Seraphina (On Hold)

Seraphina Chapter 1

      The wagon rocked back and forth as its rickety wooden wheels rolled across the unleveled dirt road waking me from my sleep. Leaning up, I yawned and wiped away the sleep from my eyes. 

 " 'Bout time you're waking up. I need a break from driving," Gale called from the drivers seat in the front of the wagon. I stood up and stumbled to the window where I could see where Gale was sitting. He sat there, rigidly with his cloak pulled up against his face to fend of the iced air of the plains. Our leading animal, a great grey Ox named Druambe, grunted and pulled on the reigns begging for slack. Gale held the reigns tight in his hands, as he was uneasy about slowing our pace, yet he obliged the beast not wanting to over work him any more than necessary.

 "How much further?" I called in a low voice careful not to break his concentration. 

 "Every half hour you ask, 'How much further' or 'How much longer'  you're really starting to sound like a four year old."

 I huffed in reply, "Forgive me for wanting to get into sanctified land before the frost comes," I sat back down and crossed my arms in front of my chest. "It was just a question no need to bite my head off!"

 Although he was right in snapping at me, the anxiety of crossing the Voided Lands so undermanned was almost more than I could bear. Besides that, the sight of the treeless flats and fens of The Voided Lands, partnered with the dust colored sky, made my eyes yearn for the blues, yellows, greens and whites of our mountain home. My brain itched anxiously for visual stimulation. I might go crazy out here, but of course Gale is handling things perfectly. This being his fourth trip crossing the plains and only my second.

Gale just turned twenty, while I am only six months behind him, he is already so much more experienced than I. Even so, our entire family is counting on us, the youngest members of our family to make the delivery of harvested wheat before the snow comes and the Voided Lands become impassible with snow.

 This is how It has been for generations. My father's grandfather was the first to settle his family in the mountains high above the scourge of the Wights and the fires in the old cities. I always heard stories about the old cities, before the scourge and the Wights he lived in a huge city brimming with people. There were also buildings that touched the sky and 'electricity' used like flame-less fire. "Life was easy then," Grandpa would always say. Food was always available, no one had to hunt or farm. Food was always somehow pre-cut and packaged with fancy wrappings and vibrant colors.

We do not have any of those things now. My great Grandfather said, " People then had every thing they wanted or ever needed." That is until, they used the earth and each other with wanton avarice. That is why Grandpa thinks the earth sent us the Wights. The Wights are humanities' punishment.

 After the Wights came, I was told that the cities became death traps. Thousands upon thousands of Wights were made everyday, and they accumulated there, as if drawn in by the stench of death. It was no longer safe to stay in the cities for people who had not been effected by the scourge or (sickness). It was great Grandfather and his family that escaped from the cities so long ago and fled to the rocky mountains in the east. It was there, where I was born and raised. The mountains is where Wights cannot climb the craggy earth or move quickly through the snow.

 For eight decades, my family some how survived. They learned to cultivate the land and hunt it's animals--all the while fires and death took over the land below. That burned and lifeless land became to be known as, The Voided lands. It wasn't until my Grandfather, that our family left to see what had become of the rest of the land beneath the mountains. Grandfather was lucky enough to learn about WhiteAsh and its walls, and he took sanctuary within them. Still, he chose to raise his family away from WhiteAsh, for there were too many people--for it is known that, a lot of people attract Wights. From then on, my family used Whiteash as a resource and they used us for trading good they could not grow on their own.