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AmberA

Member

Registered: 2019-07-02

Posts: 168

Oracion family and the story of how we died out.../facepalm

I was born as a male into the Oracion family who was of the desert race. It was a somewhat large town that has a well that used seals. My mother gave me a name but wasn't very loving. Sometimes she would feed me but not always. Another woman dressed me, fed me and was provided the love that my mother didn't. But perhaps now I understand why. I heard rumbles of a panic going on outside the nursery. A took a peak at the commotion and saw all the berries were dry. A tumbleweed rolled past, the crops were on the verge of death. The seal of the well was torn and we had no replacement! I snuck into the kitchen and heard the village elders discussing that we have had no rains and that we were in a famine. I heard a woman wailing about all three of her children dying due to starvation. My god, what have I been born into?! There was a massive panic, people were dying left and right.

The men and boys rallied together and went out in different directions to get supplies to fix the well. One left with a knife and bucket in search of the jungle people. The men left on horses while I was on foot. I'd heard there might be other villages and without saying goodbye to my mother, I left on foot. I didn't think she'd miss me. I took a bowl to fill with berries as I walked. I walked far but saw no signs of civilization. I quickly ate all my berries, stored the bowl in my pack and my belly ached as I walked on. I was ready to give up. As I was passing through a dangerous swamp, I muttered a prayer...and just then I saw a cart with four empty buckets! Perhaps the town will survive another day!

I quickly filled the buckets using my bowl and hauled the cart home. I'd grown into a strong teenager in the wilderness pulling the heavy cart but as I arrived at my village, the quiet was eerie. I saw a woman leave her child to die, I fed it a berry but he didn't survive. The mother died soon after. We had watered the crops but it would take weeks before anything edible would grow. The village had one fertile woman left so I told her, "Take what you can and survive off the wilderness, return after the crops had grown". She left to take refuge in the wild. She was our last hope.

Two other adults and myself remained in the village, trying to cook in preparation for the last woman's return. But allas, we heard a cry in the wind and we knew...the last woman was dead. The Oracion line would end. The others either left town or gave up and refused to eat.

I was alone in the village, surrounded by the bones of my mother, my siblings, my entire family. I decided I would stay and clean up. I started cleaning up the kitchen, as I was carefully moving the bones of the dead outside...I saw something that made me laugh and cry.

Just outside the kitchen door was three buckets of sulfured latex, three bowls of palm kernels and a bowl of palm oil...

Morti

Member

Registered: 2018-04-06

Posts: 1,323

Re: Oracion family and the story of how we died out.../facepalm

Good story.
If we don't teach, people will learn,
but we, can help them learn too.
Even better, we can help them learn,
to teach, by teaching anything, more often.

This is one reason I am against consistently bootstrapping new towns, with products of old ones;
people need to learn the steps, when they are needed to be taken, at all stages and in order.

They'll get it.
We'll get it.