-- A SHORT STORY--
Listen, and you shall hear a story.
Once, alike in face as in personality, there lived twin brothers - and ah, you know now, don't you? Ten words spoken, and you can already predict how this story is going to end.
-----
𝗛𝗘𝗔𝗥�...
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Tliichpil only became aware of the low drone pressing against his ears when it resolved into the familiar sound of the cataract. The river that ran through the village was small enough to barely earn the name, dammed into a lake that filled the upper valley. It was shallow enough to be waded across, for even young children to play in without fear of drowning; but not so was the cataract-river. Even in the driest of dry seasons it sunk only barely down from its banks, nor could the bed ever be seen through the turbid water. In the higher regions, it fell over many waterfalls and rapids, scouring cloud-white beds from the stone. Lower it poured through clefts, chasms, and joints.
And then in between was the cataract, where the river dove underground in a secret waterfall. One looking upon it from upstream would have wondered how the flow filled its well and then did not spill over, if they had not seen the downstream outflow where the foaming outrush calmed into a turquoise plunge pool.
The path crossed right between them, a white streak over the center of the ridge. Its edges were fringed with plantain, fist-sized rocks, and the spaces where rocks had eroded and tumbled away. Comalpo went first, toes curling over the rock, and he followed.
He had crossed this path no doubt hundreds of times before, remembered racing Comalpo and their sister Lotlixya over it when they had been younger and their father had finally allowed them to come to their first trade meet and being screamed at to stop, get back from the edge. Two full paces wide had looked like a road to his younger self. To his older perception it had narrowed, but was still easily navigable.
Up ahead, a stone clacked as Comalpo put weight on it, and then clacked again as he moved off. Tliichpil turned his eyes back down before his own feet.
The stone looked strong enough to step on. And then it moved.
A shock of cold drove through his veins. The rock and the dirt it lay within slid and fell, white specks against the dark water. The spear slipped from his hand as he flailed wildly for balance, but to no avail; his foot dropped, and he went gasping over the edge.
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