There was no permanence in man, nor his works.
Only the gods were allowed to claim eternity, and even then it was necessary for them to overcome the petty spitefulness of men and their will to build anything lasting. Thus was it decreed by The Eternal, the Lord of Winter, that man should have no great monuments save Him. No buildings cast in the permanency of stone.
Naught, but wood walls and a simple tile roof. For in that seasonal transience would man find happiness with his place in the universe, seated contentedly at the feet of the Great One, there to receive his wisdom.
Ul Banop Cheani Yuur, Khan of Trusski, looked out over the empty meadow behind his magnificent palace compound and considered what eternity meant.
The fog was just beginning to thin in the face of the autumn morning. Dawn revealed the quiet stream meandering from right to left, seeking its eventual way to the sea, once it crossed all manner of boundaries, ponds, and challenges. Low grass was just tall enough to hide small creatures from predatory birds if they remained cautious.
Magnificent stands of trees beyond the wild, open space framed the palace grounds, a kilometers-thick belt on two sides that formed a game park for the residents of the Capital city, Taymyr, with the wealthiest of them able to afford their own palaces on the meadow itself.
Each generation had torn down this palace and rebuilt it, frequently moving so slowly that the construction was eternal: adding a wall here and removing one there; transforming an arcade into a patio, a guardhouse into a museum, or a mogul’s palace into a tea room.
When no man or woman owned the land, they could not pass it to progeny. And Buran himself, the Lord of Winter, had decreed impermanence, so there was no silly sentiment attached to the old. One would hold the land in trust and put it to use for a time, until your lease or your life expired and it moved on to the next occupant’s temporary custody.
Yuur had been Khan for eight years now, a Scholar who had managed the seemingly impossible, to rise to become a Minister of the Eighth Rank and be appointed to govern this sleepy world. Far from the grand lights and bustling metropolises of his youth, but welcome, nonetheless. It was a simple, quiet place. The fading darkness overhead drew his eye.
At this time of year, one could rise well before dawn and stand on this porch facing the southeast as the sun rose at your left shoulder, crossing slowly behind you. Until the stars faded, you could face the darkness, that great gulf known to men as M’Hanii, light-centuries of empty darkness filled with great clouds of cool gas and pitifully few stars.
Beyond, somewhere in the grand distance, the star Ninagirsu, gateway to the Altai Sector, and eventually Winterhome itself, master of the Protectorate of Man. Perhaps Yuur would be blessed to retire there, once his days of usefulness to The Eternal drew to a close. It would be a lovely reward for a lifetime of service in the distant hinterlands, colonizing an abandoned world wrested from under the nose of the distant barbarians known as Fribourg.
Perhaps the barbarians feared the darkness, its empty, black skies visible from Taymyr seven months of the year. Only in the summer did the sun generally set in such a way that the thin band of lights representing the galactic disk filled the skies, leaving most to simply notice the few orbital platforms and rare freighters as sudden shooting stars overhead in other seasons.
The sun finally turned the sky golden. Yuur knew he should give up hiding here and go face his day. There was tea to steep and bureaucrats to face. Perhaps he would get lucky and something interesting would happen today, to break up the monotony of living on a farming world that was only now, after four generations, able to export enough goods to import expensive fineries, rather than the barest minimums necessary for life.
Under Yuur’s steady hand, his government was nearly half a generation ahead of the Great Plan laid out by The Eternal for Trusski, the outcome of diligence in the face of daily tedium.
A touch of excitement would be a pleasant change.