IV NAMASTFINGER

NamastFinger came from Kavantar. She didn't tell anyone about it. NamastFinger never told anyone about herself, or at least she didn't tell the complete truth. Why should she tell anyone what had happened to her - or - why should she tell anyone what she had ever done! She hated, hated even, when others questioned her, and worse - when they questioned her and pretended to know and see everything.

There were plenty of such hunchers everywhere. ArtFork was an exception. She may not have told him anything, but at least he didn't ask stupid questions about what she was doing during a sween or a takveen. She usually traveled to Kavantar for the takveen, and when she couldn't because she had a Balinquist missile drop, she traveled to Kavantar in her mind. Mostly for Anatouri.

Who knew she would ever be friends with her! What's to say that she didn't succeed until after she died. She hated Anatouri as long as she was alive. She thought of her as an eternal enemy. Anatouri was just trying her best to make her dislike her or something! But it wasn't like that at all. When she cried herself to love after her death, she understood the eternal disconnect between Cablewayers, Soldiers, and Bridgewalkers.

The Cablewayers longed for the Bridgewalkers, the Bridgewalkers for the Soldiers and the Soldiers for nobody. And that's what it was all about. No one could be happy in Kavantar because the Soldiers had undergone an abortion of hearts under the frogheadie government. It was originally a military project. The Soldiers had their heart strings surgically removed.

It was about their blind devotion to the army. Later, the project was passed on to private companies who offered this surgery to the ordinary citizen. And where there is no heart, even death does not take. So NamastFinger understood that she had to get out of there. Her happiness will NEVER bloom in Kavantar. The Soldiers are never born with a niva´s heart again.

NamastFinger herself was the Cablewayer of the second generation of successors. The continuators were the self-appointed managers of Smakleen, Davan and Teardown mountain pass cableways. But the key for them was the section between Old and New Mountains after the Dedimount Overquake. The Dedimount was the strongest planetquake in Kavantar territory under the original Cablewayers.

The entire first generation of continuators still had a lot of infrastructure to rebuild. Sometime around that time, the frogheadie government was in power. The Frogheadie was a tough creature. With one eye he forged the plan, with the other he confirmed it, and with the crook of a frog he set it in motion. No one yielded to his strength, but everyone yielded to his power. I mean, the Frogheadie had more superfrogie power than strength. That's why he stayed in power for so long. The abortion of hearts was one of his many dictatorial inventions.

He created sick citizens, whom he subjugated. And yet his government was overthrown, not by the citizens, but by the disease that the Frogheadie and his followers had spawned. You may have wondered what the heartstring was used for, but it was actually for nothing. It was taken to the warehouse, where it was mustered up, and where the first germ of anthrax was born. Death spread everywhere.

It killed the Soldiers, the poor fellows, they were actually completely innocent victims, and then it moved on to the Bridgewalkers, the Cablewayers, and crawled up into the Frogheadie´s ranks. The Frogheadie government actually overthrew itself. The second generation of successors thus had a lot to do in order to survive in the shattered city.

It disrupted the entire structure, tarnished its spirit, but it also tarnished its reputation. That's when all the cities stopped doing business with Kavantar. In fact, it was fortunate that Kavantar stood apart from all of them, surrounded by neesmus. The fact that Kavantar was surrounded by the neesmus on all sides stopped the contagion. If the neesmus hadn't been there, not only Kavantar's generation, but the entire planet of FX6FEE would probably have fallen into history.

No wonder NamastFinger didn't tell anyone anything. Even after so many quintans Kavantar did not have a good reputation and rather preceded him - too bad to talk about it. Those who have not experienced it will not understand. NamastFinger had vowed to keep her origins quiet. Only Fork knew that she sometimes went to Kavantar. Fork hated it when she called him that.

"Can't you call me Art?" He lit his cochmeene. "Give me one too," NamastFinger said, inhaling a cochmeeneal hlomad until her eyeballs rolled. "If you want, I'll call you that. But don't get mad if I don't always remember, whew, that's powerful!" "Yeah, it's a decent ride. I got it from Hayx of Vanon. You know him?"

"That's a decent guy," laughed NamastFinger. "Hahahahrg, he is. Last time he sang to me Moha, tapla cshmee." "What an asshole!" NamastFinger laughed. "Like this," ArtFork began to sing Hayx's words, "Moha, moha, tapla cshmee, hooo, tapla tapla veynoonoo, coman tamen psee. Moha, moha, hahahahhrg." He couldn't stand it and laughed. They were both rolling around in fluffy feathers of Voleymanean tripleti, all stoned.

She liked him, in a way. But she could never tell him that he wasn't the only one who she wanted. They'd been the colleagues, but they'd snuffed the cochmeene together occasionally, made small talk, but then always got stuck a halfway somewhere. Like when it was supposed to be serious. That's when they both stopped. But NamastFinger knew, and so did he. ArtFork couldn't have known there was someone else in Kavantar.

"Sit closer, NamastFinger. Just a little more, just a little more." Anatouri took a fonka on a silver plate. "Look, it's nice, it suits you. Wait, I'll make another one." They were sitting in a bar in the suburbs of Carouge. "I'll hang it here." And she was hanging the plate over the table by the window when the bell above the door jingled and He came in. He looked Anatouri in the eye and she knew at once. They both knew. And NamastFinger knew too. She pulled out her gun and fired. He fell to the ground, his side shot through. Anatouri looked at NamastFinger in a confusion, who didn't return her gaze and ran off.

Anatouri remained sitting next to him until his eyes went out. And before they were completely extinguished, a leyser shot out of his pupils and engraved a message into the silver plate. She covered him with the blanket from a chair, made a cross on his forehead, closed his eyes, and left. She walked out the door to an unknown destination.

NamastFinger hasn't been to the bar in the suburb of Carouge since. And now her footsteps were leading her there again. Something pulled her there, but she also felt fear and guilt. Anatouri was the Bridgewalker. She could never love her. And yet the whole heart of NamastFinger belonged to her. That was why she couldn't get any closer to ArtFork.

But why she killed the stranger she knew. Just as Anatouri knew she loved him in an instant. Anatouri was found in a ravine below the cableway, which broke NamastFinger's heart. She knew that by doing so, Anatouri had sent her a clear message - keep your guilt and fuck it to death! Decease, decease, decease, decease. Pieces of glass crunched under NamastFinger's feet as she approached the bar in the suburb of Carouge.

There'd been a big shake-up here recently. Markets had fallen, the citizens had lost money, system had collapsed, and the one core of Kavantar still held on, otherwise the rest of Kavantar had gone down. Sad. But that didn't bother NamastFinger now. She stood in the bar, looking at the wall where her portrait hung on a silver plate, with a message added to it: "Lov" Anatouri still walked up to the plate and saw herself falling from the cableway into the ravine.

She turned and walked away. Behind her, the Soldier remained lying. And now, in the heart of NamastFinger, Anatouri approached the plate again and carved the "e" into it with the tip of the ring. And so love was reawakened again, as NamastFinger acknowledged the love of the Bridgewalker and the Soldier. But it did not bring her relief, she saw in the reflection herself lying dead at Aktamo Temple. The Cablewayer would die too.

NamastFinger hasn't been to the bar in the suburb of Carouge since. And now her footsteps were leading her there again.