Prolouge

Prolouge to my story called Qae that I'm writing for school. Hope you like it!


Prologue

I opened my eyes to complete darkness.

Darkness. It’s what comforts me. I’ve been in darkness my whole life. To me, darkness isn’t just the lack of light. It’s a light in and of itself.

I sat upright on my loft. You who live in the light won’t know about that. In Qae, we sleep on bowl-shaped clay beds, high above our living space, with no cloths to cushion us. Another tradition the Laders left for us.

You’ll soon find out what that means. 

I remember sliding off my loft. I loved the drop from the loft to the soil floor. I landed as usual, in a squatting position with both hands on the ground.

I could hear my sisters sleep-breathing on the lofts above me. I stalked confidently out the door, wanting to get out of the house. I instinctively pictured the layout of the street I lived on; innately, mindlessly calculating distances between walls, houses, furrows. I cleared everything with a leg-length to spare. I made it to the Terra with no problem.

I will always remember how calming it was, being in Qae in the Nox. Nox – that is what us, the Qui, call the most complete darkness, the kind that presses up against you like water, that springs up in a solid wall in front of your face, that sound seems to bounce off of. The kind only Qui can navigate. The kind only Qui could ever feel entirely comfortable in, according to evolution.

I sat in front of what I knew was the Terra, the place where things were grown. That, I knew, was where I would be working in a moon, after my Teaching was completed and I had had my Crease. I had always known my Laki; my passion; was plants, and growing them. At that point, I couldn’t wait to get into the warm, dark greenhouse with its smell of soil and growing.

I am the type of girl who never gets nervous, and I wasn’t very emotional about my upcoming Crease, or the Teaching I was barely two hour-burnings away from. But I was eager to learn everything I would need to become the best Grower I could be.

It never occurred to me that there could be something greater than my life, than me, than all of Qae, coming. But there was.