So it was early morning. It was for 4 hours. Even in the evening, warning his mother that he would go to the desert, Shir Ali was touched when on the table in the corner he was wrapped in his waist scarf, a bundle.
He knew that Hontur had prepared breakfast and lunch for him on the road. He was simple, like every nomad. Two thin unleavened cakes, such as Indian Tandoori, three dozen, white balls, it was dry cheese. It was prepared from kefir, which was wrapped in a cloth and hung over a basin where serum flowed. They drank it, added to the soup. She boosted immunity. They tasted sour, brackish, relieving swelling, and quenched thirst. And a day later, they unfolded the fabric, there was already cottage cheese. One part of the cottage cheese was eaten and the other part was used to make dry cheese. Salt, pepper, and sometimes nuts were added to the curd. Dried in the sun for 10 days or crushed with a stone.
These white balls were rations for nomads, like special energy pills for the ninja in Japan. During a long horse trip, you could throw a couple of balls into your mouth, and saturate the body, quench your thirst. When it was not possible to find other food, then a few people dumped themselves in a cauldron, threw 40-60 white balls, poured water, threw "deer grass", a couple of stony cakes growing almost everywhere in the steppes or in oases in the desert. Dinner for 6 people was ready!Warriors always took them on a campaign. So his mother gave him them with her.When he carefully left the yurt, afraid to wake his parents and brother, he saw his father standing in the street. He was looking at the sunrise. Turning back, the father nodded to his son and continued to watch the rising sun.
He looked at the back of his retreating son and only smiled at something of his own.Shir Ali used the sausage as a gift to the guards to let him out of the gate and turn a blind eye to his absence. Having recently received a scolding from the chief, they did not agree. I had to give them a bribe, Shir Ali, took out a bag and there were silver and copper coins that he found in the desert. The guards knew that Shir Ali often finds something, some trifle. Then he exchanged it with the warehouse manager for food. So, their temptation to get silver coins was high. At the envious warehouse, these coins could be exchanged for cigarettes, tobacco, medical alcohol, and even for a 10-day leave home.
Therefore, despite the reprimand and the order of the camp chief not to let out Shir Ali, who could be lost again, they decided to exchange a temporary walk for coins. This was a violation of the regulations of the guard service, but the empire was already weakening, the discipline that was not there before. The guards began to think about their future, they needed the initial capital. And silver coins, could give them goods, cigarettes, very well dispersed among the soldiers and officers, this was the internal currency inside the camp. With a block of cigarettes, a soldier could get an indulgence from an officer, buy time to sleep, buy a large portion in the dining room, get 2 days off to visit the district center 150 km from the camp.
The guards, Shir Ali urged, would return to dinner and not make everyone worry again. He promised them that.
Leaving the gates of the camp, Shir Ali went along a broken, barely visible road, it used to be asphalt, but it has not been driven for the past 60 years. From asphalt, here and there, powerful roots of bushes and grasses made their way.
In the middle of the 19th century, not so far from the camp, an ancient mine was discovered, copper ore was mined in it. The mountain was composed of limestones and the other part was a shale.
This mine was known even during the Arabs, in the 7-8 century AD. But copper was developed in it, only for the needs of the local population.But in the Middle Ages, under the Chinese, this mine worked at full capacity, and only by the end of the 17th century did it cease to exist. Everyone forgot about it, until in the middle of the 19th century, the kingdom of Tsao was not colonized by the First Northern European Empire. New colonizers explored the newly acquired territories.
A resident of the empire, an amateur geologist, found an ancient mine and declared it his property. I got permission for it, began to conduct development. They mined not only copper, but also a new mineral that contained radium.
In total, three mines were discovered in the cave. They were cut down into one rock, but had different trunks. Each mine had a stone tablet with runic inscriptions on it. One said "Red Cave - Copper", the second read "Yellow Cave - Magic Ore", and the third "Green Cave - Green Spiritual Crystals".
The red cave was 100 meters long, the mine gradually rose up, having many turns, the shaft of the mine itself was 5 meters in diameter. Pieces of copper ore were visible on the surface of the mine floor.
The yellow cave was not long, only 20 meters wide, 9 meters wide and 10 meters high, before it had stalactites and stalagmites, but over time, they were defeated in search of magic crystals. Poor alchemists ... they did not know that it was radium.
The green cave had the shape of a yurt; the whole bottom was covered with small crystals and clouds of large green spiritual crystals. Poor cultivators did not know that these crystals contained uranium ores.
In the 10-20s of the 20th century, these ores were sold for export, earning foreign currency. In the late 30s, underground waters entered the mine and there was an order to blow them up. But something went wrong, a civil war began, so the mines did not have time to blow up.Then the Second World War began, the materials on the mine were lost, everyone forgot about it. Those who remembered were shot as enemies of the people and foreign spies, so no one knew about this mine.
If they knew that this ancient mine possessed teleport circles ... and was connected to another world where spiritual beasts lived, they could gain more power and knowledge about the culture of cultivation. But fortunately, the people of the empire did not know anything about it.
