The Learned City of the Ponderers

Emerging from the willow forest, Tomek saw a broad field. An open plain.   And by dusk he came across a town.
People were walking to and fro in the streets, and the women seemed to glow.
The lantern-lit women passed in the streets, the air full of their charm and radiance.    Tomek had not seen women in three years.
There were all types of women here.   Tall ones, short ones.    Skinny graceful ballerinas, or buxom voluptuous milkmaids.   Ebony ones and ivory ones, olive ones and apricot ones.      And hair of every color, from black to red, even purple.
All the hair was long.    Long tresses that reached to their buttocks, their ends bouncing on them as they walked.       Indeed, it was hypnotizing, because the ends of their locks would first nestle in the valley of their moon, the soft crease in their skirts where their derriere parted, obscuring it, and then with the next step, bounce away, revealing all.
[or: All the women had long hair.   Hair that reached to their bottom, and bounced over it.   Or even tumbled and furled its way past it, swaying back and forth across their knees as they walked, like an extra skirt.    ]
As mentioned, hair on this island was believed to be a spiritual antenna.    One that sparkled with electricity, and sent and received messages from the spirit world.   Men’s hair was long as well, but rarely grew as long as the women’s.   But the men had beards, and these were believed to be antennas of a different type, tuned to a different channel.      Cut the hair of either the men or the women, and their communication with other souls, either the living or the dead, would begin to wane.      They would become lost souls, — like ships adrift at night.   [Angel wings they called it. ]
It is the human antennae, connecting people to the spirit world.   Cut it all, and we are like lost ships at night, our communications cut.    Hair is the sacred talisman that grows from the seventh chakra, the crown chakra at the top of the head.    ( Chakras being the spirit centers, as the students of Yoga and the eastern mystics know it. )

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The women's skirts, their blouses, were of all lengths and colors, but tended to be light, and airy. Their wombs seemed to glow, like lantern, fire-fly lights, shining through them.

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This village was a very learned one. The largest university on the isle was here, and the streets were filled with erudite conversations.
Professors and students mingled on the streets, and he could hear them pondering such things as:
Mc²+69x-xy³+(88³+69²)=xxx
Or discussing which wine vintages have the subtlest undertones.
Or even the subtle scents and undertones from a woman's panties/lingerie.
The conversations were quite varied, but he noticed a number who spoke gravely of a problem that beset the isle. They spoke ominously of things like the ‘Border’, or 'the circumcisers', or the 'Leash People', or the ‘People of the Tube’, — the 'Plasticos'....
Further listening revealed the island was at war, that it had been 'invaded', by the 'People of the Tube'.

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Some women were veiled, in the manner of desert women. Like desserts that must be wrapped, until you're ready.
And a number of the women had little gemstones plastered on the center of their forehead. On the mystical '3rd-eye', — the 'Chakra' point of intuitive, spiritual enlightment of eastern peoples. And some of them were splotched with what appeared to be a spot of encrusted semen, on the centers of their foreheads. For indeed, on this isle, — as Tomek would later learn, — this was a sign that they'd received "The Annointment". It was a lass’s ‘good-luck charm’. Their talisman to ward off evil. They were proud of it, liked to show it off, their faces radiating with smiles and wet sheen of semen.

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But the 'maiden of the horse' was nowhere to be seen. Tomek bought food in the market, and moved on.

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