The lagoon lapped around the wooden pilings of the dock.

Not so much flowing is slowly oozing through the maize of reeds and grasses growing out

of the shallow waters.

Boats made from woven reeds glided through the tangle of vegetation, the boatmen pulling

their way through familiar paths on their way to the shore.

The boatmen loomed ahead of them, mud brick and stone, taller than the orchards of palm

trees clustered around the edge of the lagoon.

Baskets of dried fish, bushels of grain, bundles of reeds, snared marsh birds tied together

with the neck ready to be plucked and cooked.

The boatmen piled all of this on the dock.

They were on the edges of the city, the waves still lapping against their boats.

That calm slapping was slowly drowned out by the sounds coming from inside the city walls.

Out on the docks it was just a low indistinct buzzing, but inside that sound resolved into

a thousand different and distinct notes, noises coming from a thousand different sources.

Cattle bellowed and goats bleed it as their herders led them in from the dry scrubby countryside.

Farmers who had arrived from their outlying villages, inspected imported clay trinkets

and copper axes with their hands, still stained by the fertile dark earth that piled up near

the rivers and irrigation canals.

Some group clustered around an open pit, drinking from finely walled tall, thin pottery vessels.

The people were solemn, their eyes downcast, staring at the young man lying on his back

in the freshly dug grave.

He was no older than his mid teens, wearing a necklace of shiny black obsidian, his eyes

...