At the crack of dawn we were whipped awake by the slave drivers and formed into two lines side-by-side. A caravan of extra guards and supplies had arrived during the night and they were unpacking an incredible amount of equipment consisting mostly of long wooden poles and hundreds of long leather straps. At first I was worried they were going to hang us all at the same time but there was murmurings that we were being taken to a slave market to be sold.

Our hands were bound together using leather bracers and every third pair of men had a wooden pole placed across their backs with their arms backwards around it, binding the two together, with the leather straps attached to the wrist bracers of every person, linking each pair together forward and back into a massive train of people which would pull the supply wagons at the back. The extra trouble to bring in a small fortune's worth of leather, let alone the weight, seemed excessive when hessian rope would do but this was clearly not the driver's first rodeo and they had the process down to an art; within an hour of dawn-break the caravan was rigged and ready to go. Being late to market meant money lost and cheap hessian rope probably broke too easy and lead to delays. There was little risk of escape anyway, four camel riders lead the front to set the pace and the remaining guards followed on camels spaced along either side of the train. If anybody even tried to make a run for it, they wouldn't get far.

We set off not knowing how many days we would be travelling. It was practically a death-march, we stopped for nothing; anybody who fainted was dragged along and those presumed dead were cut loose and stepped over. We walked from dawn to dusk. At night, the guards built a fire and we formed a circle around it, still bound and reined together into a train, now curled around the only warmth during the freezing night. Sleep was difficult with your hands bound behind you and every part of your body aching, but I eventually passed out from exhaustion into a death-like dreamless sleep. At the crack of dawn and of the whip, the whole process would repeat.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I kept my mind occupied and distracted myself from the heat through the day by reciting the 500 fables in my head to make sure I didn't forget any. I remembered the confusion I experienced the first time I saw clay writing and I blessed the wise women of my clan for preserving the 500 fables for generations which I needed more than ever now. We had string numbers where the types of knots and spacing recorded numbers in strings, for managing the clan's food supplies, but no writing; everything was passed on orally. Every child in the clan was expected to memorise the 500 fables -- I'm not sure if there were exactly 500, I had never counted them out, but there were hundreds of stories that every child heard, first as bed time stories and tales told by elders around the campfire, and then drilled into us at school. The girls with good memories and recital skills were then tasked with learning the greater oral histories and the best of those who wanted to become the next wise-woman had to pass a week-long cross-examination of knowledge followed by a recital of the entire oral histories, fables and all, in front of the whole clan without getting a single word wrong.

I was only 7 or 8 years old the last time anybody had to do the test, I didn't understand the significance of it at the time, I was just glad I got time off school to spend all week watching this game where the wise woman asked the lady questions about the fables and I had fun trying to guess the answer to as many as I could. Then she recited everything; the history bits were boring and I didn't understand it all, but I was utterly enthralled by the recital of the complete 500 fables. She finished the last fable and everybody clapped and then there was a big party. Later I learned that apparently she was the youngest person to have ever passed the test at just 25. Passing this test granted a woman the title of Keeper and they worked directly with the wise-woman as more able-bodied assistants until the wise-woman's memory began to fail and a new one was selected which was every 30 years or so. My mind wandered back to the clan... would there be a new wise-woman by now, who was selected, was it that lady who I saw pass the test back then? It was the first time I had thought about my previous life in terms of the present, but I had to put those thoughts away; right now I was a prisoner being dragged to sun-knows-where to do moon-knows-what, probably involving back-breaking labour until I was no longer useful and finally put out of my misery.

For three days we trekked through empty sands. Those who hadn't died were looking pretty rough, I was holding up much better than expected, I had the fables and my deep-trek training in the months leading up to my departure from the clan had prepared me for surviving on minimal provisions for days on end. We were given water only twice a day, once at dawn before we set out, and again at midday. None in the evening, but before the sun set on the third day we arrived at a watering hole and there for the first time we were unbound and allowed to drink our fill and wash the dried sweat and faeces from our bodies. As I sat and watched the sun go down, I wondered why the slave drivers had afforded us this one small dignity... it must be because we would arrive at market tomorrow and they wanted us to be in our 'best' condition for sale. I shared this idle musing with my yoke-mate and soon the whole convoy was buzzing with anticipation -- anything was better than this but I reserved my relief for the day I was once again free.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

We were up early and on the move immediately, the pace was quick but we were all mentally prepared, it couldn't be more than half a day at this pace. Four hours later, the sands inclined into a vast, wide hill. A well worn path lay diagonally across the slope to minimise the incline and then curved through a small v-shape cut into the hill that meant that we wouldn't have to scale the entire hill face-on. As we rounded the bend and saw the other side of the hill for the first time I realised we had crossed the lip of a giant crater-like depression and at the centre of the crater lay our destination:

The city was called "Pebble Rock" for at distance it looked like a small pebble set into the sand and the mass of people arriving were as ants; little black dots in close ranks and tight lines mindlessly following one another, streaming from every corner of the crater and converging under the pebble.

Small openings pock-holed the surface of the pebble everywhere, the windows and balconies of thousands of homes. The people of Pebble Rock valued property above everything and above everything, sitting atop the rock, was the only external building, a city atop the city, a palace, the exclusive property of the wealthiest, one above all and all beneath them. Naturally, property extended to people too. Slavery was the grease that kept Pebble Rock running. An entire class of people that never had to sweat lived upon backs of those who did the sweating for them.

Our convoy merged with others and came to a standstill. There was much jostling, shouting and camel snorts as rival slaver gangs and merchants argued over who was in front of who. The next few hours of shuffling forward under the scorching midday sun was more torturous than the walking. I could see the shade under the pebble (the rock tapered in at the bottom giving it its pebble appearance from a distance) but forward progress was but a few steps at a time. As we edged nearer, and the pebble towered over us, the rabble grew into a cacophony of shouts, animal noises from livestock and the jangle of reins everywhere. Finally under the shade I could begin to discern order amongst the chaos: porters in coloured tunics were separating out merchant caravans and goods from slaves, arguing with caravan drivers over the semantics of this-or-that trade good and which entryway to go to and generally screaming at anybody and their camel who decided to stand in the wrong place and block the way.

As the crowds pressed in all around us, guards went down the line unhooking the reins followed by a porter who was throwing red cloth collars over each person's head -- a way of identifying which batch of slaves came from which slave merchant. The crowd of slaves behind me had continued to shuffle forward despite the slow movement up front and I soon found myself trapped in a mass of bodies, heads and differently coloured collars everywhichway I looked. I had lost sight of the guards and most of the other captives I had travelled with as the mass of bodies pushed forward in to a frightening cram. There was sudden movement up front and the whole mass of us was swept along uncontrollably. Porters with long whips appeared out of nowhere and were directing the rush of slaves ahead and before I knew it I had been sucked into the darkness inside Pebble Rock.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I had expected pitch-black darkness and solid rock scraping my head but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I looked up a saw a high ceiling, light rays from slits cut into the rock slicing across the room through smoke and... people! balconies upon balconies, several floors of people above us, some looking down, some engaged in conversations, or just going about their business as if nothing was happening below. The noise within was worse than outside, the shouting, clucking, bleating and clanging echoing back upon itself into a thunderous roar coming from everywhere at once.

The rush of bodies petered out and I began to see what was going on. We may have gone through the slave entrance but we were as cattle to them: four men were sitting on very high stools between wicker fences dividing the way forward into five 'gates'. The men held very long sticks and with the assistance of bouncers in the pen, the men sorted through us, diverting people down different pathways based on some criteria or other. Bodies jostled and bounced around as the long sticks prodded and divided us. A long stick came down suddenly on my left side and I was sent off through one of the gates into a long switchback of wicker fences designed to act as a buffer for slaves coming in quickly with the queue ahead moving slowly.

