Overview
On the surface of Duskara everything has a direction, and the direction does not change.
| What | Comes from | Goes to |
|---|---|---|
| Light | The day side | |
| Heat | The day side | |
| Wind at the ground | The night side | The day side |
| Water | The ice of the night side | The salt flats of the Dayward Edge |
| The ground | High under the ice | Low toward the day side |
| The dead | They live in the wind |
Light and heat come from one side. Wind, water and the ancestors come from the other. People live on the strip where the two cross.
- Nobody is lost in ordinary weather. A person who faces the light has the wind at the back. Grain, grass and smoke all lean the same way. To be lost is a thing of storms, mist, caves and closed rooms, and it frightens a Duskaran more than it would frighten a person of Earth.
- Nightward is the hard way. It is uphill, upwind and upstream, into the cold and the dark. Water comes from there. Dayward is downhill, downwind and downstream: the easy way, and the place where water ends.
- The word for what is right is sawa, balanced. The Central band is Daŋa-Sawa, the balanced edge. The blessing is Heri hanga zi ja sawa, "may your wind be balanced". Too much of the day and too much of the night are equal faults.
- Directions serve at every size. Creole has no east or west. It uses the four directions of the belt for small things too: the nightward shelf, the dayward stair, the nightward tower, the up-belt end of a table. Left and right are for the two hands and for nothing else.