The rocky lands of Ůtef are a difficulty to onions and thus inconvenience for the Ůt’ēžen who dwell there. There were Ůt’hožai, once. They are dead: conquered by their neighbor-nation of Kását. There are other Ůt-nations: scatterlings, and the Ůt’ēžen are the hardest, heartiest of them. They are tempered by sunlight and the rocky desert at odds with their scrupulous and gentle demeanor. Onions are sacred to the Ůt’ēžen, and so their land is a great distress to them—too great a distance, they say, from the bogs and swamps of Ůtōrō: home. Ůtōrō is dead now: overrun by rampant Kását. Elül is my native home, but I have friends in the rocky, desert lands of Ůtef. I know their names; I know their swamp songs and their bog songs. I am allowed—through friendship with these people—to take a wife among them, and a brother too. I visit them often: as a trader and as a friend, and on each visit, I am given hospitable shelter by the man I have already claimed as my brother. He has taken a wife, and so she is my wife as well. The customs of my adopted people are complex and subtle, a boggle to my mind. They are customs of comfort, of civilized ease, and so no matter how complex, no matter how boggling, they are reassuring to me. My Brother’s name is Hej. Our wife is named Borá. Upon each of my visits to them, I bring onions. “Hej has carved new doorposts,” Borá said to me, in confidence, as Hej—exhausted from a day of labor—slept in our common bed. “He hopes it will encourage you to stay; to make home with us and trade in reverse, to be our voice among the rich and the noble people of Elül. He hesitates to speak of this to you, because it is not his place to voice what may be a demand. But I am your wife as well as his, and it is my place to say what must be said. I don’t ask to make difficulty for you. I simply ask because Hej is your brother, and on the night after each of your departures, he frets and worries, pacing as if to stamp out some burning in his feet. “You belong here. Elül claims your blood and your kinship. But Ůt’ēž gives you the Ůt’ēžen heart.” On the following day, I find Hej in quiet meditation before the ancient shrine of the house. He has saved the empty husks of every onion I have brought from my other homeland. Even dry and lifeless, they are meaningful. He sits, like a lotus, naked to the waist and with bare feet; his hair, in the color of honeyed silk, has been gathered into a cascade of braids. It is husband’s hair, brother’s hair…each thin braid weighted with beads in the colors of blue and red: marriage and fealty. He has the muscle of a bull, but the manner of a poet, and now, seated in candle-light in the darkened shrine, he listens to the softness of a breeze at play in the dead skins of every onion I have ever brought into the house. I know how to listen to the rustling, and I try to find meaning in the dry, rasping sound: it is like paper, and like insects, like the wings of honey-wasps or warrior-flies harrying some poor, defenseless horse. It is a magical sound, when heard with Ůt’ēž ears. It is a soft and quiet surprise for me to learn that I have grown ears enough to hear what my adopted people hear when they sit in quiet contemplation of onion skins in a subtle, soft breeze. In knowing how to listen, and how to look at such skins in the waver of candlelight, I know what it means for Hej to carve new doorposts. I smile. “Yes,” I say, and Hej smiles. He knows the unasked question I have just answered. *** It’s funny what happens when you look at an onion skin bathed in the yellow light of an LED embedded in the business end of a cigarette lighter. I rather like onion-skin inspiration, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this little foray into…well…into the land where onions are sacred. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, enduring odd typography, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great end-of-the-week.