Time Warner

Time Warner

“To Keep the Public Informed”

Will Preston

Time Warner

“To Keep the Public Informed”

When Briton Hadden and Henry Robinson Luce began Time Magazine, their company mandate was “To Keep the Public Informed.” It’s nearly a hundred years later, and I’m not sure keeping the public informed is how I would describe what their company does. One thing it does is make money for it’s shareholders and investors, having just this week gained approval on the selling off of its cable division, Time Warner Cable, to Charter Communications for $88 billion. This has largely been the company's sole purpose in the last three and a half decades since the 80’s, acquiring companies or properties and selling them off. In the absence of a buyer, as was the case with AOL, it was broken apart and spun off into a separate entity. News and entertainment, is what Time Warner purports itself to sell. That the border between news and entertainment has vanished coincidentally in the past three and a half decades since the world’s largest media company’s sole purpose became making money, what exactly is it that Time Warner is keeping the public informed of?

The irony of the Charles Foster Kane-like optimism of the youthful Hadden and Luce’s company mandate having suffered such a tragic fall, is not lost on me. Yet the tactics and business model of the company they founded, remain ominously intact, though the motivations and intentions behind said business tactics may be far more shallow, than the company’s founders intended. Nearly a decade after the Time’s first publication, it’s now single creator Luce, Hadden had died in 1929, set out on what would be the company’s lasting legacy, acquiring other companies, he bought another magazine, Architectural Forum. Which would indeed suffer a similar fate to that of AOL, being spun off to a separate company.  In another indicator of business practices to come, in 1938, Time acquired Literary Digest in a bid to bring those subscribers over to Time. It is in these tactics we see what the company would become, but at the core of these inauspicious beginnings, it is still the mandate of informing the public that drives the company.

We see this in the sole living creator of the company, Luce’s decision to step down in 1939 as CEO and focus all of his energy on his position as Editor and Chief, proves that at this time he is fully committed to keeping the public informed, as he saw the political climate in Europe becoming hostile, and the potential for a second World War. How he shaped the magazine's coverage of these events and America’s eventual participation in the War, is a topic for another paper, however what is clear is that he is still devoted to keeping the public informed. However to remain relevant, and to support the weight of the company, expansion and innovation were necessary, and with the end of the war, we see the beginning of a new medium of delivering content.

Though Time had already dabbled in radio broadcasts and short news broadcasts, with “Time On the March”, it wasn’t until after the war that Time began to invest heavily in these new broadcasting mediums. So they began buying interests and shares and eventually whole television and radio stations, broadening its scope and reach and capabilities for informing the public. In 1964 Luce, who co-created this company, finally stepped down, and this is the crucial moment when the company became more interested in making money rather than informing the public. To put it simply, there’s more money in entertainment than in the news. When the news stops selling, make it more entertaining. At this time in the mid 60’s more households than ever have TV’s and radios, more people than ever are watching tv and listening to the radio, print media is still profitable, but the men that Luce turned the company over to could see where the tides were turning.

However, prior to Luce’s retirement, Time acquired a textbook publishing company with a $6 million stock swap. Perhaps in a final attempt to make an effort towards informing the public, to try and make good on that original mandate. Towards the end of the decade, in another attempt to grow the company, to diversify the revenue streams, to corner the market on print media, Little Brown and Company is acquired  by Time for $17 million worth of Time stock. A company it would own for nearly 40 years. Luce had died the year prior, and with him, perhaps the mandate as well.

In 1970, Time sold the broadcast properties to focus on cable television. One of the more important moves in the history of media. They also merged with a building materials company in a $129 million merger, a tactic that would be utilized several times in later decades to varying degrees of success. It is in 1972 when the then Time CEO introduced the Home Box Office as a paid TV service. Unheard of at the time, it would be a few years before the company took off, and as we all know has become one of the main providers for quality entertainment. As the company drifted further away from the mandate of informing the public, and towards the mandate of entertaining the public, and making money for shareholders, it became more financially successful and less journalistically successful.

