Veldt to scrub to fields to farms to these first tumbling houses that rise from the earth. It has been night for a long time. The hovels that encrust the river's edge have grown like mushrooms around me in the dark.
We rock. We pitch in a deep current.
Behind me the man tugs uneasily at his rudder an the barge corrects. Light lurches as the lantern swings. The man is afraid of me.