The great king of the desert came just from such a small, closed world. Since dinosaurs disappeared, and then cave lions, cave tigers and giant rhinos, another world, began to decline. So far, all over the world on Earth, only small oases of the small world, hidden from the eyes of people, have not remained, where spiritual animals continued to live and spiritual plants inhabited.This was all due to the emergence of people who destroyed mines, changed the course of rivers, which in turn fed spiritual energy to the earth's energy. With a change in the geometry of the energy flows, the spiritual forces of the Earth also fell. The magical world was disappearing. Only in those places where a person could not reach or left his human activity did small worlds survive where spiritual animals and plants still lived.
In order to expand their worlds, they needed ancient artifacts, spiritual super-energetic substances, such as Mumiye, that could help in this.
King of the desert, decided to take a chance ... and was killed. His world threatened to disappear. Since the energy force has dried up.
The unsuspecting Shir Ali, who had already received the king's power and strengthened it with an ancient artifact, was walking towards this mountain. This power and energy circulated in him, capable of expanding the small world and giving him time to revive the new king.
Shir Ali walked along a broken asphalt road, sometimes on the side of the road, you could see the remains of old trucks of the 20-30s of the 20th century. Sometimes they were stone pyramids with a height of 1.5 meters. These were the graves of nomads of the 18-19th century. Previously, this place was their nomadic territory, but then the empire took these lands from them.
Slowly the stony desert, with gray joyless eyes in gray, was replaced by light wheat-colored sands, in places which were dark yellow. Sands, dunes, dunes, which in some places towered 200 or even 500 meters. Shir Ali walked on the sand, it was morning, but began to bake slowly. In the desert, it is necessary that clothes cover the whole body, so as not to receive a sunstroke, overheating of the body.
Shir Ali was dressed in a linen long shirt to his knees, pants that were tucked into leather boots, which in turn were dressed in rubber galoshes. The shirt was belted with a cotton scarf, on which a small leg hung in his two palms. Previously, in the presence of a knife, it was believed that this is a free man and not a slave. But now the times have changed. In the city for having a knife on a belt or in the lower leg of a boot, they could be punished with a fine. Provided that the knife itself was more than 8 cm in length of the blade itself.
He was wearing a gray robe over his shirt, lined with cotton. A small landing backpack was thrown over his shoulder, in which he had lunch, water in a flask, a sapper shovel, a lantern, some crackers, crystalline sugar, and traditional medicine.
On his head was a beige shawl, which covered his hair, ears, mouth, and nose, leaving only his eyes open, on top of the shawl was a small Svan hat *, donated by the warehouse manager.He walked along the dunes, long and hard. Sometimes there were small hollows with oases on his way, where bushes grew, a few plants, near the source. There, desert hares, cats, foxes, snakes hid from the heat and the sun.
Sometimes in such oases, you could see the old ruins of houses, sometimes it was only the foundations, and sometimes the dilapidated walls when people lived there. And now the vast areas were empty, there was nobody, empty. The people are gone.
Dunes moved, occasionally showing the remains of irrigation facilities, large canals, and cities covered with sand. As imperialists, they resettled nomads and farmers, there was no one to restrain the sands, from year to year, they recaptured 1-2 km of fertile land from the desert. But there were no people, there was no more water and the desert took its toll. Previously, there was a steppe, irrigated fields, water flowed, human laughter was heard, water splashing. There were caravans of the Silk Road. Trade was in full swing, the ringing of gold denarii and silver Tenge, Rupees was heard.
But now only the wind howled, and the sands blew in the face. The remains of the ruins with rich carvings and paintings said that in ancient times life was in full swing here.
Archaeologists and historians would jump up for joy if they could visit this area, so many historical artifacts were hidden here. However, the area has been closed for the past 80 years to people. Only state security soldiers and ... Shir Ali could visit him.
It was precisely in such oases that Shir Ali sometimes found coins and some ancient artifacts of past eras. He had nothing to do with him, but it was possible to exchange for him the things he needed, food, and receive indulgences from the camp leadership. Usually in an empire, all the weather in the organization was set by junior and middle staff. They could find ways to the hearts of high leaders and thereby solve their affairs and the affairs of those who they needed.
One of these people was the warehouse manager. About 200 silver coins and about 20 gold coins have already been collected in his piggy bank. Mining Shir Ali. Looking ahead, we can say that the head after the collapse of the empire did not drink too much, did not become a homeless person, but became an entrepreneur. He made a good capital, having a wonderful mind, did not linger on his homeland, but left for New Zealand. He opened a supermarket chain there and lived in joy and contentment. Until one day he was deported from the country because he worked in the state security system of a totalitarian empire when the company began against spies and the fifth column.
Nevertheless, he managed to leave again this time in Canada and open a chain of eateries there, and then again move to Gothob and there he began to sell hunting and fishing tackle. In the end, he settled in Texas, again buying a chain of minimarkets. He lived and rejoiced surrounded by his former colleagues. But that's another story.
While thinking about this, an 8-year-old child reached the cliff. He would not have thought so, but he inherited from people to be repressed by a totalitarian system is not sweet. People grow up very quickly, they were called not otherwise, little old people.
A rock stuck out right in the middle of the desert, among the dunes. It was violet-brown and sometimes red in the south and in the north it was bluish-grayish-whitish.
Previously, a large river flowed in this area, there were lakes and canals, villages and seasonal settlements of nomads were located, life was in full swing. Now only sands and rock.
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* https://www.etsy.com/market/svan_hats