The Elder

Ga-ukogomen is the oldest of the Lorwolm, called the na-awult, which means the elder. I once asked him how old he was. He said he is forty thousand hundred gyres younger than the Arc of Lauma-athorin. I asked him what is the Arc of Lauma-athorin? He said it is a galaxy whose light will not yet reach the earth for three hundred gyres. I told him I do not know what a gyre is. I told him that his answer did not help me understand. He spoke a sound that was not a word, not a sound a body can make, an angel-sound. It was like a shrug. It meant, “So what? Not my problem.”