Again we see in 1983 Time spin off Temple Inland, the product of another failed corporate merger tactic, and that company was sold to the shareholders. Time continued through the 1980’s buying companies and magazines and shares in communications companies, all leading towards the big merger. The $14 billion dollar acquisition of Warner Communications Inc. With this merger is 1989 Time sold its textbook publisher because it, “no longer fit into it’s core businesses.” This is another major turning point for the company, as it pivots fully towards being an entertainment company rather than a informative culture molding company, and it becomes a mirror, reflecting what once was, instead of asking what could be. Mirroring it’s own business practices by repeating the same moves over and over again ad nauseum, buying companies, selling companies, acquiring debt, relieving debt, but never innovating, which is what the company was known for, which is what made the company in the first place.

In the mid 90’s Time Warner created a television network called The WB and then bought the Turner Broadcasting company in the following year. The CNN network and cnn.com is released at this time turning the “news” network into the company it is today. The once prognosticator of the news by 1996 had been reduced to a purchaser of the news. By the new millennium Time Warner, in what is perhaps its most nefarious move, was bought by AOL, in a merging of two of the largest companies in the world. While AOL would own more shares in the newly formed company, it was Time Warner that had more assets and value. And indeed it would be Time Warner whose top operating officials would essentially control the company, and over the next five years, drive out the AOL leadership and dwindle the once thriving company into little more than a subsidiary company. Selling off pieces of AOL and, as stated before, eventually spinning the company off into a separate entity altogether.  

Time had become an amorphous corporate monster, devouring smaller companies to feed its own insatiable appetite, falling further from the original company mandate set forth by its two optimistic creators. But how could they know what their good intentions would lead to? They began the company on good faith and with integrity, but the more powerful it became, the more it needed to stay solvent. Until the point where solvency was its only cause. But if the only reason to exist, is to exist, is that existence? If profit is the only goal, does that truly profit the people? Sure money is nice, but purpose is better. Purpose moves mountains, purpose motivates people to do extraordinary things. Money only seems to motivate greed. People have to eat, people need clothes, people need shelter, but does an unending acquirement of money lead to everyone having these basic needs? I’d argue not.

Since 2005 Time Warner has continued buying up smaller companies, expanding their global media reach internationally, buying companies in every corner of the global market. They’ve been buying interactive gaming companies, in hopes of gaining a foothold in yet another form of media consumption no doubt. The one place that has eluded their grasp is the video game industry. Along with the continued acquisitions of smaller more innovative companies, Time Warner has continued the merger business, and merged their television network The WB with the CBS owned UPN to form The CW. Mergers and acquisitions seem to be the only focus of Time Warner, along with staying afloat financially.

In this regard, it brings us to the next merger between Time Warner and Charter communications. This action creates the second largest cable company, with only Comcast as a rival. The two cable companies together will control some two thirds of internet and cable access in the country. It is precisely this type of control that would give the two giant cable providers enough power to price fix or gouge customers for internet access, or impose limits on streaming services. Along with this there are worries that without multiple options, customer service would decline in quality. We’ve had the same problem in politics, but I digress. This is just the latest example of Time Warner, no longer informing the public, or looking out for the public, but saving its own bacon from spreading itself too thin over the past three decades plus. It is Time who once informed the public of bad business practices, and greedy companies, who must now be informed on.

The only way for this merger to pay for the amount of debt it creates is for the rates to customers to go up. There is no other way around it. It’s literally charging customers more money for the privilege of getting broadband service from a conglomerate. With no other options for customers to turn to, they will have no choice but to pay the higher prices. In fact, this is what the newly formed cable company must be banking on to pay for the merger, this leverage is the only asset in the deal. It will hit poor families the hardest, forcing many people offline without an affordable option of cable providers. All this is to say the ideals of the company have gone so far off the rails, the men that founded the company would be working tirelessly to expose it.

Everything evolves and changes, one corporation or monopoly is toppled, only to be replaced by another. As we see what Time has become as a company, a behemoth, a corporation, the largest media company in the world, worth a hundred billion dollars, monopolizing whatever industry it can get its hands on, we take solace in the knowledge that what Briton Hadden and Henry Robinson Luce began, way back in 1923, continues on. Not in the company that disgracefully bares the name of the magazine they created, but in the integrity of the people who were raised by the people that read their magazine. It is we that embody their spirit, it is we that carry on their legacy, with hopes to inform the public of monopolistic schemes of greedy executives, to fill their coffers off the backs of the poor. It is these hard working poor who are truly successful, for it is better to have something to strive for, something to believe in, some reason to save what little money they have. For what good is all the money in the world, if you have nothing to buy?

Bibliography

1. Hall, M. (2016). Time Warner Inc. American company. Retrieved May 12, 2016, from http://www.britannica.com/topic/Time-Warner-Inc
2. Mccabe, D. (2016, May 12). $88 billion deal between Charter, Time Warner clears final hurdle. Retrieved May 12, 2016, from http://thehill.com/policy/technology/279724-charters-88-billion-deal-clears-final-hurdle
3. MCCULLOUGH, B. (2014, July 8). WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO AOL? Retrieved May 12, 2016, from http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/07/what-ever-happened-to-aol/
4. Time Warner Inc. - Company Profile, Information, Business Description, History, Background Information on Time Warner Inc. (2016). Retrieved May 12, 2016, from http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/83/Time-Warner-Inc.html

Of Winds

It will burst forth spilling
spoils upon the world
and giving that
worlds cry more

silence soothes ragged edge
hate words callous river's bend
sunday God's flower grows
stays hidden from the birds
Whose feathers wrap sanguine
stylish songs flap serenades

of winds whose breath remains
and spins ancient
the sky never misses
where the secret shelter's gift
is always given away

Wind Neverminds

they crash through the living
and sleep walk our dreams
and call themselves heroes
when they rewrite the rule book
schemes in the nightshade
fruition bulbs in the light
blood cries a shadow
divided under the sun
or from the prison of the moon
loves a whispered wound wistful
a moments dream between
deaths
a delightful deceit of God's
dancing dragon
Flames the heart
burning rain
Flames the heart
kissing pain
flames the heart
new is the same
flames the heart
the missing chain.
wild stone tumbles
down hills of feather
cursed with the mission of flight
rocks keep rolling
till hills are mountains
demons do nothing
but kill the fountains
where wishes swim
waiting to grow wings
and ignite the mind of the wisher
to make true their wishes
but fear not
for a demon is but a wisher
who never made their wish true
and wishes the same for you
make true your wish
nevermind the wind
the wind neverminds demons too

Country's War

     .10

Death's Song

     Though they were far from the village, they heard it hover over the splashes of rain. It was a confused mess that bounced off the bark and swirled high into the canopy and hung there, like a black fog in an unceasing melodic rush. Mahya felt his stomach twist with the voices. Oncoa's footsteps gathered speed, rarely had he seen his father nervous, but it was unmistakable now. As evening crept in, a silent hidden thief behind the clouds, the rain slowed to a slither, as if the unisoned noise drove it back, up into the vapor from whence it traveled.
     Becoming more clear, voices moaned, and whimpered and cried, and Oncoa stopped walking. Mahya stopped too. He looked up at his father, and at first did not recognize him. His face was pale and his eyes emotion filled and reluctant. It was fear beneath his father's face.  Why was he so afraid? Mahya had heard this song before, long ago, but it did not scare him then, nor was he frightened now. It was a song that reminded him of home. He was more afraid of the look on his father's face than the song that drowned the rain.
     "What is that song father?" He finally found the nerve to ask. After a long breath, his father pulled his chin up and looked at his son, eyes of tears.
     "It is the song of death." And the chorus grew louder. Gasped hush fell over the jungle creatures, and everything was wrapped in a coat of thick humid air. Film grew over his tongue, and he tasted his breath and the must of the jungle. Suddenly, he was in the trees, leaves slapped at his face and his arms and twigs caught his hair. Inside his chest, his lungs jumped and air flew from his throat and an involuntary gulp of a cry escaped with it.
     Like a sack, he laid cradled in his father's arms, between his massive forearms and biceps, the air gushed past him, never had he moved so fast, it was difficult to catch his breath. He watched as Oncoa palmed one branch after another, swinging violently from tree to tree, leaping cavernous gaps without thought. Low hums became high pitched cries and audible lyrics. The words were breathless and morose, they didn't so much as float as take flight on an unsuspecting air.
      Heaved over shoulder, Mahya wrapped his arms round his father's neck and held on for life, as Oncoa used two hands to swing on thinly hanging vines. One snapped, and he felt as though they would careen to the jungle floor, but Oncoa used the momentum to cling to the side of a tree, and lockstep leaped to a branch and continued his forward motion until they landed like a thud behind a pack of villagers. None of whom turned towards them. The chorus was loud but soothing, and many tears flowed with the words. To Mahya they had no meaning. He tried to cry but could not. To see his father crying uncontrollable he felt embarrassed that he too could not.
     Encircled the villagers stood motionless, all singing the same tune. As Mahya and Oncoa made their way to the center, Mahya sat in the cradle of Oncoa's arm like a toddler. He wanted to wipe away his father's tears. Then he saw the old man, lying in the middle of the singing circle. He recognized him slightly, as the man who bestowed Yahna, and told stories around the beach campfires on celebratory nights. He remembered he had come to his bedside one morning when Mahya was very sick, and gave him a bitter drink to heal him.
     "I remember him." He whispered to his father as they stood over the dead man.
     "Egahna." Oncoa whispered back.

     That night in the hut they ate only bread and water around the fire pit at the middle of the trunk. The smoke billowed up and out of the top of the tree. Oncoa stayed with the other men. It was their duty to prepare the body and care for the family Egahna left behind. Anjah allowed her children to stay up late and held them close as they listened to the death song fade into the night. Mahya could smell the wet forest floor far below. He loved the aroma of mud and leaves and wet logs after the rain.
     "What do the words of the death song mean?" Mahya asked his mother with his head upon her shoulder.
     "They have meaning only to the singer." Mahay sat with that a moment. The fire crackled and his sister nodded off on a cushion fashioned from boarhide and stuffed with feathers.
     "You mean the words have no meaning."
     "They have the meaning of what the singer feels at the time." She stroked his hair and stared into the flames. The glow of the fire painted shadows on the wall. They looked like black creatures climbing and staring.
     "What did your song mean?" Anjah closed her eyes. Mahya waited a long time for her to respond.
     "When my father died...i felt alone. I was already married to Oncoa and we had Leyah... but it felt like the person who protected me all my life, was gone. And I knew I would never get that back. That's what my song meant." Mahya thought of a day when his father would be gone. He thought of how he had been protected from the wolves that very day. And he would have to protect himself from the wolves.
     A light thud shook the silence and they looked towards the door. Oncoa entered, sullen and dejected. His usual strength and vigor seemed to have been left with the family of the fallen.
     "Father. What happened? Where is Egahna? What did you tell his family? Who will lead Yahana? What was your death song about?"
    "Bed time Mahya. Go to your cot." Oncoa lifted Leyah and laid her in her bed. Anjah sauntered over to their room and slid roundly behind the long leaved curtain. Oncoa drowned the fire and the hut filled with smoke and darkness. Mahya bounced out of the hut and onto his cot. Tridder chirped sleepily somewhere far above. He heard his father hit his bed hard, and snore immediately. Stars swayed back and forth above the thick leaves of the canopy, winking at him a promise of dreams. He watched them and blinked back slowly. He saw the wolf fangs dripping with rain. Then the old man's body in the mud soaking wet. The songs that haunted the evening played in his head until he finally blinked into sleep. The shadow creatures danced around him while he dreamed. They danced to the death song and welcomed a new member of their hidden tribe of shadows.

Country's War

.9

Feed the Wolves

     Stones balanced in hand, Mahya swung from a branch and landed lithely on the bamboo walkway with a hand on the path. Tridder floated overhead with the wooden cup clasped in his talons and let go. It bounced off the crown of Mahya's head with a plunk and landed in his palm, and he rubbed the sore spot with the other hand. He side eyed Tridder as he chirped a chuckle and flew into the canopy. 

