Codex - Famine

Section 1
Summer again, and the famine comes. We have a shelf packed with books, but you can't eat paper. I reached for a book last night, and I cried. It ts the one with a vision of the Mount of Plenty on the inner jacket. A detailed map nearly three-hundred years old with every elevation, green swathe and oasis. It was a sacred place. Even back when I was growing-up, the lake was a paradise of wading Blue-beaks and Yellow—legged Parakons. That was before the diggers came. They were trying to get at the stone, which surveyors said was deep inside the body of the Mount. The surveyors proved right, and more ships followed. Some of the folk from Cross Fields traded farming for digging, since diggers would get a healthy share of the tithe, or a even a chance to become god. Then one summer, it didn't rain once, and the lake was a dustbowl. In the middle just a sticky pool for the creatures to fight over. That was but the beginning. As the digging went on, the wells and creeks dried up too, and then crops began to fail. Still every month, comes the knock at the door, and all say it the same. "Give us your tithe." "But there's not enough to meet the tithe," "Then give us what you have." We can try to hide some back, but the Godhands are always up in their ships looking down. We are afraid they'll put us to work like Bandini.