Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
The sun was rising over top of the rocks that crowned the spring. He walked in
the waving shadow that a enitree bush cast. Rit stopped as well. “Or you could.”
Alicia flushed. “Am I the Wu'lim?”
“I have no intention of provoking either Alisim Temple or the Overpriest.”
“So you let him just take over?”
“What's there to take?” Bolda asked without his usual theatrics. “Or did you
have something in mind?”
Did she? How couldn't she, was the better question. He looked harder, much
as he had to get the placement of Ulanda. She didn't wait very well, but was it
just a difference in temperament or something more? He ran a finger along the
side of her face, and her jaw clenched. Angry. “Is my touch so hard to endure?”
She turned her face away, her cheeks darker red. He dropped his hand, if he
touched her again, she'd strike him. Rage crowned the small cold beast in her
mind. Rage like thorns and the white flowers that smelled of rot.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
The moment passed and she sighed. “Maybe we all need more sleep. I'm sorry
too.”
“And you don't wait very well.”
She accepted his excuse for her. “And you wait all too well.” A smile tried to
make it a joke.
He felt as though he was using his reputation as armor for them both. “Not so
well at all. I feel like I never left here. Intil didn't feel like this.” Summer in the
waste and along with the familiar sense of waiting, his body had reverted to an
edgy watchfulness. Almost as though the Opening and all the rest of it hadn't
happened. A glance, a chance sight of a shape or color, and suddenly, for an
instant, he was back. The waste, the Mound and waiting for death in the form of a
Xintan bullet or knife.
“We've been here over a month,” Alicia reminded him. “You should be used to
it by now.”
Well, it was only hitting him now. Or it was worse, growing from what he had
consciously known and finally reaching gut level. “All this time and nothing has
changed.”
“Of course it has.”
“Not substantially. Not the people or the languages, the land.” Or how the air
smelled. What had Bolda said: that the world-altar wouldn't change, ever. He
hadn't mentioned the people. “From Empire a few words and rituals have been
added, but... what our world was at the Opening has been frozen.” That Empire
itself didn't change, Rit had known but it was alien to him anyway. But this... his
skin crawled.
“You talk as though that's a bad thing,” she said.
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca