TRADE

Prologue: The bridge

Nobody can truly remember that day. It started off as a painfully ordinary day, or so the journals say. One moment, life is normal. The next moment...all hell breaks loose. As the sun was at it's peak, an ugly cloud shaded our home. Marking the beginning of our perpetual winter. What was initially believed to be a nasty storm was actually a natural anomaly. The ghastly thing still hangs above us to this day. A hundred or so years later.

Being caught on the wrong side of the cloud was a death sentence. Our number of civilians significantly dropped. Hundreds unable to stand the bitter cold. There are old records that call this period 'the days of thinning'. The journals detail how much we lost due to the sudden weather change. Crops dying, people dying and ultimately, hope dying. Hence we were nicknamed 'the waste land' for around fifteen years after the incident. An inhabitable freezing kingdom with less than a hundred living residents. Graves peppered on every bit of available land. Including the spaces that used to be lush green farms.

Ironically, it's different now. Babies born in our snowy domain are bound to the land. Built for the cold and unable to bare too much sun. Evolution set in quick. Our ability to withstand heat isn't all that changed. Our skin is ghostly pale and our eyes are black. Except me. I wasn't so lucky. My left eye is the traditional black but my right eye had to be Eristian native blue. It's almost entirely useless to me now. The light reflecting off the snow near blinded me.

Our neighbours shunned us. Not wanting to catch our bad luck or develop our 'freakish' features. There's been bad blood between us and Heliosos for a while. It hasn't become a war quite yet due to the peace treaty my great grandfather Nicholas penned. But it's not a close relationship. They have their land, we have ours and that's it. We don't trade, we don't share resources and we certainly don't share culture.

Our unfortunate predicament led them to praise the sun. Hoping that whatever caused the cloud to appear would spare them. Leading to loud week-long festivals throughout the year.

Our leaders mutually agreed to leave the bridge empty. Back when we we had seasons, the bridge was created over lake philia to make trading easier. But since they decided we were living bad omens, they shut the bridge down. It's still there. A relic of a past filled with unity. A time before our beautiful Eristia was divided. It's right where the cloud ends. So half is in our territory and the other belongs to them. Even lake philia is the same. Half frozen and half flowing. Both Tundarian territory and sosian territory. My tower has a beautiful view. I've illustrated old philia more times than I can count. It's a truly mesmerising sight. If only it wasn't blocked off by barbed wire.