As I stood in queue for whatever came next I looked around and there were not many people in my gate but the other gates were being flooded with all kinds. I tried to make sense of what they were dividing us up for, the weak, old or sick-looking; the strong and able-bodied men; and my group which was maybe the cleanest, healthiest looking. Was I going to be put to the worst kind of hard labour because I was the healthiest looking one here? Peering around my queue mates as I shuffled forward I could see more porters, this time with desks stationed along the fence, each had an assistant that was picking coloured beads from a box and threading them onto a string.

I was straining my neck and ears trying to listen in to what was being said up front when suddenly a porter barked in my ear "Name?", I hadn't noticed the desk to my left and I stared in shock at the porter, my ears ringing. His assistant had the string prepared with a bead already threaded. "Americ?" he barked again. This was the word people used for language and it suddenly clicked, he was asking if I understood his language. "Oh, yes" I said. "Good, name?" he said quickly without any hesitation whilst his assistant threaded another bead on the string. He obviously did this every day and no longer had any patience for anybody so I tried to be as clear and direct with my answers as possible, lest I end up shovelling shit for the rest of my days.

The porter had on his desk a clay tablet in a frame and a metal stylus in his hand and he was putting my answers into the clay; the writing was a series of closely spaced vertical lines, some angled or crossing and wasn't like writing I had seen elsewhere, a lot more words could fit onto a tablet with this narrow writing and it took fewer taps, he was very efficient and could tap out words almost as fast they could be spoken. "Can you read and write?" came the next question. "No", I had said instinctively before realising that my answer could be the difference between back-breaking hard labour and a job with a chair like this guy. The assistant already had what must be the "uneducated" bead prepared before I quickly blurted out "I can do numbers! I know string-numbers, and I can read clay numbers!". They used different clay numbers here, but they would be easy enough to learn compared to writing which was as far as I could tell, completely random.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

When I first encountered clay numbers it was at a market and a lady had a display of her fruit and vegetables and beneath each tray was a clay plaque decorated with a pattern of lines. She had spaced them out across her stall assumedly to stand out rather than have them all together. I thought these were maybe ornaments or decorations for the home so I picked one up and turned it about. For an artistic design it was pretty crude and asymmetric but then it all fell into place -- these were warding symbols to drive off the flies and rot! I wanted to know more so I asked the lady "What are these symbols for?" and she looked at me as if I had just called her mother the offspring of camels. "The price" she replied as if she couldn't believe her ears. "No, I don't want to know the price, I want to know what these warding symbols are used for" I explained. "No, the symbols are the price... were you abandoned in the desert as a baby?" she bit back, "Look, here, it says three-eighths!" pointing a finger at the lines. I stared at the lines and I couldn't make sense of them; maybe the lines counted the numbers but that would mean there would be three lines and then eight lines, but there weren't even enough lines for that and they were all different angles and sizes. I think it finally clicked with her that this was new to me and it seemed to amuse her enough that she softened a bit. "Have you never seen writing before? My, you really were raised by wolves! Here, this says '3'", pointing to the first set of lines, "this is the solidus" (pointing to a longer line between the two groups of lines), "and this is '8'". It appeared that they didn't use string numbers but made drawings in clay but I couldn't discern the connection between the lines and the numbers. I looked around at the other plaques to see what other symbols were used. There was a variety of them, so there must be at least 10 or 100 different symbols and each one meant a specific number somehow. "Could I buy this from you?" I asked her. "You mean the plaque?" she asked dumbfounded. I suppose from her perspective it sounded as if I wanted to buy sand off of her. "If it helps, sure" and not one to let a deal walk away she added "do you want any of the others too?" so we picked out plaques that had a variety of numbers on them and haggled out a price and she wished me luck, waved me goodbye and I went around the market looking at the plaques, asking about prices and within a few hours I had the whole number system worked out and memorised.

