“At first, we heard the deafening crack, as if a bolt of lightning had been shot straight into our ears. We felt the earth rumble, a feat nature had never performed in our country before. The walls shook; cabinets flew open, and we could head the tiles sliding from our rooftop and crashing against the ground outside.

I watched as my family tried to escape for the door, a feeble attempt to escape nature's wrath. But we found that no one could stand on their own feet. We crawled, frantically trying to make our way outside. I remember the shaking being so strong that I was unable to even lift my neck. The room spun, in a mad and swirling tempest that threw me in such a daze that I vomited.

 When we finally dragged ourselves into the streets we noticed a fetid stench in the air, as if the rotting carcasses of a thousand creatures made their resting places in the thoroughfare. I lifted myself up and sat on top of my legs. My head pressed into my chest, my body, crumpled in on itself until the rumbling stopped. When my bearings came to me, I turned my head about to see if all the members of my family had escaped our home alive. It was my mother, my father, my grandmother, and myself. I was relieved to see my kin safe and unharmed. As I let loose a shaky breath, my mother shrieked and turned my head to see her pointing to the sky in horror. I followed her shaky finger in the direction that it led to, and I felt my jaw widen on its own, while my heart nearly beat from its chest.

Every spot of cerulean sky, for as far as the horizon stretched, had been snuffed out; and in its place a canvas of ugly and sickening puce. The clouds that had once served as friendly reminders of the sky god's benevolence, appeared as if they were firewood in a smoldering brazier. A black miasmatic cloud of smoke and ash churned, appearing to condense into a singular but ever enlarging mass. Streaks of flaming cirrus cut across the poisonous nuvem and they began to twist into a maelstrom of the most foreboding black and crimson. My grandmother had crept near me and offered her wisdom in the form of prognosticated whisper,

 “‘Ush, ‘Ush my child, be still. Offer your penance to the god of fire.”

 I felt her decrepit claws sink themselves into my neck and, with all the strength she could muster, she forced my face into the ground.

Whether I was the only one she warned, or I was the only one who listened, it seemed at the time, that no one else heeded her warning. The screams of my family pierced deep into my heart, and the cries of despair from every corner of my village deafened me. And through it all, all I could do was shut my eyes, feebly trying to drown out the noise with prayer. Though I felt the cries of my people unanswered; in my own meditation I heard a sound. It was at first faint, but then it blasted melodiously like that of a thousand trumpeters, rattling my brain all the way down to the bottom of my spine. Then I heard its voice, like that of a large and vile toad; a fiendish belching of its noxious message to its millions of spawn, a message that only I seemed to hear,  

“There is no pleading with I.”

At once I felt my grandmother's hand leave my head and the choking scent of dust and ash filled my nostrils. I lifted my head back up and noticed the sky had gone from a tumultuous palate of red and black to a dull and lifeless grey.

At first there was nothing, but then little white flakes slowly fell from the sky. I held out my hands and let it collect into a pile of fluffy powder. At first, I thought it some strange snow, and in my foolishness, I held my tongue out. On its landing upon my tongue, I began to retch violently. It was spoilt ash, the kind of refuse left after burning the excrement of a swine.

Thus, on the first day of the eighth month; a month known throughout the world as one of harvest and festivals, our world began to crumble.

To my father however he dismissed it all as madness. To this day I am not sure what he had thought, but knowing my father, he just hoped to return to his field. For you see my father was a farmer. His father was a farmer, and so was his grandfather and his grandfather’s father. Hardy men who had bought, bit by bit, the entire countryside that surrounded our hamlet. These were men who lived in the same house their fathers died in, men who cared not for the struggles outside the field and men who would rather die than deviate from the path laid out for them.

It was expected that I would continue the craft and so every day, whether the sun was out or not, my father would collect me from my bed. So, on the day following the incident, my father shook me awake,

“Boy, wake thyself, the hour of sunrise is nigh.”

I looked up at the bushy faced man,

“Surely,” I thought, “He must’ve felt some sort of way about it all?”

But as he directed me to the kitchen table, where my mother had laid before us the usual breakfast of hogs’ meat, cheese and bread. My father sat and began consuming his meal, as if it were any other day.

 My grandmother was shaking, her cup of tea spilling all over her hands as she looked wide eyed at her son.

“He spoke my son! We need to leave! Depart for the southern lands as soon as…”

My father waved his hand and spoked rather sternly.

“Silence mother. I’ll hear no such thing”.

He shook his finger at her and pointed away to the fields beyond the wall,

“Father would turn over in his grave if he heard you even think of abandoning the fields.”

He turned to me and shook his fist,

“Stay strong son. Eat hearty and collect your tools.”

After our meal and morning prayer, I gathered my tools and took a deep breath before following the temperamental yeoman outside. The sky was somewhat clear, but there still seemed a thin overcast of gray. The ash that started yesterday had continued falling, and by this morning a thin dusty layer had collected itself on the ground. I reached down and scraped a small pile, one that only reached to my first knuckle. I wondered aloud,

“I wonder when this will cease.”

My father huffed,

“Hopefully soon.”

We walked through the town and bade our mornings to everyone we passed. The butcher, blacksmith, fishmonger, baker, apothecary and so on, each opening their shops as if nothing occurred. There was a slight tension in the air, but everyone was trying their best to ignore what had occurred.

We trudged on and into the fields, the same ones my ancestors had bought so many years ago and we began to work. We harvested fat bundles of wheat and large ripe ears corn for sale, the kernels of each looking healthy and juicy. As we continued with our reaping, my father couldn’t help but comment on the weather of the day,

“The sun seems rather light for harvest time.”

 I looked up and chuckled,

“Oi, father, you can hardly see the damned thing.”

In truth, I took this as a more inauspicious omen; my joking only served as a counter to my true feelings. The sun still shone and looking at it still caused a burning, but one could hang on it a few seconds longer than normal, and the normally crisp harvest heat was nowhere to be found… My father kicked a little dirt at me with his heel,

“Let not your grandmother hear. She’s frightened.”

Our day ended nearly as it had started on the dusty main road through town. We had sold all our goods, first to the townsfolk, then to the laymen and the traders, and then finally to a roving caravan of people passing hurriedly through our humble village.

They had come from the capital, farther north in the fair lands. They spoke in hushed tones about how the calamity had blighted them. Terrifying stories of hunger and robbery in the streets, while the crown doing nothing to alleviate the stress on the poor populace. My father would have none of it however, and he grabbed me by my collar and ripped me away. As we walked away one of them shouted that they were heading to the lands beyond the Great Southern Lake. As my father dragged me along, he only shook his head,

 “Timid fools.”

The next morning was much of the same, and this continued drudgery proceeded on for the next seven days. Things seemed to be returning to a certain sense of normalcy, people tried to move on with their lives and ignore the ash falling from the sky. It was harvest time, a time of growth and abundance.

But it was on the eighth or ninth day, when my father woke me from bed, that I felt the eerie sense something was amiss. I tried to brush it off as folly, much in the same way my father did, and I sat at the table to begin eating. I didn't think much of it at the time but now that I look back on it all I can see clearly. It was the middle of the harvest, the time when the spring hogs were to be slaughtered, when the spring lambs were done suckling at their mother’s teats, and we could enjoy the sweet taste of their flesh. When the overabundance of food in our lands meant that for days on end, fruits, nuts, and vegetables flowed like wine. And yet now I recall, in the middle of what should have been a beautiful time, our meals had begun to grow smaller.