http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/annakut-kolkata-india-food/

Magic beans never failed. It was a beautiful panacea, or whatever the word was for false panacea. Whenever the masses got riled up, the palace convened a Gifting. People dropped what they were doing to flood the royal city streets. They came from every corner of the empire, hands outstretched, to take what the palace gave them. As it ever was, and as it always would be.

Gifting was a simple, elegant policy. When troublemakers got loud, they needed to be quieted down. The riff-raff couldn’t shout if their mouths were full.

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Notes on C.C. (Code Name Sabathia)
Crew #3, Gran Paradiso, Italy
Third expedition – August/September

August 7
Arrived at Base Camp. Preparations in order. Hiking experts are friendly, local to the area. They’ve both hiked Gran Paradiso many times. Neither has ever encountered Sabathia.

August 10
In the mountains. Unremarkable hike to this point. These hikers exist on equal amounts of water, wine and cured meats. And a truly outrageous number of cigarettes. Oddly, they’re very careful to collect the filters. They leave nothing behind when we break each morning. They argue over the relative strengths and weaknesses of Juventus at all moments when they are not guiding us. They are, I must admit, abjectly hilarious. I find some of my apprehension about a potential Sabathia encounter quelled by their easy ability and endless good humor.

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For almost five hundred years, this square had been a hotbed of international tension. Two countries had traded the semi-tropical outpost back and forth a dozen times. The regions natural resources were essentially tapped out from years of exploitation. As a result, the small city’s role had been reduced to tourism for its unique blend of architecture from two opposing historical traditions and the yearly peace conferences held by every nation of the continent.

High summer. Only a few days past the solstice, delegates from fourteen countries descended on the city full of stout fortresses, overly spired churches and the neatly stone-tiled streets. For five days every year, the sleepy town normally reserved for architecture nerds became the center of the political world.

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Sun-drenched afternoons didn’t have quite the same panache when they came with a terrible threat. Hiking in the high peaks had perils enough without worrying about melting snow. Melting snow meant loose snow, loose snow meant avalanches, and avalanches were bad. Even a hiker as inexperienced as Spiro knew that much.

“I’m saying there are easier ways to impress a girl,” Bastian said, rehashing his argument from earlier. It was still nearly two days to base camp, and he was a staunch advocate of conversational hiking. It became too monotonous, too easy to let one’s mind drift when hiking in quiet.

“We didn’t come here to impress her,” Spiro replied.

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This wasn’t at all how he’d pictured spending his Saturday afternoon. This time last week, he’d set up a date. A beautiful girl, smart and spry and she was a part of the opposing party in the forest council, but that wasn’t that big of a deal because she was a beautiful, smart, spry redhead. They were all redheads of course, but that wasn’t an important note at this moment. Because at this moment he was not on the date he had set up last week.

Instead, he was crouched in the grass in the western region of the forest. He was two days away from the council, crouched in the grass, watching smoke rise from a chimney in a little cabin. The cabin itself was idyllic, picturesque in its little valley nestled among the autumn trees. But he wasn’t crouched in the grass in the hills above the cabin to dissect its architecture. He was on surveillance.

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A soft sound blossomed on the top of the Spiral Peak. It was a choir song, voices layered and rich. The words were unrecognizable, sung in a language long-since lost to this world. But the melody was gorgeous, the harmonies exquisite, and the tone of the voices perfectly complimentary. Suddenly, where moments before there had been nothing, an angel shimmered into being on the mountaintop.

As his form solidified, his white robes morphed and shrunk. In moments, he wore a simple suit. In one hand he held a six pack. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a few moments to himself. Choir practice was essentially mandatory, so he kept just enough of his divine tether open to hear their songs faintly in the background.

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Just moments before, it had been a usual morning of surfing. Beyond the break, they could see normality, their fellows floating on a patch of flat sea that filled the space between sets. But things were all wrong at the waterline.

“Is this a time storm?” Amelia asked.

Dana began to nod, but stopped herself. “Yes.”

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http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/black-bayou-lake-louisiana/

The water flowed by at a languid pace. As ever, the massive trees loomed above the land, two hundred feet high and stately in their dying days. As his boat floated lazily with the current, he wondered how long it had been since they had last had leaves. The thought lasted only a moment. He decided he didn’t really want to know.

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Part 3 – An Adventure Concludes

Hundreds of cranes mulled around the shallow end of the seasonal lake. In a few months, at the end of the rainy season, the lake will be six or seven feet deep all the way around. The cranes will have moved on by then. Their season here ends when the water rises above the backwards-bent knees of their spindly legs. Anything more than two feet deep is enough to drive them away. That the lake once ran too deep too measure, too wide to swim across, was unknown to them.

Their numbers were swollen this season. More clans than had come in living memory were gathered in the ankle-deep lake. It was a conclave the likes of which the cranes had not seen in their long years as the porters of the nymph children.

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Part 2 – Superstitious Cacti Get All The Girls

It must have been nerves. Bluster and showing off were, as Bellemar understood it, a daily routine with men in large groups. But even this seemed like an exaggerated version of the stories she’d heard. The men were far from home, on the eve of battle, and they spent their time carousing like schoolboys. She’d stumbled upon some kind of drinking game that she didn’t entirely understand. Someone would take a swig from a bottle of whiskey, then whip their lasso into an ongoing loop. The bottle would pass to the next man, who did the same thing. Eventually, at some signal Bellemar must not have registered, the whole group whooped for joy, and the bottle went back to someone who took an extra-long swig.

Bellemar turned from the game. She figured it must be their way of relaxing. Or pumping themselves up. She’d grown up with her older brother, but she hadn’t really ever understood why boys do the things they do. Most of it seemed pretty impractical.

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