No matter what anyone says.
I was not naïve.
I was not manipulated.
I choose this path.
----------------------------------------
The wind was always hot.
She hated it. This place had once been almost cool every day of the year. Sometimes it would snow almost the entire year. Now she struggled to remember the snow at all.
A small whirlwind played around her, tossing and turning a cloud of sand through the air.
It didn't interest her. He would always do things like that to try to catch her eye, but she knew better now. He would never let her learn the truth. She knelt, watching the little insect begin to walk in the strange little spirals.
They always did that. The wind blew past her and towards some distant land beyond her reach.
As the wind blew, the girl faded into the sands with a faint shimmer.
----------------------------------------
The wind blew across Hushwood. The thick, heavy air stirred little clouds as it drifted to the village. The ground was rough and ragged, with only small crevices for the sand to find a safe harbor from the wind.
Little drifts would build up in the cracks until small whirlwinds swept them away, only to be deposited again by the breaks created by the small adobe homes of Hushwood.
A young boy with tasseled brown hair was busily removing the offending deposits of sand. It wasn't the most difficult of jobs, but someone had to do it and he didn't mind dealing with it. So when the odd jobs went around, he was usually the first to volunteer for this responsibility.
He paused, gazing into the east. A large hill blocked most of the rising sun and the expanse of lifeless land beyond it. He had heard so many stories of strange creatures residing in that forbidden land that he couldn't stop imagining the possibilities.
A rather strong gust of wind blew past, trying to deposit sand in his eyes, but he was able to block it before they succeeded. The houses whistled softly with the passage of wind. Every home had a wind pipe. It was an essential piece of their hard stone shapes. It allowed the air to pass through the buildings, sucking all the air from the inside out, leaving what air was pulled inside from the doors or windows.
No one in Hushwood closed their windows or doors. There weren't any reasons to do so. They were the only living creatures for some considerable distance.
The young boy paused, listening to the sound. It was the reason he didn't mind this chore. He worked in the clay pits like everyone else during the cool of the night, harvesting the precious white clay that they would ship off to Emberfall to the northwest. It was almost three days from here, and the road was long and treacherous.
As he worked, he heard someone moving on the roof. He turned to see Lyla on her rooftop. Her beautiful long hair was almost straight and pure black, and it did amazing things with her eyes. He waved happily at the girl he planned on marrying someday.
She was a little older than him, but they had both talked about a life together when they grew up. Just the other day, they had discussed where they wanted to go in life, and what they planned for the future.
"I want to see the entire world," Lyla had said. She had been sitting close to Zayn, and he had noticed it in a way he hadn't as a kid. After all, he was almost fourteen, and that meant he was basically an adult.
"Are you sure?" He had asked skeptically, "What is there that we don't have here? We have family, friends, and plenty of good food."
"Don't you want to know what else there is in this world?"
Zayn hadn’t known what to say. So he simply shrugged.
"Did you know that Emberfall isn't even that big of a town? It has 10,000 people living in it. It is considered small!"
"Where did you hear about that?" Zayn hadn’t been paying attention to what she was saying. All his attention had been on the faintly pleasant aroma he had just noticed.
"My dad was talking about it. He thinks we shouldn't have gone here. He said that it wasn't worth it."
"What does your mom think?"
"She says he is being silly, and that he has forgotten how hard we had it before coming here. This place is peaceful."
“What’s wrong with being peaceful?”
“Dad says we can be something if we leave here. He thinks we shouldn’t be afraid of the world, and that there is a chance we could have a better life out there.”
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Zayn had said it without thinking about who he was talking to, and he had immediately regretted saying anything. Lyla stood up, her shoulders set firm and her eyes filled with fire.
“You think it is stupid, don’t you?”
Zayn had felt his face grow hot. He didn’t think it was smart to go out into the world and try to find something he couldn’t even be sure existed.
