Madlands

12. About Ogem

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Towards the end of the growing season, which lasted almost half of the orbital cycle, families would gather in their villages all across the hemisphere for the Exchange.

It was a tradition that had been practiced for longer than the recorded history of their world. It was also far more than tradition, it was survival, balance, and peace. Family groups would trade what they had plenty of for what they had little of, and by the end, everyone had an ample supply of each of the planet's vegetables, fruits, seeds, grains, herbs, and medicinals to last them well through the cold half.

The Exchange was not a barter or a negotiation, it was a celebration. The joy that came with sharing what you had was even greater than the gratitude that came with receiving what you need. Friends from farmsteads on far sides of each district might only see each other once a cycle, at the Exchange, so the festive reunions often carried on through the night.

It was also when the vast and diverse set of ingredients were brought together, contributed by foragers and farmers, mountaineers and miners, and given to the elder alchemists to make the feverfew.

Trellians had everything they needed, and not much they didn't want. Most of the galaxy didn't seem to understand their way of life, and they were perfectly fine with that.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

It had been a long time since Grey had seen a real campfire, and flames shooting out of a rusted barrel at Jawa camp didn't count. This one was an honest-to-goodness, small but vigorous campfire. Grey had been sure to avoid calling their overnight stay on this moon a detour (Mando would have bristled at the idea) or a pit stop (as an image from her last "pit stop" was currently making its way around the sector in a priority bulletin). So, she'd called it a springboard for the journey to Rin, which was going to be, well, demanding.

G'neenan wasn't exaggerating, for once, when he'd called Rin "far flung." It was almost kitty-corner across the Madlands from Galir, especially considering the two worlds' current orbital positions. Galir was in the bustling Dreon-Ro binary system, and Rin was in the remote Icaria system, a moon-rich set of planets around a white giant. Rin itself was actually a large moon, (though most thought of it as a planet), orbiting a gas giant, and it had a sister moon—Cereda.

The space between Dreon-Ro and Icaria was largely claimed by the Nycho nebula, so the route was not direct. In fact, the Razor Crest would eventually pass not too far from where those two ships had run into trouble a few days ago.

Grey had reluctantly checked for an update on what fate befell the crew of the second vessel, and only because knowing as much as possible was both her job and her obsession. In a twist of fate uncharacteristic of the Madlands, they had been saved—evacuated onto three smaller, very gracious ships in an ancient hauler fleet.

As she sat and watched the flames, Grey imagined that moment when the airlock would have first opened between the doomed ship and its saviour, the two crews seeing each other's faces for the first time after desperate exchanges over their inter-ship comms. It must have been...

Time to show me why we're here and where we're going.

Mando's voice, from two feet to her left and four feet above, whisked the daydream away. She hadn't even heard him come down the ramp from the Crest. He could be remarkably quiet, which would, of course, be an important skill for a successful bounty hunter.