A Stranger to the Weave

Suruli was playing down by the river when he found it. Something long and black, poking out of the wet sand. It could have come down in the storm; the river had been churning for days, fearsome and brown, too quick to approach until today. Or, who knows, it could have always been there. Things kept turning up in the muck beside the river, buried among the reeds and leaves. This was one reason why Suruli often drifted this way in the afternoons once the teacher had cut them loose from school. He was a collector. The thookku at his hip was always rattling with some assortment of things.