Two Moons

Chapter 2 ~ The Red Day (part 2)

The sky was full blazing, blood red by dawn. Sat in the corner of Hugo’s room was Seline. Her red hair fell in bouncing waves that moved slightly with the empty wind. Her eyes were black and piercing in the light. She smiled as he awoke.

“Come now, Ugo-shi, the solar eclipse is nearing every day,” She said.

“Must I see you?” He groaned, his body was exhausted and craved more sleep but his brain was buzzing, his heart thudding. He hated when she entered Ona, hated the way she behaved. Hated her smile and black eyes.

“Always nice to be back here, to think twenty years ago this place was prosperous and one of the finest Nomad lands before Aurora burnt everything,” She laughed to herself. “All because of you, my little fire,” She was above him, stroked his brown hair. “You should shave.”

She faded into the sunlight streaming like red ribbons into his room.

Hugo pulled his aching limbs off of the bed and stood. Let his body soak in the scarlet light.

Pulled his boots on, a clean cotton shirt and black slacks. He climbed out of the window, scaled the side of the eroding stone onto the brown grass. Sucking the crisp, hot air into his lungs, he ran through the plains. The earth with is balding grass, the flat land that stretched nostalgically before him. He found the clump of woodland, now populated by naked trees, he would venture into as a child. Twenty years ago. The black trees were maze like, stained with markings of dried, old blood.

Canners. The cannibals had taken over Nylo, eaten most of the people until there was little left other than bones and hair. How were they surviving now? Chewing up the wandering traveller who wandered too far?

He felt his feet carry him through the former woodland, further north, into their territory. He didn’t realise, lost in a red daydream.

He kept walking, and walking. The sky was engulfed in a thick dark red which choked the sunlight into emitting a crimson glow that stained all bare beneath it.

On the horizon he saw a billowing cloud of red smoke dancing in the red air. The sound of drums reverberated through the red earth. Calls and chants and screeches melodically drew him. Closer and closer and closer.

Tents of stained red rose as he drew closer. They were tall and pointed with ripped fabric swayed in the weak wind. The ground pulsated with life, something Nylo had long forgotten. He was soon able to make out people moving erratically in the centre of the circling tents, they were in turn, circling the huge red bonfire at the heart of the campsite.

Hugo found himself only steps from the border, some of the people were sat observing, others entangled in sensual embraces, drinking a milky fluid. Four women, clothed only in black feathers around their hips with black feather bracelets and anklets, danced and whirled chains with blazing fires at the ends ripping through the air like blood red and orange brush strokes. The sky had darkened with the setting sun so that the red of the sky was only tinted. The drums had swallowed Hugo in a hypnotic thrum.

There he stared into the eyes of the cannibals, stared into the eyes of the men eaters. There he had entered without ever knowing so.

Aurora’s violet moon slid so that she was adjacent to Seline. The Red Day had ended.