Chapter 1 #2
Water is another precious resource, and a dangerous one in our community.
As much as we pray for it, we also dread it during a strike.
There are always casualties during the rain.
It’s just another fact of life as a lightning farmer.
Our water tank outside holds barely enough for one person, let alone three adults for the entire year, so we’ve set up a system to make it last. Each person gets two pumps a day—maximum.
That’s enough to drink and wet a small towel to wipe off the daily grime.
Preferably, we skip the cleaning part, and we only use one pump each per day.
Wound cleaning makes this harder to abide by.
I checked the tank this morning, and it’s looking dire.
We’ve grown up on rations our whole lives, but when we spend our days sweating out each precious sip of liquid, it’s a precarious game.
Only last full moon, old Nellie next door fainted, falling down a rod and breaking her leg.
Mam had insisted we share a cup of water with her.
Nobody shares water; it isn’t the done thing.
But our mother taught us that morality should be valued above all else, so we did as she said.
She was right. The hollows didn’t provide us any kind of basic human decency, so the least we could do was give that to each other. The unfortunate thing is that we have seen less and less humanity within our own community as the years have gone on and life has gotten harder.
This is already my second pump of water today.
We cannot spare it. I also cannot afford to get sick with only Nix and me working our field.
Most families have multiple generations repairing rods.
Antibiotics cost credit, and all our credit is spent on essentials—food, charcoal to purify the water, minor emergency supplies, occasionally new rags for both clothing and wound care, and the repair materials needed for the rods.
In this life, nothing comes for free, even if you are under the Halo regime.
Unravelling my hands of the worn brown bandages, there’s a patchwork of white and pink scars bordered by calloused skin, new wounds opening on top of the old.
They remind me of my mam and Nix’s hands; worn down by time, a lightning farmer’s hands.
Serond hands. Though they do not like to call us that—no, we are farmers by solence, generational.
As if those words somehow make us better.
More than. I’ve heard the hollow keepers whispering to themselves at the factory.
They call us swine, inbreds. Pretty big talk since those grey-eyed bastards are more inbred than the people working the farms.
At the end of the day, we mean nothing to them. Our place in their world is lower than the dirt that cakes our lungs. I’ve heard they treat the animals in Halo better than they do us. Nothing would surprise me anymore. My heart has become hardened to their crimes.
Placing a dash of alcohol in the water bowl that cost Nix’s monthly credit, I place my hands in the liquid and silently grumble about the injustice of it all. A zing of pain radiates up my bones as I begin to scrub.
They expect us to work for them, feed them, and pay them!
Scrub.
All while they sit in their ivory towers with their superior solence!
Scrub.
All while we rot on this land that no longer belongs to us!
Scrub.
All while I watch the people I love slowly wither away to nothing!
Scrub.
“ARRRR!” I rage and push the water to the side, the liquid cascading over the bowl’s edge, barely causing a mess. A small tear escapes—a tear I cannot spare.
“Fuck.” I hurriedly get to my feet, my heart beating a rapid rhythm that has me pacing from the sink to the table.
RING. The second warning bell sounds. I flinch.
Breathing in deeply through my nose and out again, I sit back down and submerge my hands in the last of the pinkish solution, squeezing my lids shut, my teeth instinctively grating. The pain is a sort of blissful recentring of my body.
RING. The last warning bell sounds. Nix better be at the tent, observing from the safety of the rubber ring with his sound blockers.
Damn it. The sound blockers. Pulling my hands from the water, I race to my nightstand and find the small foam hearing protectors. I push them into my ears, head over to Mam’s side of the bed, and feel around her ears to make sure hers are in. They are.
My body sags next to her onto the improvised blanket bed just as a deafening crack sounds through the tent, the strike of light illuminating the space around us as if we don’t have walls at all. I close my eyes to the blinding brightness that lasts all but a second.
Once it’s over, I take our foam plugs out and go back to wrapping my hands for the evening.