Raising his hand to stay his assistant's bead, the porter seemed to relax a little and leaned forward to ask "Math?". "Yes", I said, I mean I could do market numbers no problem but I wasn't sure if he was expecting geometry. "What's 57 times 36?" he said pulling numbers out of the air. "twenty hundreds, two and fifty" I replied immediately. "I have a good memory too!" I added trying to improve my chances. The porter eyed me up and down trying to discern if I was bullshitting him. He thought for a moment and then looked over his shoulder to his assistant and said "We'll check this one further, purple". The assistant replaced the previous bead and fumbled for a purple one, threaded it and then tied the string into a loop and hung it around my neck before shoving me down the line without so much as a goodbye.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I was under the balconies now and the roof sloped down and the walls enclosed us as we approached the end of the fenceways, every person was now pooled together, each with their own necklace of colour-coded beads to identify them. Hot air blew against our faces from the back of the cave-like area we were in and orange light danced over the rock ceiling. Then the muffled screams began. I looked about trying to understand what was going on and there was much murmuring as everybody else was doing the same. Were they killing off the worthless ones? What barbaric insanity was this!? Word fed down the crowd, they were branding us. Up until now I had been trying to remain calm and make sense of everything, if I was going to escape I had to remember where everything was and plan carefully but now I was scared and panicking. If waiting outside in the midday sun was torture, this was terror; the screams emanating from up front weren't helping. Another batch of slaves began arriving from the gates behind asking what was going on and so the fear spread through the ranks quickly.

As much as I didn't want to move forward the thinning crowd ahead was the only direction I could go, over their shoulders I could see several open fire pits with hot irons heating in the flames. Men wearing leather tunics to protect them from the heat were feeding the fires with fuel, others were pumping bellows, and at each fire pit sat on a stool was the iron master doing the branding. He was juggling several hot irons at a time in the fire to keep things moving which only meant fresh screams came every 10 seconds or so. There were many guards, all with metal swords in the belt and armed with a club, tasked with keeping the flow going. People were grabbed from the front of the crowd and pulled over to the iron master and made to sit down on a stool. A rag wrapped around a stick was shoved into their mouth to bite down on and the guard held their arm in place whilst the iron master selected a red hot iron from the fire. Anybody who resisted got beaten and branded without the bit between the teeth. Those screams rang through the head like a bell. Another worker was ready with a cloth which he dunked in a bucket of water, slapped it on the fresh burn and tied a tourniquet before shoving the victim to the back of the cave past the fire pits.

The wall of flesh behind pushed me closer and closer to inevitability. My heart was pounding, my head light from my panicked breathing. I was trying over and over again to think of a way out of this, some way to take control of the situation but my brain was spinning in circles. I didn't even see the hand grab my arm and yank me with such force my feet left the floor. The rest was a blur of senses, "purple" the guard uttered to the iron master as I was thrown to the chair, my legs giving way easily. The searing heat of the fire. The smell of burning flesh in the air. "Head" came the voice of the iron master and the guard clamped his beastly hands on top of my head and under my chin. Do I not get the bit!? The iron master's hands passed over the hot irons and instead selected a long fine needle. Were they going to poke my eyes out because they didn't want anybody reading their secret numbers!? I was done with caution, I'd rather die fighting than have my eyes poked out. I tried struggling but with my arms still bound behind my back, my head in the guard's vice-like grip and my legs as weak as aspic, I was utterly powerless. As the iron master raised the red hot needle I grit my teeth, held my breath and scrunched my eyes shut as tightly as I possibly could, I was going to fight with everything I had left. A hand grabbed my ear and pulled, there was a sharp pain in the side of my head, some rustling, a crunching sound, and a sudden disorientating rush as I was lifted off the stool and pushed away.

