The cave is bright and it is night, but the sun-stones in the ceiling do not know this. They burn without flame, cold and steady, and no one sleeps under them, though everyone wants to.
This is a place for waiting. I have never seen so many of the tribe wait so hard. They sit slumped on rows of hard seats, mouths open, eyes closed, clutching their bundles to their chests the way a mother clutches young in a storm. But they do not rest. Every few breaths a great spirit-voice fills the whole cave, calling names of far places, and the sleepers twitch and check their glowing pebbles and slump again.
The tribe has ranks here. Some drink dark bitter water from paper to force their spirits awake. Some carry sacks on wheels, dragging them like a fresh kill too heavy to lift. All of them stare at the huge board that clicks and changes, changes, changes, telling them a truth they hate: not yet. Wait more.
There is meat, but it costs many shells and tastes of the paper it comes in. There is a river of moving floor that walks for you while you stand still, so you arrive at your waiting sooner.
Outside the clear wall, in the dark, great birds the size of a hill sit on the ground and roar. This is why the tribe suffers. They have all come to the belly of the world to be swallowed by these birds and carried somewhere the birds choose.
They pay for this. They wait for this. They cross the cold cave at the hour of wolves, holding their young, to climb willingly into the thing that eats them.
Brave. Foolish. I do not follow the tribe into the bird.