     The hut was dark and quiet, and the table still messy with breakfast. He lit a candle of brown wax and began clearing the table. He took the dishes over to a bamboo spouted hole and pulled on a hemp rope in the wall. From the spout water flowed and he rinsed the wooden dishes and utensils, saving the larger scraps and gathering them in a bucket. 

     The island wolves loved the  scraps, but he was afraid to feed them. Usually his father took the scraps to their cave. Once in winter he took Mahya with him, trembling, he hid behind Oncoa the entire time and sobbed when the wolves' eyes glowed in the dark enclave. They sprung out to feed from the slop. Oncoa rubbed their heads and they licked his hand. Mahya's hair stood on end, he could feel the wildness in them. A wildness that he knew could vault forth at any moment and devour him. He felt safe with his father, his large hands could crush the wolves heads like a fruit pod. 

     Mahya sensed a similar wildness in his father. Perhaps the wolves sensed it too. He gathered this to be the reason they respected him. Mahya felt none of the wild within himself, and was ashamed at his fear. Even now, collecting the scraps, he felt his shame collect in the front of his throat. On edge, he jumped to his feet at his father's voice from behind. He worried his father sensed this shame in his son as well.

     "Did you gather the rocks?"

     "They're stacked out front." Obscured by shadow, he could not see his father, the sun hidden high above the canopy cast no light in the hut. The jungle was quiet at the noon darkness, when people returned to their huts to nap and whisper.

     "Good. You've collected many rocks now. Good." His face still hidden, Mahya thought he heard a small smile in Oncoa's voice. "The Yahna will soon be here. Before I grant you your footprints, you must do one last thing to prove yourself to me." Mahya swallowed and hid himself in his chest. He stood very still, and stared where his father's face should have been. His giant hands grasped the top of a chair as he stepped forward into the candlelight, his eyes low and face blank, he barely moved his lips. "You must feed the wolves."

     Tropical clouds sprang forward from the sea with swift warm winds. The canopy rustled from far above and bristled and hissed and he saw spots of faces from hut windows and pathways and he trudged through the jungle pulling the scrap bucket behind him. At times he dragged it through the dirt, almost hoping it would tip over so he would have an excuse to stop and turn back. He thought of the Yahna and what it would mean to get his first footstep. He tarried onward. 

     He smelled the rain while it was still over the sea. He could make it to the cave before it fell, but he'd be caught in it on the way back. He quickened his pace. Now far from the huts, he felt his spine stiffen and his footsteps lighten, the creatures of the jungle strained to hear him. Every bush reached towards him, and more than once he gave out a yelp at the poke from an adjunct twig. 

     Rounding a fat trunked tree, the jungle darkened around him as the rain clouds blackened and descended on his path with a howling thunder. The cave bobbed towards him now and the rain dropped through the canopy. Sticky and string like, it was warm and sweaty, and as the cave neared him, the rain mixed with his tears. 

     Only a hundred feet before him, the eyes in the cave began to blink open and he heard their paws shuffle on the stone cave floor. He tossed the scraps towards the cave and turned to run and felt his nose press against the snout of a large, thickly coated brown wolf. Teeth exposed and panting carefully.

     "I'm not afraid." He thought. I'm not afraid. But his heart beat otherwise, and the wolf knew it. He backed away and slipped on the scrap heap. The wolf inched forward, licking its chops and lowering its head, Mahya pressed backwards, his palms slimy in the slop and rain and mud, all he could do was slide in the muck. The wolf crouched to pounce and Mahya covered his head with his arm and braced for impact, when he heard a familiar, reverberating thud from behind. The wolf wagged his tail and barked and yelped and jumped with his tongue hanging from his jaw. Oncoa wrestled with him a bit and fed him some of the scraps. Mahya stood teary eyed and ashamed as the rain soaked them all. His father stood with the bucket in hand and they walked home in the rain and silence. The wolves watched them disappear behind the fat tree, and they scooped up the scraps and vanished into the cave.

