Sun Dark

[Floyd Looney]

Sun Dark
Floyd Geron Looney

Bits of broken glass, very common for this area the girl thought to herself. Amongst the rock pile they were always finding this glass, sometimes shaped or colored differently than just flat shards. Some of them were used as knives but too often they were worthless and hurt unwary persons who cut themselves on their edges and points.

The girl moved on, she wasn’t looking for glass she had to find something to eat. There was loose grass growing between some of the rocks and squeets were not that uncommon here. She was hoping to get a chance to catch one because she was hungry. There were muddy water holes in the area but none of them were good for drinking, Jarad called them rivid holes, which was one of the more common species.

Lehr stuck her tongue out at the thought, she detested the taste of rivid but if she didn’t catch a squeet or something else soon, she would be trying to catch one of the little hoppers. The squeets were fast, they would bite and scratch but at least they were edible without tasting like poop.

These rock piles and mud holes extended past the horizon, she never really thought about it but Jarad always said it wasn’t a natural formation. He was silly like that, going on about how people might have once built things out of the rocks and they fell down. There were far too many rocks to build anything out of, the largest structure she ever saw was home and that just had two partitions.

Lehr stood very still on top of a large flat stone and watched the slither move across a valley between two piles of rocks. She thought to herself intently before deciding that this particular type of slither, judging from the color patterns was not a juicer. She sprang on it and soon had bashed its head with a rock.

Finally, something worth eating and she wouldn’t have to think about eating a rivid today.

“Lehr!” she heard her brother calling “On home! Mother says a visitor is coming”

A visitor, why would there be a visitor she wondered. She stood up and climbed the piles of stones toward the voice and found him. “Why a visitor?” she asked.

“I don’t know” he shrugged “I don’t know how she would know someone is coming either”

Lehr had stopped worrying a long time ago how their mother just knew things that hadn’t happened yet, she was more interested in why someone was coming. “She isn’t trying to give me away again, is she?”

He just laughed for a moment “I guess that is possible, but after you ran away last time I think she gave up”

I’ll run away again if I have to, she told herself, I don’t want to belong to someone I don’t even know, I’d rather stay here. She was curious about other places that were not ‘here’ but not enough to want to just get up and leave the place she belonged.

Lehr started following her brother who glanced at one of the mud holes as they passed “Have you ate?”

“I caught a slither” she answered; he knew she did not like rivids but he never gave up.

She lay down on the stones and raised her head just enough to get a glimpse of home. Her mother and someone else were in front of the hovel. She couldn’t hear what they were saying while she was hiding but when Jarad walked on over and announced he had brought Lehr with him, the hiding was pointless.

Lehr glared at her older brother as she walked up to her mother and tried to hide behind her while looking up at the visitor. He was older, he had a beard and he brought something in a bundle. He said they were food but it didn’t look like anything Lehr remembered eating. The man wore a pelt around his middle but it wasn’t cold times, Lehr didn’t remember seeing anyone wearing pelt when it wasn’t cold times.

“These grow on the ground near my land” he was telling them “I always leave some so that it will grow again in the next season”

His name was Laxt and he showed them how to eat the bulb on the end on the grassy things. It tasted good, much to her surprise Lehr found herself eating more than she probably should have.

“There are trees taller than ten of me” Laxt told them “and clear water to the horizon”

Lehr couldn’t believe his story, it was too fantastical. “How is that possible? The biggest trees I ever saw were barely taller than Jarad and they only drop a few fruits if they alive”

“The rock piles make the ground hard for trees and stuff to grow. The mud holes seem to not want to share their water with the living things.” He told them “There are no rock piles where I live”

“No rock piles?” Jarad asked, sounding amazed “How far is it to this place?”

“About seven days journey if you are fast footed” Laxt told them “The living is easier there. This rocky place is too hard, that is why there are so few who live here”

“True” their mother said “But there is no one to hurt us either”

“Less people, less blood” Laxt responded “That was true but there have been many moons since Garan and his monkeys try to rule the lands”

“Not moons enough” their mother said “Garan and his monkeys kill Ladan. Lehr was too little then, but I don’t forget”

Lehr was feeling queasy “Are you here for me? Mother; you giving me away?”

“No” her mother answered “I just thinking about moving away from rocky land; Food hard to find”

“There are squeets, slithers and rivids” Lehr told them “Sometimes we can find honey bush and once we found that sweet spot and got stung by the buzzers”

“Mother is right though. Food is getting more hard to find than before. I remember more than Lehr” Jarad said to them, sounding like an older person “Maybe we should go”.

Lehr was almost convinced herself but she felt connected to this place, her home for her whole life and she would miss it terribly. There wasn’t much to take with them if they went, she realized. It’s not like they could take the hovel.

“Tell us about your land” Lehr asked.

“We all help each other. If someone else wants to hurt us like Garan, then we all fight together” Laxt told them, he pulled a knife from his pelt. It wasn’t glass but metal. Shiny metal. The only metal that Lehr had ever saw was bent and rusty and useless and sticking out of the rock piles at strange angles.

“We take care of plants” he said pointing to the last red bulb on the grassy he had brought “We help them grow, trees with fruits too; Plenty of foods to go around in my land”

Plenty of food, Lehr wondered. Again his story sounded too good to be true.

“We have knife like this but we have stick knife we throw and kill prey too” he told them “Sometimes we use fire to cook our prey”

“Fire?” Lehr asked

“Like storm lights” her mother explained “Remember the tree that burned because of storm light?”

Oh, that was fire. Scary.

“We make fire. We control fire” Laxt told them “Our land is safe, we have food and we live well”

“How?” Lehr asked, this just didn’t see, possible.

“Many villages work together. We are one land” he told them “No fighting, no killing. We have decider who picks winner of argue without fight”

“Decider?”

“Decider was picked by village elders but now we have Chief of all villages but he not like Garan, he listens to elders too” Laxt told them “Garan make promise but he lie, he never true. Now we make true the promises of liar Garan”

Mother sat up straighter and crossed her arms over her chest “We will move to your land. I want to see. If we go and I not like, I come back”

“Fair” Laxt said

Lehr thought more and more. They have all those things and we have nothing. Would they let us stay there? Would they kill us or eat us or enslave us?

We have nothing, she thought again. Why not just go and see?
…