Nix won’t be back for a while. He likes to be the last person out on the thick black rubber that makes the floor of our tent and pushes out enough to form a safe viewing area for each strike.
Watching. Waiting. Hoping. When he was fifteen, Nix discovered a shimmering kaleidoscope of colours beyond the tree line that sections the hollowed lands from the Fairy Lands.
The place where the colourful creatures live.
The very same ones Halo took as seronds, using them for their magic, and who they now fight against for land.
Hypocrites. If I’m ever before one of the Halo Council members, I’ll give them a piece of my mind and my fist.
All information we know about the fairy folk is hearsay and heresy.
The only time I’ve seen one was on my first and last hollowing day.
These events were basically glorified visits to see who of us was secretly a hollow in disguise—I know, so mysterious.
In actuality, it was to see if the keepers had been defiling the seronds.
Sometimes to see if the odd hollow solence line had slipped through their grasp.
I still remember that day like it was yesterday.
The fairy creature was a mesmerising shade of blue, the likes of which I had never witnessed before.
His hair was midnight black and cut short, so it flopped over his forehead.
Crimson-red irises pierced into every soul who crossed his path.
When it was my turn, I couldn’t take my gaze off him, utterly spellbound.
The shackles that bound his hands and feet didn’t take away from his beauty.
He was far beyond what my mind could ever conjure.
And when they took my solence to him, he deemed me nothing more than a swine, no Halo solence to be found.
It was welcome news, yet a niggling part of me always wanted more.
Pushing aside old thoughts, I make quick work of cleaning any dirt with the lingering solution I made earlier and finally put on the scrap of off-white material that composes my nightgown.
Before getting into bed, I sparingly cover a slice of hard cracker in protein spread and scoff it down to stop the hunger pangs while my body drifts to sleep.
The last thing I do before my eyes fully close each night is check Mam’s forehead.
Sharing the same bed, I roll to my side, her snoring faint.
The knot in my stomach tightens. Has she been in bed all day?
Did she eat? Did she drink? She had enough wherewithal to put in her ear protectors.
Or maybe that was Nix when he disappeared earlier today.
This whole situation is getting out of hand. Placing a palm on her forehead, I feel the slickness of sweat and heat.
“Shit.” I pull the covers off her, noticing the sweat stains covering her light sleepwear—the same simple clothing as mine.
Rushing towards the sink, I pour a quick quarter-pump into a copper cup and bring it back to bed. “Mam,” I say, and gently push her onto her side. “Mam, wake up. You need to drink something.”
“Mmmm.” Her voice is strained, her eyelids beginning to flutter. I let out a breath. “Mam, sit up, please.” The harshness of my voice is loud even to my own ears.
“Storm, what is it?” Dry lips smack together.
“Mam, you need to drink this.”
“Okay, okay,” she says, rubbing her eyes and slowly sitting up.
“Have you been in bed all day?” I set the cup at her lips and help her take small sips.
She stops and looks ahead in thought. “Mmm. I-I don’t know, sweetheart.”
I want to scream out loud and beat my anger into the walls of the factory. Instead, I lock my jaw and rub her back. “It’s okay, Mam. Finish this cup and sleep.”
She yawns and sips the last of the contents. Turning, she gives me a small smile, saying quietly, “I love you, Storm.”
“I love you, Mam,” I choke out. Seeing my once-strong mother in this state is too hard to swallow.
Together, we slide under the covers, and I wrap my arms around her from behind. The position reminds me of when she used to hold me when I was younger. Now, our roles are reversed, and I’m the one looking after her.
I should’ve come back to feed her. My mind whirls. It’s hard to keep the voices quiet.
Last year, Mam got sick. We were all in denial for several months until her symptoms began to progressively worsen, and Nix started to notice her restricted movement and short-term memory loss—key signs of the wasting.
Then came the night sweats and the fatigue, and soon, Mam was limited to the confines of our tent, barely able to get out of bed.
We had seen these symptoms thousands of times before in other lightning workers. To see them in our mother was utter devastation and complete rejection.