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Yara was clambering, looking out for hdiver signs on the rocks and the stones. She met few signs today. Only scratches on a piece of bark cut with a trowel, warning, “Do not tie horses!” Maybe, the ground is slipping away? Who knows? An experienced hdiver always trusts a warning and will not tempt fate.
De
“The overhang” turned out to be a narrow, about twenty steps, ledge under the vertical cliff. Detached rocks and formations sliding down whole spoke of frequent landslides. The cliff was fragile, heterogeneous. Compressed sand and cockleshells were discernible in it. Many pieces broke off easily and crumbled in the fingers.
After estimating where best to begin, Yara walked several steps along the ledge. She stopped and, showing that they had reached it, dropped the trowel. The blade went in, but shallowly, and, having splashed sand, tumbled down. De
Yara wiped her nose with a boyish gesture and, after getting down on her knees, stuck the trowel into the sand. They dug for a long time. The sand was revealed as layers, but under it began caked clay. Every now and then the trowels caught something and tinkled, producing dry sparks. It was necessary to stop and look, after clearing the clay. In the majority of cases this turned out to be a stone.
It had to be harder for De
In the first hour De
Yara was standing chest-deep in the pit, which she had dug out in the past two hours and, not going deeper, enlarged it with short strokes. There were no blisters on her palms yet, but a special sensation and redness were detected on the skin, which would only go away with the white bubbles.
De
The radiance became bright, persistent. Yara squinted. She shaded her eyes. A dark-blue flower, woven from a live, timid fire, blazed up inside the rock. Small, like a bluebell. How it had fallen into the rock and grown there was a riddle. Yara no longer scraped off the clay. She held the stone in her hand and was continuously tossing it up, as if it was very hot.
“A good marker. Strong… Only it’s blue,” added Yara with regret. “And what’s so bad about blue?” De
Yara leaned over and lowered the marker onto a flat fragment of rock etched with brown cracks. De
De
“But two of us today!” said De
“How many years before this flower formed?” De
The marker, which no one was touching, almost faded. But Yara knew that if she would take the stone and, not letting go, hold it, then the flower would burn so vividly it would melt the rock. Then the marker would merge with her and would hand over its gift to her.
“Is it always a flower in a marker?” asked De