Darius walked through the debris piled between the sand swept homes. Everywhere he looked, men and women cleaned sand from their mud brick dwellings. The hovels were a blessing during storms such as these, but in other ways, they were prisons, cooping up the colonists until the storm ended. With the storm raging, it was easy to fear that the chaos would never end, and they would be trapped forever. He looked up at one of the looming, red silhouettes in the distance.
The details of his nightmare came rushing back to him. Darius blinked hard, casting them back into the recesses of his memory.
Back in the alleys, every door was open, and every colonist was outside, looking things over, or checking on one another. Several picked up pieces of mud brick that had come from their roofs or walls. The houses on the colony's western side had stood for many years, proving their worth in the face of too many storms, but this storm had been severe.
Luckily, Darius's house had held.
He limped on with his cane, passing several of his neighbors. All of them had the same sobering expression that came with each storm. Their grave expressions would last until the effects of the storm had passed.
With a storm this bad, it was a slim hope there were no casualties.
Soon, The Heads of Colony would be out with their assessments and their stern faces. After each storm, they made their rounds, determining the damage and the deaths. Once they knew the impact, they assigned able-bodied colonists to help those in need. Even if he had damage, Darius would refuse their help. He wouldn't take assistance away from those who might need it more.
In the general area of his home, a few people checked on him, noticing him hobbling past, but no one stopped to converse. They knew him as the old man who fixed their spears and knives, nothing more. They had families—and problems—of their own.
Darius sometimes felt as if he were a ghost, drifting past the people around him. If not for the rhythmic thud of his cane, he might've convinced himself he was invisible. Looking at some of the people and their families, it was easy to feel that way.
Darius had never married. Most of his younger years had been spent sneaking into the caves, looking for treasures leftover from the first colonists. He had become an expert on maneuvering through those dank tunnels, finding the animals that lurked there, and bringing them back for food. His parents' scolding hadn't gone far with Darius. Each time he agreed to stay away from the formations, he ended up returning.
Everyone feared the punishments of The Heads of Colony.
Everyone except Darius.
His accident changed that.
When Darius was twenty-five years old, he'd been scavenging along a narrow ledge in a tunnel's bowels when a bat dove at his head, knocking him off balance. Darius had grabbed for a handhold, but found nothing. After falling many feet, he'd landed hard, fracturing a bone in his right leg. Despite tremendous pain, Darius had crawled for most of a day to get out of the caves, finding his way back without a torch, eventually making his way to the sunlight. Darius had lived, but the long journey out of the caves had worsened the injury, and he had lost the use of his leg.
He still remembered the crowd that had gathered around him that day as he pulled his dirty, bloodied body from the mouth of one of the tunnels.
A few kindly people had sent for a healer.
For several days afterward, The Heads of Colony and The Watchers had questioned him, thinking he was a criminal. More than one had threatened to throw him in the annex for a month, even a year. A few suggested he remain in there forever, for breaking the laws and venturing into the caves. Eventually, they decided his intentions weren't nefarious.
Or perhaps they decided that the loss of his shattered leg was punishment enough.
Overnight, Darius went from a respected person in Red Rock to a warning parents used to frighten their children. His accident ruined any chance he had at securing a woman to marry—no woman wanted a crippled man. Most turned away from Darius, and in turn, he withdrew, spending most of his time indoors, fixing things for those few colonists kind enough to give him work.
Now he was an old man, whose stories had mostly been forgotten.
But he'd never forget Akron.
Darius still remembered the day when Akron's parents had sent him to Darius's house to ask him to fix a spear. Unlike most of the colonists, who only spoke to Darius long enough to give him instructions, or exchange surface pleasantries, Akron had taken a keen interest in his work, hanging around as he made the repair. Darius had told him stories of the caves, describing each of the places where he'd found some of his scavenged metal—remnants from the miners—or in the case of a few older keepsakes that he'd hung on to, where his father and grandfather had found them in the desert.
Akron kept returning long after the spear was fixed.
Eventually, Darius came to enjoy his visits, and Akron turned from an acquaintance to a friend.
If Darius could have foreseen how his stories would spark a passion in the boy, he would've never told them. Looking up at the silhouette of the enormous, red rock formation on the colony's eastern side, where Darius suspected he'd disappeared, he felt the same pit in his stomach he did with every sandstorm.
It was his fault Akron had journeyed to the caves on that day, like he had done so many other days. And in an indirect way, it was Darius's fault he had died.