His daughter was gone. His only child. The light of his life.

The harvest was due, there was no time to do proper searches, there was a storm coming, days ahead of their predictions, and his daughter was gone.

Their daughter and her friend, his wife had corrected him, with a gentle hand on his shoulder, but he didn't care about that. The other child wasn't his daughter, and it was her that was gone.

Overhead the thunder rumbled ominously, and the sheaths of rice were heavy across his shoulders as he hauled them towards the storehouse.

They should have been able to leave them out in the sun for days more yet, but the clouds had formed out of nowhere the day before. A fitting mood. The storm in the sky mirroring the one in his heart, because his daughter was gone.

His wife assured him that she would come back. Had always come back before. That her desire to be different, to leave the village was just youthful rebellion. A night in the forest, a sneaking back with the dawn, and his daughter would return.

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But he knew in his heart she would not. He heard it from the birds with their mocking cries, from the dogs barking at their owner's heels, from the fish that swam in the pools and streams.

His daughter was gone, and would never return.

He knew this as certainly as he had known anything before in his life.

He dropped off the sheathe in the shed, into his wife's strong arms, and headed back out to pick up another. Overhead the birds cried out. "She is gone, she is gone."

There were new people in the village, those who had come to help with the harvest, who they in turn would help the next week, had helped the weeks previous.

But none of those people were his daughter, none of them had her, and none of them cared that she was gone.

Standing on the edge of a terrace, staring down at the valleys below, he could see for miles. Everything was activity and movement, the drained levels which would fill up with life-giving rain tomorrow. The ones where the rice still grew, ready to be harvested when the squall was over.

From here he could see forever. Almost, he imagined, to the great cities and oceans of the north, places he had only heard of.

But none of what he could see, and none of the places he could imagine, contained his daughter. For she was gone.

Overhead the birds cried out again, and Ricebrings returned to work