I stumbled and flopped forward, my whole body shaking, my jaw having been clenched so hard it ached. I was caught by a porter in a purple tunic but before I could even stand on my own I looked back. I couldn't tell you what I was expecting to see, my brain just assumed that I'd see myself, to witness what I had just been through because I didn't see it. I didn't understand what had happened -- I wasn't blind -- but I did get my answer because the next person was getting the same treatment. The iron master took a short leather lace from a box at his feet and with that hand gripped the guy's ear whilst picking up the hot needle with the other hand. Ear-piercings! That was what that pain was and the strange feeling like something is stuck to the side of my head. The iron master pushed the lace through the ear-lobe with the hot needle and then wrapped the two ends together in a leather tag he had palmed all whilst putting down the hot needle and picking up some kind of pliers in the other hand, crimping a metal stud through the leather tag to seal it.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

"This way please" the guy in the purple tunic said, directing me away as another purple tunic swept by to catch the next guy. My head was still spinning and I completely lost track of which directions I was being lead. Dimly lit tunnels, this way and that, some stairs up, more tunnels, a door, a room, bracers removed, a chair, "Wait here for now". I sat massaging my wrists trying to get the movement back into them. There was the door I entered through, four chairs on each side of the room, another door on the opposite wall and some kind of oil lamp sculpted into the bare rock wall providing the only light. I had hardly finished looking around the room when the door I think I came through opened and several people entered the small room; a purple tunic, a guard and three other people like me, two women and one guy. The purple tunic was explaining "you just need to wait here and you'll go through some basic tests soon" as the guard was undoing the bracers. The three other captives dropped to their seats around the room and we all stared at each other in disbelief. The man was all hair: beard, sideburns, eyebrows, the lot. The women had their hair tied back highlighting their pale-faces and one was holding her hand over the ear tag unsure if what just transpired was real.

The guy spoke first. "I think we just narrowly escaped a nasty fate there!" he said trying to force a bit of joviality. "We're not out of the fire yet" I added, trying to temper expectations. I had no idea what came next, this was the first moment I'd gotten to think since being sucked into the rock. What was all this about? Why did we get ear tags instead of being branded. "I think it's because I can read" the man announced trying to keep the conversation going, "can you read and write?" he asked in the direction of the two women. The one who was holding her ear and staring into space stammered out a "yes" as if it were expected of her. "I can't do words, but I can do numbers" I butted in so that she didn't have to explain herself any further. He continued unabated, "I reckon we're going to be sold to some merchant or other and do accounts or scribing -- it sure beats breaking rocks!". The shocked lady was opening and closing her mouth like a sand lizard whilst the other woman held her hand and comforted her; the thought of having to break rocks may have broke her mind. "Rogert, by the way" he introduced himself. "Oh, Sarah" said the calm lady and she nudged the shocked lady to produce another word from her, "Esmae". Both women looked to be in their 30s with Sarah somewhere in the lower half and Esmae in the upper half.

I kicked my feet out, leant back on my chair and stared at the ceiling trying to figure things out whilst the 'I got it all worked out guy' regaled the women with his life story. After 10 minutes of having to listen to tales of adventure and fisticuffs of questionable veracity, the opposite door opened and in stepped a tall, older woman in white robes with purple hem and an unusual metal armlet around the upper arm that was kind of maze-like. She was carrying a clay tablet in a frame much like the questions people earlier. "Oh, four people today, that's nice!" she said as if to nobody, and then "this way!" in a sing-song voice as she left the room before we had even stood up. We filed out of the door, the talkative guy whispering "I'll tell you later" to the women. The next room was larger with the walls cut flat and many desks and stools. 4 down the left wall, 4 down the right, and then at the end of the room against the right wall the sing-song lady already sat at her desk. In the left corner, on a chair, sat a guard who wasn't expecting much trouble from us. We all chose desks and sat down on the stools. Each desk had a lamp, a wax tablet and a metal stylus. The sing-song lady began at once, "I am Julia Principa of The City Skills and Labour Department, my job is to ensure the city has all the necessary people and skills available to function. There will be a series of tests to determine where you fit in but for now just write down an informal introduction, if you can't write words please just write the numbers that you know" and with that she was eyes down looking at her tablet as if we had vanished from before her.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

What in the worldglass was wrong with this crazy woman!? Had she no idea of the trauma we'd just been through -- kidnapped, beaten, marched through the desert for days on end and treated like cattle -- we were still in the rags and loincloths we'd started out in! I had half a mind to go over there and shake some sense into her where she sat but then the guard would have to get off his chair. I turned to the others to see if they were showing the same exasperation but they were already heads-down etching away at their tablets. I can't be left behind here I thought to myself, these people can already write and I can't and it's going to be much easier to escape chained to a desk than it is chained to rock. Even though I could read clay numbers I hadn't ever actually done any writing. It looked simple enough, just press the stylus into the clay but the wax was hard and you couldn't just press straight down into it so I had to scratch away like trying to etch a stone. It was messy and looked like the aftermath of a chicken fight.

