A stamped-out ember dreams of wildfires.
When I imagined a cursed island, the last thing I saw were weathervanes — spinning metal contraptions that stood like monuments in the endless snowscape.
The island of Nordsummer was cursed. Fire had abandoned us, and under the cover of night I worked atop a humble house. With my wrench in hand, I worked away as a simple slave for the empire. Under the frozen moon, I would've warmed myself up with a campfire, but everyone in Nordsummer knew that wasn't possible.
Here, no amount of sparks could light tinder ablaze.
I am Emil, a weathervane technician who lives in the valley village of Wintermute. Second only to seamstresses and cobblers, we technicians were the lifeline of Southsummerian society. Atop the slate-tile roofs, we technicians worked — illuminated only by starlight above.
I endured the eternal winter on our own, my solitary wrench twisting and turning as the sweat of my brow froze with the wind.
From the warmth of their homes, I heard the townsfolk whisper both curses and prayers to Nordsummer's goddess. Through a smokescreen of snow, I found a shattered weathervane, a machine torn apart by the wrath of winter. Reaching to my hip, I flipped my coat where my radio sat.
"Report," I said into my coat radio. "I got a broken weathervane here."
"Broken weathervane? Where?" I heard. It was the voice of our military officer Boris, the de facto mayor of Wintermute.
"House number…" and I knelt, sweeping away snow with a gloved hand, reaching the base metal plate where the weathervane used to be. "House number 43A."
Soldiers arrived, cutting through the mist with a weathervane carried like a battering ram. They hoisted it up like a flag, pushing it up for me to drag over — my breath freezing as I yanked it atop a tide of rising snow. Coupling the house's power cables to the replacement, I propped the machine against the wind. The metal blades of the weathervane spun before sunrise, and after a night shift of hammering, soldering, wiring and repairing, the warmth of daybreak marked an end to my shift.
When the midnight blizzard came to a standstill, the village awoke, starting the clock on the five ours I had left in my day. I had two choices, and that was to either drown myself in pine needle wine or I get back to work, trading daylight for credits. Peering at the porch of the tavern, the sight of frozen drunkards was sobering enough to make me choose the right decision.
I marched through the town, past posters I had put up for imperial credits, and made my way down to the river where the people worked, hand-drilling holes into the ice where they fished up their meals and livelihoods. Here, I could make a single credit for an hour's worth of fishing, or I could choose a different, riskier route.
That route involved walking past the fishers, over the solidified river and up its mouth. The river poured out of a cave, a dark and damp place where the only vegetation in Wintermute grew.
Protected from wind chill, moss grew like a plague inside the cavern. The wintry white of the world vanished, turning to a stone gray that trickled to a gentle green.
The moss, as simple as it was, had its own value. Seamstresses would weave it into thread before knitting it into clothes. Older women in the village would dry and sew it together, weaving a gentle green shawl they wore daily. Others used it as insulation, jamming it into their sleeves and into the opening in their boots — a technique I adopted — but moss wasn't the reason I had come.
Gazing ahead, I spotted a drop of pink in the darkness of the cavern.
Lit by nothing but daylight, I traced the colors, leading me towards my prize. Growing out of the moss was a peculiar pink flower — a cavern thorn. With a knife, I slowly brushed up the petals of the flower before cutting away at the roots. From there, I continued collecting for hours before returning back to Wintermute. There, a shop clerk was happy to trade a few hours worth of quiet foraging for 10 imperial credits — twice that of an ordinary fisherman.
I made myself two and a half credits an hour foraging through the dark caverns, and with my money in tow, I returned home for the night. Returning home at around 2:30 pm, I watched as drunken mechanics stumbled through town, their pockets emptied out at the tavern.
From afar, I watched as a drunken man picked a recruitment poster off the wall, giving it a glance before tossing it aside as a crumpled ball.
That afternoon, I returned home where I dumped my twenty credits on my table — ten from foraging, ten from putting up posters, as per Boris' request — alongside a fish, a ball of moss, a single flower, my toolbelt which I put up on its wall mount and my coat that I left on a rack.
With everything said and done, I sat down for my one meal of the day.
Carrying the knife I used to sever flowers, I cut strips of flesh off the white fish and ate it with clumps of moss. I took the flower and cut off the thorns — thorns I soaked in a bowl — and placed the petals and roots in a cup of water, setting it atop my heater to boil.
When a sweet scent filled my room, I took that cup off my makeshift stove and drank, warming my body with the medicinal flower's bittersweet flavor. In Wintermute, we technicians lived our lives on shoestring budgets, a budget that couldn't support expensive medicine, and the thought of being unable to work as a weathervane technician led me to a single conclusion.
That conclusion was to become a soldier.
And there was no quicker route to the grave than taking part in the ongoing war between north and south.
With my fish stripped to its bones, my tea emptied out and with exhaustion settling in, I had no choice but to go to bed. I took the thorns — soft after soaking away in water — and used them to pick at my teeth like they were toothbrushes.
Under covers, I took that moss ball and squeezed it between my hands, forming a clump, one I bit down before wrapping myself up in a ball for bed. The moss acted as a filter, stopping evil spirits from entering my mouth while I was asleep.
Under covers, we Nordsummerian dreamt dreams of warmth, of a springtime we weathervane technicians would never live to see.