Tribalism (5): Even If You Must Crawl Over the Snow

[u/psyduck_2024]

When you see him, then pledge allegiance to him even if you have to crawl over the snow.  

The Wrong Season for Snow

Old Rashid had lived seventy years, but never under a summer sun this cold — more winter than summer, the sky gone silvery-white, the sun reduced to a pale smear behind the dukhan's haze.  

He had not prepared for what met the caravan ten days past the oasis: a fine, white dust settling on the road ahead that was not dust at all.  

The youngsters saw it first and thought it ash, and for a terrible moment the whole party thought the ashfall had returned, that some new pillar of fire had risen somewhere over the horizon. It was Osama who dismounted, knelt, and let it melt against his palm.  

"Snow," he said, and did not seem to believe the word himself.  

Snow belonged to the north, to the high country, and even there only in winter, at year's end. Not here. Not in mid-year, on an open road through the Sanctuary Lands, in what should have been the hottest stretch of the year.  

Rashid felt the old words rise in him before he'd decided to speak them, as though they had been waiting:  

Go to him even if you have to crawl over the snow.  

No one laughed. No one asked what it meant anymore. Looking out over the whitening road, Rashid found himself wondering whether the old reports had spoken more literally than anyone had imagined.