“So what if I do?” He had felt childish saying it and wished he could be like his father. When his father stood there, he commanded everyone’s attention.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
There hadn’t been a point in trying to defend himself, as Lyla had stormed off and left him alone on the roof.
Zayn pushed the thoughts out. It had been a while since they had fought. He waved at her and felt his face grow warm when she turned away without even looking at him.
He didn’t stand there for long, because the sun was rapidly rising and he wanted to finish his chore before the heat settled in. So he spent the next thirty minutes gathering up the sand and moving it to the western side of the village where he deposited it, allowing the wind to sweep it away and along its journey to the west.
His mother turned and smiled as he entered the main room of the house. The other rooms were small affairs, barely larger enough to hold the hard cool beds that everyone slept on. The main room was cool and dark, with its only window facing in the same direction as the door. The kitchen was tucked into a slightly larger room around the far right corner of the main room. The door to the kitchen shone brightly as the window caught the light of the rising sun. The three doorways to where everyone slept were cool and dark.
“Want anything to eat?” She asked him.
“Sorry, I don’t think so. I am too hot to eat right now.”
“Drink some water before you sleep.”
“Sure thing Mom.”
“Selene!” Zayn’s father’s voice boomed from outside, “Did you hear the news?”
He entered the room and his voice died off. His eyes bore a hole in Zayn’s head, “Oh, I didn’t know you were still awake.”
Zayn yawned, “Yeah, I just got done cleaning the sand traps. What was the news?”
“Oh, it isn’t that exciting,” His father raised a muscular arm to his head and tugged at his hair. It was a surefire clue that something was bothering him.
“Off to bed son,” Zayn’s mother shooed him towards his room, and he didn’t really have the energy to argue with her.
His bedroom was cool and dark. The sound of the whistling wind was rather loud in here, and Zayn didn’t mind. He loved sleeping to that sound.
As he drifted off to sleep, he could have sworn he heard his mother yelling at his father; but that couldn’t be possible. They were almost inseparable, spending countless evenings talking on the roof and watching the stars.
Zayn pictured the stars swirling overhead, hidden by the light of the day, and drifted to sleep.
----------------------------------------
He awoke to the heat of the fading day, having finally infiltrated the cool of his room. Then he noticed that the whistling sound of the wind had vanished.
He frowned, the wind was one of the constants of their home. Hot, warm, and slowly moving to the east. Having it stop, even for a moment, felt incredibly unnatural. He got up and went into the main room. It was now slowly growing bright with the light of the passing sun and discovered that he wasn’t the first one up. He didn’t expect either of his younger siblings to be up yet. They usually found excuses to stay up in the heat of the day and go hunting for lizards.
They never found any, because there just weren’t any animals this close to the wasteland. The adults all talked about how nothing ever survived there. It was a barren land where creatures would go to die. A graveyard of sand and wind.
It gave Zayn chills to think about that place.
Still, the kids had fun chasing after whatever creatures they thought they had discovered today. It was usually nothing but a sand sprite, playfully dancing just at the corner of human vision.
He went to the basin and found it full of warm and tepid water, so he washed off a little and then opened the drain. He reached under to pull the bucket out and went to draw fresh water from the well. The well was the last source of water that anyone knew of in this area. The only other sources were the two wells that marked the trail to Emberfall. One for each of the two nights that travelers would be forced to stay during the long meandering trip between civilization and the middle of nowhere.
He heard a clang from the kitchen after he had brought in the fourth bucket of water, filling the basin enough to properly be able to drink from it.
“Zayn, is that you?” His mother didn’t exactly call out his name, but he could hear her reasonably well even though they were in different rooms.
Rather than answering her, he just went into the kitchen.
The light wasn’t nearly as good now that it was evening, but his mother's long slender form and thick curly hair were still beautiful enough. She worked over a large pot, cooking and stirring something that didn’t smell like food.
“What are you cooking?”
