Dragons, governance, teaching, inheritance, transformation

March 22, 2022 2:16 PM

"The Divine votaries in the roadside temples become easier to convince as Tishrel goes higher into the foothills, recognising on sight what he is. It’s Tishrel himself who is forgetting now, with words from his past drifting in fragments through his mind. All this is yours, Tishrel. One foot after another. Before the individual, the state." "To Embody a Wildfire Starting" is a fantasy novelette by Iona Datt Sharma (previously), published this year. Their summary: "Now the revolution has come, Tishrel is on his way home to the Eyrie, the socialist dragonish community of his upbringing; it turns out that both he and it have changed."

The story starts:

During the unbearable years of tyranny, the political prisoners of the Anchorite Hegemony made a solemn covenant: when the time came, they would cross the last miles to freedom on their feet. For reasons of youth and idiocy, Tishrel thought he would have a choice in the matter. The doors of his cell would open, and rather than flee into the sky, he would make the journey as he had made his way through the years in captivity: with what dignity he could, one foot after another.

Then comes the time and the hour: the Hegemony are overthrown, the rebels storm the red sandstone heart of the city, and the guards at the Tawnpur Jail are quick to see which way the wind is blowing. When they dump Tishrel on the street outside the iron gates, he knows there is no hope of flight, or dignity. If he’s leaving this place, it’s on his feet.

He wonders if he could earn enough as a street artist or caricaturist; he’ll need food and shelter on the long way home, and he can still draw. Some of the prison guards used to smuggle in pencils and paper to him, wanting him to do little sketches as presents for their wives and mothers. A couple of the more enterprising ones even got him to sign the sketches, in the not-unjustified belief that these minor scribblings would be worth something some day. Now that the Hegemony is no longer around to fulminate about non-religious art, Tishrel hopes the Tawnpar guards make a fortune. They were just working stiffs, bewildered at what they were being asked to do. Some of them were kind to him.

But that is another option he doesn’t have. He’s free, but he has nothing to his name: not pencil or paper, not food or water, not the power of flight or the mercy of strangers. So it’s one foot after another from here, out of the city and north into the arable country, hitching when he can and desperately footsore when he can’t. He sleeps in roadside shrines and shepherds’ huts and feels himself diminish to nothing but bones and will.

About twenty miles north of Tawnpur, someone does take pity on him. She’s a votary of an old Divine temple that’s reopening now that the Hegemony are gone. She listens with indulgent disbelief to him explain he’s a consecrated Divine priestess, then gives him the meal that the temple would give to any passing vagrant. Tishrel stays a night and moves on. Each step he takes away from Tawnpur is a step towards home.

Datt Sharma has posted a thread of notes about the story on Twitter, including: "why is it so important that a dragon uses metres not yards? the answer is: colonialism."

posted by brainwane (3 comments total)

Wow! (Perhaps something more insightful will come to me later, but this will do for now...)
posted by dttocs at 3:53 PM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

thank you for posting this; this was wonderful.
posted by wym at 11:53 PM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ah geez, thanks for posting this, brainwane. I definitely got sucked in. Will have to check out this writer’s other works.
posted by Tesseractive at 10:44 AM on March 23, 2022 [1 favorite]