Country's War

.8

Yahna

     Waves broke upon hills of sand as the sun rose behind a tropical beach forest. Mahya rubbed his eyes stretched out his arms and yawned. From his hemp strewn hammock that twisted forward and back squeaking slightly with his movements, he could see his sister preparing breakfast in the tree hut across from him. He looked down between the hammock net to the jungle floor some 150 feet below him and saw a few fishermen returning home with a giant fish tied to sticks held by four men. He could smell the scales from here, and looked forward to dinner. He bounced from the hammock, swung on a branch, the canopy twirled green wheeled above him, and landed in the hut where his sister poured juice from a round spiky fruit with long thin leaves and yellow skin, into wooden cups. He tugged at her boarskin pants and shirt.

     "What's for breakfast?" 

     "Good morning Mahya. Nice of you to join us." She had been up for a few hours working with her mother, preparing for the day, while Mahya lazed about in his hammock. 

     "Is it sweetbread?" His voice rose with hope.

     "You did not get any syrup yesterday like mother asked." He closed his mouth dejected. She chopped leaves and sprinkled them in the cups.

     "Not fruit pudding again." She rolled her eyes to his whining. 

     "Perhaps you should get the ingredients to the breakfast you want, and then I can sleep while you cook."

     "Oh, you're doing a fine job. Besides, I wouldn't want to interfere with your wife training." He ducked as a giant wooden spoon came flying at his head. She went back to stirring, a bird chuckled somewhere behind them. 

     "Leyah?" His voice softened and he leaned over the table she was working over. 

     "Yes Mahya?" She answered reluctantly as she stirred. The fruit concoction began to thicken and her stirring slowed. He took the bowl from her and his vigorous stirs caused some of the pudding to spill over the side. 

     "How long til the Yahna?" He asked as he fingered the lip of the bowl and sucked on it.

     "You just asked me that yesterday." Leyah laid out more bowls and chopped stocks of leaves with orange bulbs at the end.

     "I know how long from yesterday, but how long from today?" He stirred again more carefully but just as vigorous.

     "About 7 moons, Mahya." Sun rays, orange and sleepy meandered through the hut between them as they worked. Noise followed close behind, as more villagers awoke. A dancing branch creaked and a thud onto the bamboo walkway of the hut interrupted them. Thick ankles atop hurried hardened feet entered and tore through the hut, and a round woman, tall and firm, tidied the floor and finalized breakfast as the children took their places around the table. Anjah looked at her children and let the sunlight across her face. 

     "Thank you for helping, Mahya." She sat across from them and laid out raw chunks of meat that bled on their plates, licking her fingers of the red trickles.

     "I did most of it." Leyah winced as she recognized the whining she emitted. Anjah ignored it.

     "Your father will be here in a moment. Do not pester him. He's tired" They sat quietly for a moment. The sunlight yellowed slightly now awake and prepped for the day. The chattering bird flew in from a window and sat upon Mahya's head.

     "Mother? Can we have sweetbread tomorrow?" Mahya sat his head on his knuckles with his elbow on the table. The bird cocked his head to the left waiting for the answer.

     "Did you find the syrup?" She asked as she searched the door for her husband.

     "I will today!" 

     "If you find the syrup then Leyah will make the bread." Mahya smiled and the bird flapped his wings and hopped.

     "Why can't Mahya make the bread and I find the syrup?" Anjah whipped her head around at her daughter.

     "Syrup finding is for the boys! Girls make the bread! You know that Leyah." Leyah forked the bleeding meat on her plate.

     "With thoughts like that I wonder if Canj will marry you."

     "Good." Leyah breathed out beneath her tongue. 

     "What was that?" Before she could inquire further the thick branch heaved and the leaves swooshed and a huge thud shook the hut. A giant man bowled through the door and put a flaming rock at the center of the table, then disappeared into another room. Anjah fanned the flames until the rock just glowed red and smoked. The Burly man bustled to the table, his giant wide shoulders and biceps blocked the sun and he clasped his fingers together and closed his eyes. The rest of the family did the same.

