Timpoochee’s ears were beginning to hurt from the cold when the sun edged over the horizon behind them.
By the time the sky filled with enough blue to light the path, he could see more Yonega soldiers lining dunes above them.
They were dressed in the same strange manner as Timpoochee’s captors. It struck him how something was familiar about their hard, shiny headdress. It looked like a ground melon which had been hollowed out like a tree trunk and painted with a bright gold dye.
It was not until he saw several of the soldiers boiling water in it that he remember why it looked so familiar: he remembered a pot which looked like that when he was a small boy in his own village. It had come from a soldier of the nation which first settled the Yonega village.
That’s who these Yonega soldiers are, he thought to himself, the precursors of the present Yonega village. The people who once lived there but left when he was a small boy.
Timpoochee and his men were marched to the end of the island. Giant ships were anchored in the great sea just off the pass into the bay.
Atop the highest dunes, the soldiers held tight to a makeshift camp which prominently featured cannons pointing north, across the bay, toward the large town.