She looked up and laughed, “I’m not cooking hun. It’s just a little something for later. I need to keep at it for now, but I want to tell you that Dad and I have to tell you some news.”
“Oh great,” Zayn sighed, “Does that mean I am getting a brother or sister?”
His mother blushed enough he could see it on her sun-darkened skin, and Zayn frowned. It was the only thing that they ever had to tell him about that counted as ‘news’. Yet she had never looked uncomfortable like that with his other siblings. Both of them were a lot younger than Zayn.
Zayn and Lyla were the only two kids in Hushwood that had the distinct privilege of being born before the families had moved here. Zarn didn’t remember any of those days, because he had been too young. He frowned as he wondered if Lyla remembered something from then because she was almost a year and a half older than he was.
“Not that kind of news, well not exactly. There is a kid coming, but it isn’t mine.”
“Oh, that’s neat. Who is expecting then?”
His mother clutched her spoon tightly, and he thought she was biting her lip. She didn’t look even a little happy about this, and it only confused Zayn.
“Lyla.” his father spoke from behind him, “Lyla is expecting.”
“But Lyla… She isn’t… I don’t…” Zayn rambled through several incoherent thoughts as he struggled to understand what his father had just said.
“We all know how you feel about her, and we knew you deserved to hear this before anyone else.”
“Is it mine? But we... I mean…” Zayn fumbled through a jumbled mess of thoughts. He had been thinking about spending time with Lyla, but they hadn’t done anything like that.
“We know it isn’t you.” His mother spoke softly, and Zayn was too shocked to see the smoldering anger in her eyes. He missed the awkward shuffle from his father. All he felt was numb. He had planned on leaving with Lyla. He didn’t want to go, but how could he actually say no to her?
Something cold and wet stung his eyes, and he went to his room to cry. He wasn’t exactly sure what he had lost, but he felt that he had lost something precious. Lyla was going to have a family without him.
He was supposed to go work in the clay pit with everyone else, but no one asked him to go. His parents just packed up and went without him. The house was empty before he knew it, slowly cooling now that the sun was almost completely set.
He left his room and went up to the roof, but it felt hollow and empty to watch the stars by himself. Their normal playful sparkling felt cold and mocking for some reason. So he left the roof and wandered over to the pit, where everyone was working.
Normally there was little talk, and seldom there was laughter. Tonight was no different. Everyone worked silently on their tasks. They felt small looking at them from the overlooking ledge. He had never realized how pitifully small humans were. Their tiny forms were insignificant under the passing stars.
“Why?” Zayn asked the cold night sky.
Pathetic humans. The wind whispered back to him.
Zayn looked around, but there was no one nearby. He sat down, legs dangling over the ledge. He watched everyone for a while, but all he could think about was Lyla.
With someone else’s child.
His hands felt cold and numb.
Pathetic humans. The wind whispered again.
A part of him agreed with the wind.
“I just wish everyone would disappear,” Zayn muttered quietly to himself, and then he turned and wandered back to his home.
He went to the room and was relieved to hear the familiar whistling had returned. He wasn’t sleepy, but he still managed to drift off to sleep.
His parents tried talking to him when they got back, and he couldn’t muster himself to say anything. The voice of the wind kept whispering to him. All he could think about was the anger slowly building inside of him.
The sunrise changed that. He watched it rise and felt the warmth of its light shining over him. He normally worked through the night and was hot, tired, and exhausted by the work. Today he felt something different as the light shone on him and the wind died off.
“You going to be alright?” His mother was behind him, and he turned to see her tear-streaked face. A part of him wondered what she had to be sad about. It wasn’t like Lyla meant anything to her.
Zayn struggled to say anything, but he didn’t have anything he wanted to say. He was sick of all the talking. All he could think about was the wind’s mocking laughter at the pitiful human lives it passed by.
“I guess.” It was difficult to answer her.
Thankfully she didn’t say anything but simply put a hand on his head.