Subject: Shepherd, Santa Monica Mountains

Turns Expedition - Interview Excerpt

Grass this summer’s taller than the last and it was taller last summer than the one before. Lost a good ewe in the hills last week. I’m grateful for the teeth I got and I’m right with all the gods. That’s all there is to say about me. I don’t graze ‘em in Los Angeles. You kidding? They’d eat broken glass and who knows what else. Used to join scrap runs into the city when I was a kid. The seventy bandit-kings of Great Lah ran the hills back then. They were gonna clear out the ruins, build seventy palaces in the old towers. So much for them. See that hill? You’ve got glass eyes [Binoculars.], see the big grassy mound? The Lah had their court there. Beautiful, shining thing. Walls with murals painted in every color. Thought they ruled the world. Julieta marched through and put all seventy of ‘em on her pyres, easy as dusting her boots. Why? I guess she didn’t like them. Why do goddesses do anything? The ashes were good for the grass. Maybe that’s why. Pah, going around quizzing honest folk about theology.

Earlier expeditions noted with interest (and some concern) the emerging civilization of Lah, a highly cultured league of raider-poets tracing their descent to a mix of celebrity bunkers and pre-Fall organized crime. We came here expecting to exchange gifts with the Lah court. While Lah political consolidation posed a potential threat in its own right, the nature of their downfall is deeply troubling.