Tales from Drunswick

[Yukki Kazuto]

My eyes fluttered open slowly, the familiar brown ceiling of my house greeting me. I rolled onto my side, the bed giving off a raspy creak as I stood up. Looking out of the hole in my wall that we called a window, I saw the sun about a quarter of the way into the sky. Time to get the day started.


Stretching my arms behind my back, I walk over to the dresser and look at the list of chores my grandfather has left me for the day. I picked up the list and put it in my shorts pocket. Walking out the back door of the house, I grabbed the bucket we kept by the back door.


My name is Damien. I live in the town of Drunswick. We live in a desert, and the nearest civilization that we know of is about a six hour walk, over hills and valleys of sand, in scorching heat, the entire time, with no source of water except what you started with. Even the best rationers run through it quickly.


Walking through the little town of Drunswick, the streets were filled with people going about their morning tasks. In Drunswick, everybody did something, from the children to the elders. It wasn’t long before I made it to the well in the center of town, and waited in a numbingly boring line in order to get a bucket of water.


My walk back through the streets my petite town was a dull and careful one, the entire walk spent making sure the water didn’t splash out of the bucket from my walk. Once I returned to my house, I poured the water from the bucket into a large container at the back of the house, designed for heating water to be used for cooking, cleaning, and bathing.


I pulled out my list of five tasks, and, using my trusty ink pen, put a check next to the first one.  I took a small rest to drink a glass of tea, before continuing my work. The tea was nice and refreshing, sweet but not overpowering, with hints of lemon. It also helped cool me down a little. I was used to the heat, but it still felt good to drink something that was chilled.


Heading back outside, the screen door to my house shut with a loud slam. I walked towards the far edge of the town, specifically the area where the bazaar was set up. I wandered through the town for a little while, looking for the material I would require. I saw several people selling white I needed, but not in a small enough quantity for me to warrant purchasing the goods.


A very small amount of silver coins jingled in my pocket. Just enough to bring my attention to their presence, but not enough to point out I had money to other members of the town. The coin in Drunswick wasn’t used anywhere else, and was specific to our tiny town. Though I had heard stories of a prime who would convert it into another currency for any of us who were willing to travel. But that had only happened once in my lifetime. I was too young to even remember the experience.


Though, there was that one prime that grandfather had saved. He used the experience to teach me why we never bother leaving Drunswick. Everything we could possibly need is already here, so why leave the relative safety of our town?


I found what I had been looking for, a small square of screen to fix a patch that had formed in our front door from the sand blowing into it. I payed for it with two silver coins, leaving me with one to finish my other chores with. The coin was a polished silver, with several scratches from the sand that would rub against it. On one side was the crest of Drunswick, two torches crossing each other over an oasis. On the other was the face of someone nobody had ever seen, but it was claimed that it was Drunswick’s founder.

I put the coin and the screen into my pocket, and fixed the screen door to my house. I pulled out my list, and checked off the second task on my list. Looking over the next three, I realized that it was going to be a long day.