Free Krymzyn (The Journals of Krymzyn Book 1) by BC Powell Page B

—well-known—or an emotion that the artist sees.”
    “I apologize, but I don’t understand.”
    “Look at what I’m doing,” I say as I stop walking.
    She stands still and watches me. I clench my hand into a fist in front of me, extend my forefinger, and trace one side of a tree trunk in the air. As I return my hand to the base of the imaginary trunk, I pull in my forefinger, and extend it again each time I add something to the image. I gradually create branches spreading out from the trunk, most reaching up high but a few falling down to the ground.
    “What do you see?” I ask when I finish my invisible painting in the air.
    “A tree,” she says with mild surprise.
    “What kind of tree?”
    “A sustaining tree.”
    “Was it a healthy tree, or was it damaged?”
    “A healthy tree,” she answers, nodding her head.
    “So in my world, we have things called paper and canvas —thick white rectangular fabric—and pencils and paint —things that make dark lines or colors. I draw like I did with my finger using the paint , and the paint leaves the shapes and colors on the paper or canvas that end up being what I draw .”
    “Why would you do that?” she asks as we start to walk again.
    “Just to make people feel good when they look at it. Or to inspire an emotion. Like how you knew that was a healthy tree. I wanted you to see it that way.”
    “Or you could have made me see a damaged tree?” she asks.
    “Yes,” I say, “but the sustaining trees seem pretty important to you, so I wanted you to see a healthy tree.”
    “They are important,” she replies. “Thank you for showing it to me that way.”
    “You’re welcome. Don’t you have ways to record things that happen here or show what things look like?”
    “All is recorded in our minds,” she explains.
    “What if you need to, like, solve a math problem or show somebody where something is?”
    “We do so in our minds or with our words.”
    I remember the way she instantly told me my age in snaps.
    “If you multiply twelve hundred and eleven by thirty-seven, divide that by seventy-three, then multiply again by one hundred and twenty-three, what do you get?” I ask.
    “Seventy-five thousand, four hundred ninety-six, with a remainder of seven hundred and twenty-six one-thousandths,” she answers without hesitation.
    “I’ll have to take your word for it,” I chuckle. “In my world, we need to write that all down on paper or use a thing called a calculator to do it for us.”
    “That seems inefficient,” she says before increasing her pace when we reach the base of the hill.
    “We’re not quite as quick in the mind as you.”
    It takes us fifteen minutes to climb the hill at an extremely fast walking pace. I’m completely out of breath when we reach the top, though Sash never seems winded at all. Once on the crest, the constant silence I’m used to hearing in Krymzyn is replaced by the echo of rushing water. I marvel at the panoramic view surrounding me. All I’ve really seen of Krymzyn is a small area in the south-central portion of the Delta.
    An enormous black marble wall lines the edges of the football-shaped Delta, occasional green-haired Watchers walking along the top. Forking at the north, a broad river viciously flows down either side and rejoins at the south. Furious raging rapids swell through the river. Silvery blue waves smash against a few giant, black granite rocks spiking out of the surface. The water churns like torrents of semitransparent liquid metal reflecting the scarlet and orange light from overhead.
    Across the river, red grass gradually dissipates into an expanse of black dirt. Occasional sustaining trees with charcoal-black bark, gangly and old, are scattered across the rocky, hilly plains. Many are stripped bare of branches, just towering stumps of black rising from the ground. The few that have limbs are laced with sparse gray leaves. The light in the sky fades from red and orange over the Delta to tones of