The Warrior's Training Begins

Where did the warrior expect to go with this wild-girl for a guide?

In days long gone, he'd come to expect
events run a-strange
in this quest for leadership and victory.
So when the girl took him, first
to a rock-bumped savanna,
and when she straight away
stretched her frame along a hot flat rock
and began to doze to the buzz of insects,
he was not in the least surprised.

As she slept, he watched
the hyrax at play.
In and out of rock holes,
first one then several
soon upwards of forty, all
sunning themselves on flat rocks
(like the woman.)
Blunt little noses touched together,
nibblings of bitter wild herbs,
whisking of back fur in a breeze.
At times, the small creatures would freeze as
some mysterious gauge
within them perceived danger,
often as he would change position,
or whenever the woman would sigh in her sleep.

He laughed once, which woke the woman,
for one rock rabbit made mock war on another.
The would-be victim twittered hearty reprimands.

"They can shriek if their ire is up,"
the woman spoke
bvut her words were still full of sleep.
"Have you had your fill of watching the hyrax play?"

He considered her visage, then asked.
"I don't know, have I?"
She laughed then, too, now full awake.

"Come, we have other things to see.
I would show you something of a city now."

She took him to a inland sea
where a small boat floated, docked.
And they rowed that boat to an island
--one appearing about 7 miles in its coastline circumference--
but she led him to the island interior.
Where still, he saw no city.

"Where is this City?" he finally asked.
"Beneath us," she said, spreading her arms wide
opening to his attention
the many clay sculptures that surrounded them--
weird shapes
like monstrous drops of clay or
random-fallen plaster dobs in some giant's palace.
Then he saw one of these strange towers
give up an inhabitant,
a tiny ant.

"What's this?" he asked.
"A supercolony. Very rare,"
She answered.
"tens of thousands of nests,
with millions of workers
and a few million queens--
all here under our feet.
Rooms for storing their food, tending their young--
yet our world takes no notice.
Do you think these industrious creatures--
given their empire here--
should be surprised
that we take no notice?"
She shrugged.
"But you'll remember them, no?"

They did not disturb the skyscraper city of ants,
but before they left the island, they paused on the beach
where they swam and cooked fish
and enjoyed the space-giving peace of the sand
and the renewal of the dune grasses.
It was there that he began to wonder if
he'd not be sitting under the tutelage
of a human voice at all in this adventure.

The next day, she took him to a place
that bore no outstanding feature
save a strange hum, a nervous energy
spangling the air all round.
But as they took their mid-day meal,
in a grove of trees quite pleasant,
just then,
she suddenly, cried out,"Wait--"
and clutched his arm. "Wait, it is about to begin."
The nervous pulsing that was no pulsing at all
rose in tenor, he noticed--
a clamorous timbre ill-defined swelled with driven energy.
When suddenly, bursting forth from the treetops
a swarm of locusts rose
making of the trees strange molting creatures,
but negatively, for here it is the husk that takes flight.
And soon appeared a flinty tip on a gigantic arrowhead
shot from an invisible bow.
"Watch them," she said, needlessly,
for he could do little else
but gape at that sparkle-wing cloud issuing forth
from above their heads,
moving toward a distant horizon.

Then the maiden returned to nibbling her bread
and with a scholarly turn, said
"Those who study such things say there is a trigger for the swarming."
"Obviously," the man responded. "Do these studious ones know what that trigger is?"
She nodded and swallowed.
"They think they do.
Overcrowding."
"Overcrowding? How do the creatures determine such a thing
as overcrowding?
Is a signal sent by some master locust?"
"They say most likely
their legs crushing against each other.
This makes a trigger,
and not the call of a singular leader.
Some number of contacts-made is the magic number,
and they fly."
"Amazing..." the man mused.
Tossing aside the hard end of crust,
she said, "Come I'll take you to visit a real palace now."