“I’m sorry to interrupt you. My name is Sister Araari. I am a nun from outside Dallol. I have medicine, and food, and water.”

He shakes his head and curls up more tightly with his dog. He looks deeply distressed.

“What’s wrong? I am—sorry if I have violated some taboo. Please forgive me.”

He whimpers and does not say anything more.

Araari rejoins the procession.

A boy, no more than fourteen, steps out from the crowd and steps up to her. He offers a small, rusty knife in his open hands. His eyes look generous as his lips peel back in a grin of blood-stained teeth.

Araari takes the knife and bows to show gratitude. It is mostly gratitude that now this boy won’t be stabbing himself with a rusty knife, but still.

At the building, two villagers precede her in, each drawing their hand across a block of salt in the doorframe in which many shards of glass have been embedded. This draws blood; many villagers have clearly done this in the past because dried bloodstains extend nearly to the ground on that side of the frame.

Aaaaaaaa. Okay. Araari.... does not do that and tries to go in.

The villagers allow her to enter.

It’s clear that the building must comprise at least two chambers, from both its size and a doorway obscured by a hanging cloth that leads deeper into the building. The interior salt-block walls are covered in Ge'ez and myriad symbols in a haphazard, multi-layered scrawl.

The Ge'ez says: "Beneath the cloudless sky, the valley of the whisper shall open on the night of no moon."

A woman sits inside the salt house, apparently uninjured. She wears a shawl wrapped around her torso, which is doubly odd in that the outlines of only one breast can be seen beneath it.

A very old Afar woman sits on a stump of some native wood. Both of her eyes are gone, hollow sockets gaping where they once were. Both of her feet have been severed, and her entire right arm is gone at the shoulder. She says in halting Italian, "the Wind has shown us visions of your coming."

Her accent is... strange. It's hissing, and full of vowel sounds.

A deeply foreign accent, not one Araari has heard from any Afar before. It sends a chill up her spine.

“Thank you for allowing me into your village. What has the Wind shown you?”

"You were at the Obelisk. Worshiping a foreign god. Not the Agony on the Wind. Then Tshombe could not see you, for a time. Then she saw your friends. Talking to an old man. A weak man, who once had the Agony's favor, but has given up Its veneration and embraced his weakness. Tshombe could not see you. Then you left, and she could. Tshombe sees many things."

—Araari is pretty sure that matches up with when the warding stone was being carried. “What is the Agony on the Wind?”

"The greatest of all gods. We heard its voice many years ago. Tshombe was the first to listen to the wind-whispers. It revealed itself to her in dreams and signs. It gave her strength, and she taught us its purpose. To make her powerful, and to make us sacrifices."

“Is that what the people here are doing? Making sacrifices of themselves?”

"Yes. In Its holy name."

(Someone grabs one of the many charcoal sticks lying around, dips it in the blood on their palm, and then begins writing a fresh layer of inscriptions.)

“What does it want? Other than—sacrifices.”

"To make the worthy strong and powerful so they can crush the weak beneath their heels."

“And everyone here—wants that as well?”

"Yes. Those who did not want it were driven away. Only those who are willing to serve the Agony live here now."

“And children who are too young to leave, or do not know there are other options.” She flinches as soon as she says it, and then straightens again.

"Children are helpless," the woman agrees.

The woman stands and walks over to Tshombe.

She reaches out her good hand, groping blindly. Tshombe places it under her shawl.

There are strange and disturbing movements of the fabric, accompanied by a faint hiss and a wet tearing. The woman’s face is wracked with an ecstatic pain.

A moment later, rivulets of blood drip down Tshombe’s belly beneath what the shawl covers.

The woman writhes on her stump, tears of pain and joy leaving dusty tracks on her cheeks.