About the Work
A farming tribe lives under a sentient sun that controls their harvest. A boy looks up at it when he should have kept his head down. The sun turns red; the famine comes. The tribe does what tribes do, and the maddened are what remains. The story is written in the rhythms of a fable.
Story
Great men have come and weak men have gone. Before them, we have sowed, and after them, we will reap. They must come and go just as we must rise, just as we must tend to our crop. Without them, we would not live, but without us, they would not come nor would they go. We give them no salutation. They give us no heed. We, the people of the crop, know no better nor worse than those who move through. Many of the youths, still undecided of their station, will chant foul curses. The chants are without direction, without a target. We forgive them, for they have yet to see the amber sun, they have yet to decide its worth.
Amongst the youth, among those who pillaged and those who gluttonized, among the many larvae awaiting berth, resided a boy. A boy unlike and similar to the others, he had been the first to see through the blinds of childhood. Impatient, he looked through the cloth and stared into the eyes of the sun. In his indiscretion, he had looked when he should have hidden.