SIGHT OF SAND: Prologue

Prologue

“Analyze the situation. Adjust. Accept, and you will thrive.”

Those were my father’s famous words engraved on his headstone in the middle of a country of sand I am no longer familiar with.

My father was a wise man. Wise, yet so very stupid. He was an explorer, and a lover of the fine arts. He was also a sweet talker who understood how people work, and often times used it against them. My father had a disturbingly accurate interpretation of the world... which made him very interesting and yet very dangerous.

I was born in the land of golden sands. The land, called Sulvik, is strange and foreign. The kingdom boasts a people of an ancient culture and society, with a dress code as strange as the language they speak.

Growing up, it was always obvious to me that my mother greatly disapproved of my father’s line of work. Before his hobbies and loves, he was an explorer, and a great one at that. It brought home money, but he was gone for very long periods of time. He would leave on such short notice, leaving my mother, sister, and I to forever wonder when he would one day show up on our doorstep once more. Expeditions called him away for weeks, even months, at a time. As a result of this, most of my childhood memories were of my overburdened mother crying alone in her private quarters when she thought no one was watching.

When my father died, I was at the young age of 13. My sister even younger still, at the age of eight. His death burdened us all financially and emotionally. It affected me much more that I could admit, for in my mother’s distraught state I had to be the emotionally stable rock that would carry both her and my younger sister. My mother was always very vocal about her emotions and thoughts. My sister, who was the sibling closest to my father, took it the hardest of all. She was never quite the same.

My mother wanted very badly to get away from Sulvik, mostly to run away from my father’s ghost and hopefully remain as far away as possible. She moved us to her sister’s house in a city called Cerius located in the grassland kingdom across the sea.

The grassland kingdom of Euphasia, my mother told me, calls no man ‘king’. Euphasia, as we call it, is really just a compilation of self-sufficient cities and towns with their own governments and legal systems. In Euphasia, my mother said, we would be able to live in peace without falling victim to an unjust social hierarchy that made life in Sulvik very difficult for women.

I was the only one who would admit to the truth. The memories of my father were too fresh and strong in Sulvik. We were running away.