I smell like soil and mud. In fact everyone in this town does. It does not bother me. Dad always says that we are the people of the land. “Since the times of my grandfather and his great grandfather, we have lived in this mining town”, my father always says.

We live here, mining the beautiful Deathglow stones. They are extremely pretty. Jet black in colour with specks of white blended in. Each stone looks like a shard from the night sky.

It was two years ago when I started working in the mines. I was 13 years old. Before I started working in the mines, I will be honest, I didn’t really pay much attention to the people around me. But now that I started working, I have no choice but to do exactly that.

The one thing I find strange about our town is, almost all of us are miners. If I had to separate people into different jobs, I would say there’s us the miners, then there’s guards/soldiers and the very few nobles who we see once a month. “Others have more importance than us, as they have the duty to protect us and rule over us”, my dad always says. My dad says a lot of similar things.

I enjoy the work, but I walk every day for so long that my feet always have blisters. I carry the stones from where they were mined, to the assortment centre. There they separate the waste from the Deathglow stones completely. Because of this my feet burn so bad some days they keep me up all night.

”Oi Straak!”

I heard someone call out to me. I hope it’s not the same old guard from last time.

Jheez It’s him.

“Yes, sir!”

“Bring me my lunch from the Southern gate. I need it now.”

“Certainly, if you could be so kind and allow me to leave my mining cart here”, I asked curtly.

“Yes, leave it here and go.”

“Thank you!”, I said awkwardly, giggling and started a slow jog.

The last time I went because of this old man’s request, my foreman got angry at me. Mining areas in the town are divided into blocks. I work in block number 32. We have 79 blocks in the town.

You can’t say no to the guards. Folks who oppose them always get punished. I don’t want to deal with that. I just need to roughly walk for 1200 paces more to get past these mining blocks, and get to the Southern gate. It is one of the only two exits to our town. In front of our northern and southern gates, stands and merchants are littered. To me it’s an exciting place to go. One rarely gets to go there without a valid reason after all.

Once I reached there I realised there is a problem. The stall for the guards who give food for free, seems to have vanished. It doesn’t seem to be in its usual place anymore.

I’m going to get into trouble now. Where is this thing? I don’t want to get slapped again.

I wandered around trying my best to find the place. I frantically looked around. At that exact moment I heard it. I heard sounds I never heard before.

Is this… music? I can count on my fingers the number of times I have listened to music in all my life. It is fascinating. Intrigued, I followed the sound. It emerged from the centre of a massive circle of people. I was still quite short for my age, so passing through the crowd was easy. I just had to be mindful of any guards and make sure I didn’t bump into them.

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When I got past everyone, right in the middle, I saw a man in a cloak. Dust settled on his thick black curly hair which clumped together. His skin was also brown unlike us. He was tall and skinny in nature. Nonetheless, there was this confidence about him as he strummed on the strange instrument in his hands. It looked like a triangular wooden box, attached to a thin longer wooden bar on the other side.

He was plucking on what seemed to be metallic threads. I heard smooth sharp metallic sounds that were strangely in harmony without any chaos. It was calm yet invigorating.

Behind him. Within the crowd on the other side, I spotted my sister. It’s not usual for me to spot my sister when I’m working. Since Riv is six years older than me, she works in the block she has been assigned to when she was 13 years old. I kept my hands low, but waved them towards her slowly.

After what felt like a minute, she noticed my hands, and waved back frantically. I felt happy seeing her feeling well, but when I saw something on her arm, it made me pause. She had a bruise on her right arm, a big bruise too.

She seemed perplexed since I suddenly stopped waving. Then she noticed that her bruise was visible. She slowly retracted her hands. She looked at me again and left the crowd.

She’s been getting more bruises lately.

“Let us through.”

Two soldiers went through the crowd hurriedly. Not too happy are they. I hope they let the stranger continue.

“I think you have attracted enough attention, young man.”

That doesn’t sound good.

As the guards approached him, the stranger continued to play. I thought he was definitely going to get thrown across the crowd, so I was on the edge. My mind raced.

“Let the people enjoy it a bit more, lads.”

“We would have to arrest you then”, one of the guards said with his arms stretched. The stranger stopped playing and eyed the soldiers in silence.

While the guards were escalating the tension, the stranger put his instrument away, and waved his left arm that was covered underneath his robes. In the middle of his arm, built into his gauntlets from the top of his arm to his wrist, were several metallic strings. He pointed his arm at one of the guards and plucked a string. There was no sound. The guards started getting closer to the stranger, after deciding to apprehend him. But while they were walking, something strange happened.

“Ahggg!” “Ahhhhh!”

The closer they got to him the more they began to shake. As if someone shook them side to side. One of them lost balance and fell down. The other one walked further towards the stranger, but he got hurled in the air sideways.

“That’s what you get for spoiling people's fun”, said the man cheekily.

He relaxed his posture and put his instrument in a case. Giving no further attention he slowly walked towards the gate, looking back just one last time at the crowd. In seconds he got further and further, and then, disappeared from my sight.

“Wait wait wait. What was that?” I stood transfixed. It was like he shook the air with some strange power. I never saw anything like it before. People murmured. Most people were scared. But some old folks knew what the stranger could be. They called him; A Weaver.

I did find the cart right after. But alas, was the old guard not happy. “When were you supposed to be back boy?” He asked angrily, tapping his feet.

“Ha ha ha, the cart was moved, so it was hard for me to find it. I apologise.”

He grabbed the food from my hand. “I had to have an argument because of you”, he scoffed, staring at my face. Those eyes again. Why does everyone have these eyes of disdain? Like they are looking at an insect.

Time felt slowed down. And I saw the guard raise his leg. Next thing I knew I was kicked to the ground. “I’ll let you go so you can take a break and you take advantage? Even kids such as you behave like lowlifes, just like your parents. Go back to work.”

“Ha ha ha ha, sorry sir”, I said apologetically and got up. I’m used to this now. I would rather get kicked once or twice, than talk back and get a lashing for it. Not worth it. Although I must say. Every time I get punished like this, I lose myself. I feel smaller and smaller.

Strange thing about work is, you do not know how days go by. Miners like us do not have clocks. I have seen them once. Fascinating things they are. Even among soldiers only a few of them have clocks with them. Not like they would tell us the time anyway. Usually folks like us, we guess the time depending on the amount of work we finish. Because my job mainly is moving the stones from one place to another, I measure the time with the number of carts I carry in a day.

Work flashed by. Before I realised, it was evening. So I walked back home. My mum says that my fathers family has lived in the same house for generations. Apparently people cannot move houses, unless it’s due to marriage. Even then, they can only move either into the husband’s or the wife’s ancestral home. My grandparents used to live with us till I was 3 years old. Then they passed away.

It didn't take long before I was home. I went inside, and there they were. My mother, father and elder brother. Everyone seems to be back. Except my sister. Again.

“You know where Riv is, mama?”

“No, but you know she will be back. She’s a good girl.”

I do not like how nonchalant my mother can be sometimes. Riv used to spend time in the evenings at home, but nowadays she comes home late, eats and sleeps straight away. Saying that, we do not have much time before sleep anyway.

“Wait, is that onion soup I’m smelling?”, I said in excitement.

“Haha, you sly boy, I was trying to make it a surprise”, my mother smiled. Onion soup is hard to make as cooking oil and flour are hard to come by for us. It’s always a meal to remember for me. Everyone loves a good old onion soup.

Knock* Knock*

Just as we were about to get down and eat, I heard it. A loud banging sound of someone aggressively knocking on our door.