     "Gaia prepared us and made us strong to cherish and make use of her gifts in the light, so that we may defend her in the night, and strengthen her with our might. Amen." They touched their fingers to their hearts and to their foreheads then they all slapped the bloody meat on the heated rock. 

     "How was fishing Oncoa?" Anjah spoke over the sizzling meat.

     "Good." Oncoa nodded and bit the orange root bulb that was dwarfed in his giant palm. Mahya guzzled his juice. "We got a great fish for tonight." Finishing the juice Mahya had a large red ring around his lips. "And a surprise for the Yahna." Oncoa smirked mischievously revealing large dimples in his cheeks. His mustache was thick under his nostrils and thinned at the edge of the crease of his lips and his beard was cut close but shabbily.

     "What is it father?" Mahya fed his leaves to the bird with the red stripes and black feathers, perched on his head. 

     "Mahya what did I say about pestering?" Anjah snapped.

     "Don't feed that to Tridder. I gathered and prepared those for you!" Leyah snatched the thin leaves from the bird's beak and tossed them back to Mahya's plate. The bird chirped wildly and flapped his wings. Oncoa laughed boisterously and heartily and sipped from his juice. They all flipped their meat over to cook the other side. 

     "You'll have to wait till Yahna to find out." He beamed on his son, yellow light crested behind him and the jungle came alive with the shuffling of the day. Birds chattered, monkeys howled, and the villagers talked and rustled and took barrels and filled them and carried buckets and chopped vegetables and picked fruit and fed pets and laughed and haggled and argued and babies cried and on the edge of the jungle an old man knelt in the sand and laid his head upon a log and watched the waves pull up on the shore and heard the water call his name, and he closed his eyes and thought of his wife for the last time.

     They grabbed their meat from the rock and cut into it with wooden utensils. Mahya grabbed for his pudding.

     "Eat your meat first." His father growled a whisper gently without looking up from his cutting. Mahya obeyed and cut into his meat. Tridder hid behind Mahya's black scraggly hair. They ate the thin meat that fell into flakes on their tongues. It was warm and melted like butter. 

     "Your mother wants to talk to you Oncoa." Anjah spoke only after Oncoa had finished his meat and was spooning his pudding. It was sweet and thick and he felt like a boy again momentarily transported to his father's hut at his mother's table, greedily filling his cheeks with the yellow swirled dessert. 

     "I need a nap." He responded finally, handing his half eaten pudding to Mahya who lapped it up without tasting it. It pleased him to see his son happy and fat, though Mahya had lost his baby fat over the summer and was tall and lean now, no longer a boy. "Mahya. I want you to go gather the heating rocks. Be back before I awake." Mahya looked up from his pudding, another ring of yellow around his lips. He wanted to protest but his father's stare broke his words and he nodded in compliance. 

     Leyah had barely finished her meat and root bulb. "Leyah you go to Canj's hut and help his mother with the chores. 

     "Can't I stay here and clean up breakfast?" Leyah was bolder than Mahya when it came to their father. He wanted to say yes, he never wanted her to leave his hut, but it was out of his control. The village had spoken long ago, and next year it would be her duty to continue the traditions of the village. The Ahcaha were here long before he and his daughter. And if they were to continue to be here, she would have to grow up.

     "No. Your duty is there today. Both of you go now." His voiced boomed kindly and they shot up out of their chairs. Mahya followed Leyah. He grabbed her pudding and put it on his head and Tridder fell in the cup. Anjah watched as they disappeared out of the hut and their branches dipped and the leaves shook as they swung away to other trees and past other huts. Oncoa took Leyah's orange bulb root and what was left of her meat and leaves and made makeshift sandwich and gnawed at it as he walked into the bedroom. Anjah followed behind him. 

