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"(Context:) T'rolbarahl, ancient creature of the First Empire of Dessimbelackis, Dejim Nebrahl crouched at the base of a dead tree, or, rather, flowed like a serpent round the bleached, exposed roots, seven-headed, seven-bodied and mottled with the colours of the ground, the wood and the rocks. Fresh blood, slowly losing its heat, filled the D'ivers' stomachs. There had been no shortage of victims, even in this wasteland. Herders, salt-miners, bandits, desert wolves, Dejim Nebrahl had fed continuously on this journey to the place of ambush.
(Part in question) The tree, thick-boled, squat, with only a few twisted branches surviving the centuries since it had died, rose from a crack in the rock between a flat stretch that marked the trail and an upthrust tower of pitted, wind-worn stone. The trail twisted at this point, skirting the edge of a cliff, the drop below ten or more man-heights to boulders and jagged rubble.
On the other side of the trail, more rocks rose, heaped, the stone cracked and shelved."
So we have a tree, rising from a crack in the rock which is between some things. Okay, so far. First off, the question is, if it's a real "rock" or is the whole ground "the rock", but the baffling part is to understand what it's even inbetween. There is a flat stretch that "marked" the trail - how can a "flat stretch" mark a trail in particular, if anything? It seems "mark" is bad choice of a term any way one looks at it, since apparently it's not meant literally, but "defines" the trail so as to "be" the trail itself. A flat stretch seems pretty "trail"-like already, unless the trail is described as very uneven.
Let's accept that the stretch is the trail or we will never find an answer to how it is "marked" by it (like switching it to one side or the other...), let alone with the next stuff. Apparently on the other side of the rock - okay I guess it's a "real" rock, not just bedrock - is a tower. We could imagine it to be figurative of the "pitted, wind-worn stone" again, but let's stay literal with the tower.
A rock between the tower and the trail - not so hard, it seems, but the next part confuses everything. The trail itself is described as having two sides, apparently all on its own, like its own little dimension. On one side is a cliff, on the other a rise of boulders. We couldn't decide where to put the "marking" stretch (again, a bad choice of word for sure), we don't even know where the rock and the tower are suddenly gone!
The trail is not one side of a "between", it is its own "between", incompatible with the other stuff! And none of them could pose for them, even considering different meanings for the "stretch".
It seems to me like this little part was sloppily written and then never looked at again.
How would you explain this part visually?
This post has been edited by MattK3: 18 August 2018 - 11:59 PM
