For Dinner: A sort of seafood buffet in the common room.  
Mood: Festive.
Written in the Year of our Lord 3580, April 4th, Thursday night.
Location:  At the river Nebulon, where it meets the Nirla river. The nearest city is Nagsin, a city some forty miles away.

     We finally reached the Mother of all Rivers, the Nebulon river-- Loki's Nile, Loki's Amazon, Loki's Missippi. I have to admit it was a magnificent sight, though not as large as, say, the great river of Isis.

     We landed, and I scooped up the water to taste. There was a foul aftertaste to it, and I'm not sure if it's because of some sort of pollutants in the water, or whether because the greater metal content on Loki is filtering into the water, giving it that taste.

      Ah, well. A lot of places you travel you have to be careful drinking the water....

      There seems to be a whole subclass of people...somewhat akin to the Gypsies of old...that travel by boat around the river, and into the tributary rivers.  There was a sort of festival for them at the town we were at. The boats were fantasically colored, with streamers everywhere, and clogging the waterways and piers of the town.

     The odd music of Loki...which sounded to me like screaming accompanied by instruments...rose from the town.

      "Who are these people?"

      Glutheim made a gesture of distaste. "They call themselves the Sai...legends say they are closer to the watery hymflee than the rest of us, evolutionarily. Nonsense, of course, but they rarely come to shore.  The youngest child is given a small canoe, and building their own seaworthy boat is a rite of passage for them."

      The smells that arose from the town, although hard to detect against the everpresent  stink of sulphur, seemed to fill the air with the aroma of a thousand pans sizzling, hinting of foods for which I had no name.

       Carnival on another world.....do I dare? Yet how can I dare not to?

       "What is this a celebration of?"

       "The assasination of a noted religious leader."
 
      I looked at Glutheim, suspecting mockery. But he seemed serious, anyway....

     "We will stay at an inn tonight. This first day of the festival, is for the Sai alone, where orgies are conducted in the streets, and they feel free to carouse without watching out for oursiders.  Any non-Sai on their streets tonight would be immediatley killed. Tomorrow, they will set up their booths and try to sell junk to the unwary, and generally liven up a dull town. We will get out then."

       You may think Glutheim was exaggerating about the orgies in the streets. I can only assure you, that looking out from the window of my room at the end, he was in dead earnest. Yet I looked forward to tomorrow, to see Lokiites in the middle of a celebration.

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