OUR LORD, KING OF PUBES, GUIDE OF THE MIGHTY.”

A crowd of gray-faced peasants had gathered at the foot of the road’s end. They represented nearly a dozen families, culled from the ranks of JAY ALT’s oldest city and second oldest settlement. Their former home nestled the foot of a two tile mountain range, at the limen of a clay field and rolling pastures, a land most excellently suited for human production.

They had moved happily, but not of their own accord. The forces of JAY ALT, supreme leader of Orange, had guided them to their desert coast, bordered by a paltry forest, the farthest flung outpost of Catan, connected by road to their former home, by sea to the mysterious traders who made port weekly. They would have sheep and brick and wheat, yes, and it would be provided in balance for their hardscrabble labor in the sparse woods to the south. They would toil happily in their new home–the strongest already had, their hands callused and backs thickened through the daily flip of brick and the wood, the stuff of the road that had brought them to their end: this coast, this land.

The nearest settlement of JAY ALT’s people was near, only two lengths away, but the coast was yet a foreign land, pincered by strange roads of blue and white that met their end feet away from the crusting line of the orange pigment marking their home.

They had seen the others once, the others of Blue who had built the southern road. The settlers of JAY ALT, the thick-backed roadmen and fertile women and sinewy youth, had dug their pits and fed their hearths and scampered along the bone-dry dunes for many nights when the Blue were seen.

Without stir, a crowd of ashen families had appeared at the end of the road, borne northward from the wooded coast. They walked beneath a banner of blue as dusk settled over the land, huddling within shouting distance of Jay Alt’s people. But they would not shout. None would speak.

The People of JAY ALT ceased their pit digging and hearth feeding and dune scampering and huddled at the edge of their fledgling town. There were no sounds–for how could they speak? Who would speak for them?

They stood as such for hours, stone reflecting stone, question reflecting question, even after darkness had blanketed the land.

The families listened for sound. They stared at the ghosts of mothers and fathers lost to the cataclysm, etched onto broad shoulders and deep-set eyes. They hoped for a sound, an utterance of any sort. They did not know hope, but they knew the deep thirst buried high in their chests that brought them silence. So they stood.

At daybreak, the families were gone, turned inward to Catan.

That had been the first time the People of JAY ALT had paid witness to another people. They had existed in the corners of folklore, through the words of the rare elder with faint memories of memories of a time before Catan. They spoke third-hand tales of second-hand tales, of boats beating on against the frothing, turning sea, sailing from the smoldering horizon.

The Cataclysm had claimed nearly everything, devouring the long lost forebears of the people of JAY ALT. A man and his wife, a young boy, two sisters, and three sheep had sailed on, carrying just bushels of wheat and handfuls of grain. They had left into the darkness. They sailed for one moon, drinking the blood of the sheep, before wood met sand.

Catan.

Here, at the shore of sweetness and breath, they found JAY ALT, the Big Face, their Savior and their Lord, King of Pubes, Guide of the Mighty that would begin anew, of two seed and three womb, on and through this land, casting the net of JAY ALT’s domain, in thanksgiving of his mercy in guidance to Life, to Reclamation, to the ever-beating humanity. They sprinkled their orange on that shore, and committed themselves, in strength, to their new Homeland. The Cataclysm was lost, and Catan would be wrestled from the savage indifference of beast and plant.

“Were we the only? Did no one else survive? Do we bear the yoke of life alone?”

“We do not know. We must live as such.”

They would live as such, even now that it was known. They must. The appearance strengthened their belief. JAY ALT would reign supreme.

“HAIL KING JAY ALT, OUR LIEGE, OUR LORD!”

“HAIL, HAIL, HAIL OUR BIG FACE, OUR SAVIOR AND OUR LORD, KING OF PUBES, GUIDE OF THE MIGHTY.”

They dug their pits, they fed their hearths, they scampered through the dunes. They remembered the voiceless grey faces that had stood and watched.