There was a tut from the calm lady and she picked up her tablet and waved it over the flame of her desk lamp a few times and then returned the tablet to the desk before using her thumb to press flat the wax. She had made a mistake and was rubbing it out! I felt stupid for not realising this myself and after warming my wax tablet and covering my tracks I etched out all the unique number symbols plus a few words I had learnt from sight due to how common they were, such as "IN", "OUT" and "NO CREDIT" even though I didn't know how the individual lines were chosen to make one word into another. I had some space left at the bottom and, worried about not knowing enough to fill the tablet, I added the warding symbols I knew; I needed all the luck I could scrape together right now.

When I was done Esmae had already finished and Rogert was spinning the stylus across his fingers whilst Sarah was holding up her tablet and examining her work carefully. As soon as her tablet touched the desk our overseer looked up from her work reading a handful of tablets whilst tapping out another one, "Excellent!". She strode between the desks collecting up our tablets and eyeing them over, "All very good work, now let's have some refreshments shall we?" she announced as she returned to her side of the room, opened the door beside her desk and stuck her head through just to warble "Cleoooo dear, refreshments if you could!" before returning to her seat, setting down our wax tablets and getting a fresh clay tablet from the shelf that ran under each desk for such things. Not a second was wasted with this woman, on anything.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

Not a minute later a youthful woman walked in, her hair was short and tussled, and she was also wearing a long white robe with purple trim although the metal armlet on her upper arm was a simple band, not elaborate like Principa's. Cleo was carrying an ornate pitcher and a stack of... glass? She set the pitcher and strange tower of glass down on her mistress's desk and plucked a piece from the top, placed it next to the pitcher and then poured water from the pitcher into the glass. I could not believe my eyes what I was seeing: pure, completely see-though, polished-to-perfection glass, crafted into a mere cup. I had never seen such a thing, I couldn't even begin to estimate its worth, and there were five of them here! And the water! As pure as the glass. When the water stilled, it's as if it simply disappeared! I turned to the others to see if this was normal where they'd come from. Rogert was sucking air through his teeth. Sarah had merely raised her eyebrows and Esmae was gawping, wide-eyed and transfixed, although this was normal for her thus far.

Once the assistant had poured water for her mistress she picked up the glasses and dispensed them one by one to us before returning to pour out water. As I waited I turned the glass around in my hand mesmerised by the play of light, bending and shifting around. How was such a thing even possible? I was familiar with glass, we used glass knives in my clan but that glass was a muddy black-brown colour and whilst it was sharp it was brittle and couldn't be sharpened many times before you needed a new blade. We had almost no metal because we could only get metal from scraps of iron ore found on loose surface rocks and forging iron required a strong furnace and that required a lot of firewood and there were not many trees around and we mostly used brush wood and tumbleweed, although all of our tent-pegs were metal because nothing else was as strong and reliable. Digging for metal was a new concept to me when I left the clan, if you had enough metal to start with you could make a tool that was a cross between a hammer and a knife -- a pick they called it -- and you could force your way into a rock with this and pick the ore out from inside. Everywhere I had been metal was used to barter so there was lots of it about which meant that there had to be well-fed furnaces which meant that higher quality glass could be made, which was a milky colour like crystal, and this could be polished into beads and jewellery. But glass like this cup? There was only one place I had ever seen this type of glass before.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

