#aikhenxe

Eixa is from far away. She came to us from across the moor, days and days of journeying and she was utterly alone when she did it too. I came with someone else: in my case, my mother. I haven’t seen her since but that is more the norm, I believe. And Eixa since then has certainly been alone. 

It means the folding. The folding of the land. It is like a ripple in the earth and some of us have chosen to make our home here, in that ripple. 

The first time I came to the fold I stood there and watched it sleep for a while. I stood at the gate. My hand was touching the metal and it was burnished in the light of the sun but it was not warm. Before me the sky was a searing orange. It was terracotta. It was sun-blinding. 

This is your first sight of the fold. If you stand there, as I did, you can see the valley stretch out in front of you. If you stand there at sunset, like I did, the valley is gilded golden and the leaves are gold too. My skin on the cold metal is gold. It’s like we are awash with it, me and you, both of us standing there. I can’t quite see you but I expect that’s alright. It’s like we are in a painting and the figures look only outwards. 

The way the land stutters and collapses, tired, like a boneless cloth or a giant curled to die: this is why it has its name. Standing there at the gate and watching it is enough for many. From standing at the gate alone, you cannot see the bottom. It dips inwards, the fold, and comes rippling down in fluted chasms and trees clinging to the edge, sagging, disappearing finally beneath the surface of the land. Like a sinkhole or like a drowning head of black bristling hair.