But Hunkapa Aub was not listening. Elated by one discovery of the imagination after another, he was prancing from the nearest formation to the next, gleefully assigning a name to each and every one as proudly as if his fanciful appellations were destined to appear on some future gilded traveler’s map of the territory. Ehomba looked on tolerantly. Of them all, their hulking companion was suffering the most from the heat. Simna obviously thought the brute was making a fool of himself, but Ehomba knew that no one is a fool who can find humor in desolation.
He found himself playing the naming game. It was irresistible, the first harmless diversion they had enjoyed in many days. Not only was it gently amusing, especially when made-up names for the same formation were compared side by side, but it helped greatly to pass an otherwise disagreeable time. He and Simna wordlessly agreed to compete to find the most suitable cognomen for certain structures. The game was left to them in any case, since the black litah found it repetitive and Hunkapa Aub was quite lost, happily adrift on a sea of a thousand multitudinous namings of his own.
“That column there,” the swordsman was saying, “see how it sparkles and dances in the moonlight?” He singled out a formation spotted with many small crystals of gypsum. “I once knew a dancer like that. She would glue pearls and precious gems all over herself. Then when at the end of her dance she removed the last of her veils it was revealed that the jewels were glued not to the fabric of her costume but to her naked skin, and that all along they had only been glistening through the sheer material she had been wearing.” He turned to his companion. “What does it look like to you?”