Page 2 of Storm

Unbuckling the tool belt from around my waist, I push through the front flap of our modest home and place it on a hook next to the door. My bare feet rub, squeaking slightly from sweat against the rubber of our floor, so I slow my movements, careful not to make any more loud noises. Our allotment of power affords us a small night light above our rickety steel kitchen table, dangling haphazardly on a makeshift conduction string Nix had fashioned around a single bulb. It gives me the heebie-jeebies, but it is safe as long as we don’t touch it during a strike or until we turn off the rods each morning for our repairs.

Making my way over to the shallow kitchen sink, I pump a handful of water into a bowl and bring it to the wooden table where a first aid kit waits. We don’t even bother putting it away anymore since Nix and I use it daily. The vial of rubbing alcohol I’m after sits at the top. Holding it up to the light, the liquid barely covers the bottom of the tiny, smoky bottle. My hand tenses, my cracked wounds smarting. We will need to get more of this next Market Day. Wound care is not cheap. There’s always the option of going without, but we can’t afford infections. In this place, that equals death.

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.