ELDER of the oldest rank, the Solitary Elder shown the one thing he has outlasted. In the gilding he is the lord of drought, strongest in the long dry years, and the rare rain is the only patience greater than his own; the Sister, who keeps the waters of her working, has rendered his whole dominion in the color of that rain. He appeareth as the same weathered hand raised from an emptied plain, but the plain lies drowned in blue, a sea remembered where the desert stands, and the clouds mass above him like a debt come due. His office is to endure even this: to hold his shape in the flood-colored light as he holds it against the wind. The rain the working promises never falls; it is only shown to him, the way the future is shown to the patient.
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