At the end of a thirty-one day pitch battle, a single boywoman shall step out from beyond the boundaries of our one brightly-hued present into a mist-lit afterfuture, an era tall and crisp. This one guylass will turn face, lips and makeshift cutlass toward sunrays and sundaes, away from frost and unforged machines that wait unknowingly for past's passing. The light, oh! the light! Those first steps will mark the new evedawning, and those who have readied themselves to recognize the stepper will make haste to call this gentlegirl Carron.
We are to know Carron by the force of hir footpower. This power will not be a pressure of weight, or thickness of skin, but a heeling balance of readiness and comfort. The great simplicity of Carron's gift will be exceeded only by its value: escaping from the cooling conflict, shhe will stand.
Hirs will be a new kind of standing, a footpower not before seen among those of our like mind. Entwined into the sinewey thick sole of Carron's slight feet will shhe find incredible contours of comfort. The bare two will never tire under the weight of hir legs and abdomen, or buck against the pressure of rocky ground. Hir toes will never crack, hir flesh will never grow sore, so long as Carron stands upright.
There will be harmless myths. Tales will begin and spread faster than even Carron hirself will travel. It will be said that shhe never sleeps, that hir stride exceeds two meteres, that Carron's mother birthed this baby while straddling across fading campfire. It will be said she is marked, an outcast. She will be called devil and mutant. Ordinary bipeds will speak, call and coo; chase, follow and flock alongside Carron, terrified and glorified by the promises of hir promise, the unpadded resolve of such footpower. Shhe will not know what to say to these followers, and needs say nothing. Just so, shhe leads toward no particular destination.
While other men fall into sleep at the edges of crumbling treecastles, Carron will stride. While other women sit to sip and share tell of triumphs and loss, Carron will look down, erect at hir feet, standing and stepping. While sick children recline in autosteel machina, sapped of energy, Carron is to remain upright. Shhe will busy hirself with work, lifting; and walk, wandering; and think her gift no great feat. These shall be the two modest feet of Carron, the one-stepper who need not pause to rest, day or mornnight.
Lit in the sheen of hir short dark hair, falling across forehead, you shall know it. Through the downflicker of the soft eyes that never quite settle, it shall be understood. Pressed in each unfettered footprint, the path she makes will be marked. We hasten to find hir stride sooner, give way and travel it as our own if possible. We tread upon cold heels, wrapped in linens, and weep heavy in such a lone waltz. The gun lies even in our uneven stepping.
Only now, in day twenty-nine, can we conceive of such a battle's end. To us here have come darkports and banalserfs. We look outward from a point centered, but our eyes fail us in the midst of mist colored by sallowdata and frogdoves. We fight twisted in impassable agri-gates, ensnared and uncertain in organized mecha and mechanized organechisims that may, for sometime, still be ours to control. It is now, in a late day's hailshower, that we feel most ready to cross through sharpened raincolors and snap at the heels of that life we demand completely, as one whole people in bloom. Here sit piled wrappings and rudders. Planks of bitterwood and rotbarrels of haypennies. The sounds of earthworms surrounds each of us, a cacophonous yelp of ages stacked into our one single frieze: the shape of the burrowpast and the sculpt of clam clarity. We sit still.
Carron will carry leather clogs, but never wear them. What a choice to make! Hir legs are not always to be smooth, not always to be everbent on movement up into windows and through showdoors. It is the standing, here on this coarse ground. Shhe will be standing, and that standing a new striding. Carron's footpower comes at a great horse gallup, an unpadded stall of strength to find height and fill battle's trough. Standing bare, that next step.
Knowing of one who will stand so, how can we now sit?
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