Country's War

.7

Crystalite Prism

     

     The days passed slower with the lack of conflict. A fight here and there over someones hurt feelings on some percieved slight. The flies finally laid eggs, so there was maggoty bread to be had. They used saliva on hardened bread and wrung out the juices to make a rye ale. It had little effect on the older men, but the younger men got a bit giggly afterwards. Atryn was the undisputed captain, but he spoke little and said much as he stood up on the deck and watched the churn of the sea. A month on the wave and the younger men began to show signs of sea madness. Some began to talk to themselves, sobbing uncontrollably and screaming at nothing and no one for no reason. One stood against the gunwale and slammed his head against it. The older men had to restrain him.  The boy who had gone over board was the calmest of them now. For he had dealt with his crisis and had been saved. He watched the others sympathetically and tried to calm who he could.
     One particularly rowdy day, when all the mad boys seemed to be in a loony mood all at once, screaming and fighting and crying and yelling, Atryn commanded all of them to lay face down on the iron deck and sleep. Most ignored and the older men forcibly put them to the ground. Some of the noise continued, but it seemed to work for a while. It forced them to focus and take hold of their mind, rather than running about the ship aimless and free.
     Hard bread turned soggy in the rain. And they refilled their waterskins and finally bathed. Atryn lay on the deck and caught the water in his mouth. He tried to watch a drop fall from the cloud and catch in his eye. That was the calm storm. When the weather raged they huddled under the overhanging deck and held on to each other for safety, locking arms as the ship tilted on edge. The sea battered them, and the young men cried and wailed, cowering beneath the arms of the older men. "Hold on to me lad. I'll not let you go over." Some storms scream for days. They used the heavy armor to keep themselves weighed to the deck. They chained themselves to cleats for added security. Though Atryn knew the real danger. If the ship was turned they'd all be lost. Some ships would never make landfall. Were never heard of again. This was his fear in the storm. It was rare in deed for someone to go overboard, the gunwale was far too tall. Sea and skies churned together, pounding and slapping at each other, with the Iron Horde caught between, the men held fast, all protecting the next, until the storm past. And they always do.
     They began to spot seagulls, and they plotted to capture them. They used everything they had, chains and swords and nets and spears and arrows. When they finally caught one they descended on it like ravenous  raccoon, pawing and biting and ripping it feather from beak, until all was left was a puddle of blood and a few tiny feathers. That too was soon mopped up like soup from the bottom of a bowl. They were famished so, they hadn't even the sense to cook the damned bird, and make a real meal of it. They scratched and fought each other, for a handful of flesh. Atryn turned away during the massacre. For he knew that seagulls meant one thing. Land. He stood up on the upper deck and peered into the clouds on the horizon, the sun gray behind him, obscured and cast over by the stormed sky. He squinted and searched, perhaps one of the other ships would be near as well, for he had lost sight of them in the first storm.
     About to give up and try his hand at catching his own bird, he began to turn, and something caught his eye. A rainbow. Not in the sky, but straight ahead. And not really a bow, but a diamond. The more he looked the more it revealed itself. Like a prism, and stretched out and took hold of his sight. All light and object fell from his eyes, all he saw was the colorful specter, dancing on the horizon. He raised his hand to touch it, for it appeared as if it had boarded the ship and surrounded him. He wanted to run through the hall of the rainbow, and eat it, and let its illuminated shimmer envelope his body. He saw his eyes bulge and turn rainbow colored wheels of spinning bulbs. His hair painted purple and green, as he chewed on the walls of the crystalite prism. And he let forth a scream of joyous passion as he became one with the rainbow. And at the end of the hall he saw her face, wrapped in the gray shawl. She spoke to him, her face floating in the void. "Step Foot upon the land, and protect it. Shine your lantern in the night fallen jungle. Find your home, and they will find theirs."
     He awoke surrounded by the men. Night slid on a starless sky, and their faces were lit by campfire. They gawked like pumpkins against a black Hallow's Eve. He smelled the charred birds and they handed him a leg. He devoured it quickly and stuck out his hand for another. "You alright?" One of the men asked. "We thought we lost you to the madness."
     "We make land tomorrow." He spoke into the fire, his face covered in grease and meat and soot. He gnawed on a wing and nibbled the bone.