I was twelve. On your thirteenth birthday (to reflect the thirteen moons of the year) you had a coming of age ceremony and were considered an adult and had to provide for the clan whichever way you were able. Every 10 years an expedition of those who had since come of age was arranged to go see the edge of the worldglass. It was a five day trek there and those going would be expected to catch their own food. My birthday would have been during the trip so my mother said I had to wait until next time but I was burning with the need to see the edge of the worldglass that I had heard of in the fables and when I asked anybody who would talk to me questions about everything: why was the sky blue? Where did the sand come from? Where was it going? When my mother said I couldn't go I asked my father. When he said no I begged, pleaded with them, to go -- can't my coming of age ceremony be delayed until I got back? Again, no. Preparations were already under way and you couldn't delay your coming of age ceremony, it was the most important day in your life. I even tried cajoling: "But the whole clan won't be there until they get back anyway, surely you want everybody to be there?". Final no, that was that. So I sneaked out at night and went to the wise woman to beseech her for permission to go. She listened patiently to my pleas and asked me to wait whilst she checked the stars and consulted the bones of the ancient wise-women before her. Finally, seeing that the winds were good, she agreed and told me to sneak back into bed and not to tell my parents and that she would handle everything. I'll never forget the wink she gave me when I slipped back into the night, my heart racing from the excitement of knowing I was going. I didn't sleep.

Sure enough, days later, the expedition was packed and, waving to one and all, we set off. It was a long journey and it was tough -- I was the youngest one there and I was always trying to prove I was just as good even if I fell short. As the days passed the sky darkened ahead of us, at first I hadn't noticed, but by day 3 there was a visible difference in the colour of the sky in front of us compared to behind us. By day 4 the difference was stark, like we were approaching an impossibly huge mountain or we were uncovering where the night hid during the day. On the 5th day it was a vast black wall that filled your eyes and we rode in silence, partly in awe, partly afraid of the enormity of it. Eventually the stars came out in front of us, even though it was not night. Behind us was day, but there in front of us was night. We were going up hill now and then the sand became clumpy, and then it was wet and it got wetter and soon the camels got bogged down. "We're here", the expedition leader said. He was the most experienced shepherd in our clan who could spend months away at a time grazing the goats.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction

We put on mud shoes to stop us getting stuck and started for the edge. Ahead of us was an embankment, the top of the wet sand hill we had been trekking up for the last hour, no horizon beyond, just the darkest night sky full of the brightest stars that you ever saw. It looked as if you could just fall off the edge of the world. "Is it solid?" I asked the expedition leader. "Go, see for yourself" he said and smiled at me. "I'll get there first!" yelled one guy and we were all off, running as best as we could in the wet sticky sand up the embankment. We pushed and shoved each other and we got soaked and caked in sand all over and some stopped to throw sand balls at each other and we laughed and screamed and I fought and tugged and climbed until every muscle in my body hurt and my heart felt like it was going to explode. On my hands and knees I crawled upwards, dragging myself one hand in front of another until suddenly my hand hit the stars. I couldn't believe it, I stared at my hand, catching my breath, and watched as water clear as the glass ran down my arm. Condensation, thousands and thousands of miles of it. The glass was cool, smooth and absolutely solid as a rock but utterly flat and completely see-through as if it were not there. I laughed at the absurdity of it as I began pulling myself up. I pressed myself against the glass, arms out and let the night sky swallow me whole. The laughing and screaming behind me fell silent, I could feel the others' eyes fixed on me in awe. "It's solid!" one whispered, and they all stopped their in-fighting and rushed to reach the top.

It was all true; the fables, the wayfarer; all of it. It was real, and I had touched it with my own hands. At that moment I knew in my heart that Journey's End was real too and my purpose in life was to go there, that nothing would stop me or turn me away from it. Before now, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I became an adult, I had tried just about everything and I was not the best at any of it. Now I knew with certainty what I needed to do. Anything I could learn from the Keepers of the oral histories that could clue me in. Whatever prepared me for the journey; hunting, butchering, knife making, surviving in the desert. That day I turned thirteen, and my parents had been right -- it was the most important day of my life.

#aeonglass #writing #fiction