The river flows out of the south and towards the north.
The wind blows out of the north and towards the south.
Day and night are sharp and clean-edged, and the sky is clear and filled with stars.
There exists the line where the fertile land ends and the desert begins, and that line shifts over the course of the year, between the encroaching of the desert and the rising of the waters, an intricate dance of seasons.
The fertile land is precious, in its narrow strip along the waters. The desert is enemy, trying to steal it back.
The fertile land is precious, in its narrow strip along the waters. The desert is defender, keeping outsiders away, shielding that fertility from raiders who lack the resources to cross the treacherous lands.
The fertile land is precious, in its narrow strip along the waters. The desert is precious, filled with gems and stones, its oases producing things that do not grow in the river valley.
These are all true things. In the centre of these truths: the preciousness of black, rich living earth and the peril/protection/wealth of the desert that surrounds it, the sharp division between light and dark, the flow of the river and the countering wind, is the eternal balance: so long as each of these forces is as it should be, the river neither too high nor too low, the day not too scorching and the night not too threatening, the flooded land not so great that it swallows everything built on its edges and the desert not so ambitious that it devours all the crops, so long as everything is in proper order and its cycles are respected, so long as all things fit their proper patterns –
– there is paradise.
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