The elderly Kee stood alongside the Earther, Johnson, at the edge of a barren depression that filled the entire horizon. Both were silent as they took in the immensity of what they beheld. For a long time, there was only the wistful keening of the wind. Then the Kee quietly murmured, "Blessed are you, Kyjia*, She-Who-Came-Back. All honor to your illustrious name." "What?" said Johnson, startled out of his own reverie? "Kyjia," said the Kee; "one of the legendary heroes of our people." "Funny, I've never heard of him--and you know I've studied your history and culture for over a decade now." "Her," the Elder gently corrected. Kyjia was a female. Blessed she be." "Please, I beg you, tell me about her." "She came out of the Dry Sea not too far from here." The Kee pointed to a long debris slide that stretched from the rim to the bottom of what had been an ancient shallow ocean. Johnson guessed that the top of it was at least twenty kilometers away--and the slide was longer than that. Where it ended, the basin was over two and a half kilometers deep. "We still sing her song and it has been sung for over seven hundred turns around the sun--that would be over twelve-hundred of your years, Jawsohn. We do this because she did what no other has done before or since: She returned to us from the great salt flats." Johnson was properly impressed. The salt flats, the eighteen-hundred square kilometer heart of the depression, lay over three-thousand kilos from the closest rim. No mean feat, indeed! "She was flying her t'ga across the Dry Sea, when a storm came up and forced her beast onto the edge of one of the salt flats. It was a hard landing, and her t'ga broke one of its wings." Johnson nodded. A t'ga was about as close to an actual flying dragon as anybody was likely to see. Her animal was suffering and would never fly again, so she killed it and made jerky from its meat. She also made a pack to carry it and fashioned a large waterskin from the creature's bladder. Kyjia made a small still and distilled the water from the t'ga's blood and urine. It wasn't a lot, but it got her as far as the first water plants that she stumbled upon. That was enough to get her to a small spring, and so on. It took her months to return, but ultimately she did. It was a great triumph of the spirit over adversity, so we honor it to this day." _________________________________________ * Pronounced ki-JIH-ee-yah. CREDITS: Outfit: "Kara" by Royloo (CP); Head and body morphs: "Miki Finn" for Miki2 by Capsces (RNDA). Retextured by me using leather textures by Judith Ward (RDNA), "Reptilez" by GothKurlz (Renderosity), and wood textures by Tony Lynch. Hair: Ali's 019 hair (Renderosity). Waterbag: traveler (RDNA).