Rough Writing

Rain fell on the dusty ground. Big, fat heavy drops pulling the dirt from the air and turning it into mud. Frank leaned back against the wall with a little creak from his chair. He closed his eyes and just listened to the wind and rain sweep over his little farmstead. It had been a long day. The suns had been high and the work hard but things were looking up. His boys were tucked in bed covered with patch work quilts sent by their grandmother on the last shipment from the old homestead. Life was hard but there was a life out here. So much had been lost. Frank remembered very little of life before, mainly light and sitting on his bed reading books with his father. His dad hadn’t survived the awakening. He just remembered the hugs, his father’s beard, glasses. Laughter. That had been a long time ago.

Frank had his own family now. Young sons, a boy just over three cycles and an older son who was reaching his naming day soon. That was something different. The lost came so often these days most folks didn’t dare name their kids anything until they were too old to be taken. Those that lived past the first few years anyways. Frank’s Mom had told him it wasn’t always so. She told him that he’d been born in a special place with Doctors and Nurses, whatever they were. They were lucky if anyone with healing knowledge came within a hundred miles of their county. Times were tough, people were tougher and the Lost were everywhere.

Frank had never seen a Lost one before. Most hadn’t. He had seen their work though. People said they were angels sent to punish man for their sins. Others who were self proclaimed educated folk claimed they were the original inhabitants of this world. Frank had heard the cries of a mother who’d lost a child to the Lost. That long piercing wail of finding a bed empty of life. A bed with just a withered husk where a child full of future had been laid to rest. Everyone had tried protecting the children. Talismans were sold, watch was kept, but in the end nothing stopped a chosen child from departing this world.

Frank’s nose filled with the sweet clean smell of fresh rain as he watch a small spontaneous stream cut through the dirt trail leading from their home to the barn and begin carving itself a winding  path back and forth. Moments later Claire came out wiping her hands on her apron and sat by him. Silently they both watched as the storm blew in in earnest. They were Faters, people who believed that the Lost took the chosen and that those taken were somehow blessed to be taken from this harsh world. Claire had lost two younger siblings and Frank had watched his half brother pass right before him. If the Lost came, they would mourn the life they would have had with the child but not the child itself. Not that losing a child was easy.

Frank’s family had been lucky. His father and mother had never had much but when the time to leave the old world and come here came they had been part of the raffle group. Frank remembered his father hugging him and telling him he would see him after their long nap as Frank had gone to sleep for a long time. Frank had never seen his father alive after that. A distant boom crackled through the air. “That didn’t sound like thunder Frank” Claire said quietly. “Maybe, just maybe, Claire” Frank replied calmly. He did stand up however and headed inside to gather his rifle and pistols. The Lost were not the only ones to worry about out here.

Boomers they were called. Small quadrupeds who lived in massive colonies in the mountains. They flew with giant beasts who used built up pressure to accelerate to devastating speed with large booms. They came down during the spring rains to raid and refuel. The human’s had never managed to establish any sort of dialogue or peaceful coexistence. They typically didn’t bother people who fired off a shot or two. Frank walked back out of their wooden small home pushing some ammo into his rifle. They’d had more advanced weaponry when the colony had landed but the atmosphere combined with the slight change in gravity had made most of the propellants for their advanced weapons useless. They’d reverted to cheaper to produce formulas that were easier to make out in the different colony counties. Mineral deposits had been scarcer than expected as well so tech was expensive and heavily concentrated in Nexus, the central and only city in the colony Remnant.