The Masked Bird

what is humanity?

What is humanity? What is it that people fight so hard to protect? We survive, we work, but it seems like people never live. They just keep surviving, day in and day out. Perhaps that is because settling down is no longer possible. There isn't enough resources, and there are too many people. Most of the things we need for society to function were buried under ash and magma, leaving the survivors to keep going under a muted sun. Despite our loved ones falling with lungs filled with ash, or freezing to death where they stood, we moved forward. There will be a day in the future perhaps when the sun comes back, and towns can be rebuilt. Perhaps it will come in my lifetime - my dad said it was way darker when he was a kid, and that things are starting to get better - summer's coming earlier, and the trees are starting to grow back again. I hope we can all make it to the end of the Winter this time though.

85 PD, 35th day after first snow.

"Reading again?" a voice called from behind me as I snapped my treasured book shut. The voice behind me was a deep one, rich and filled with earthy tones, yet weathered with age. The voice is one of the few parts of the body that does not ruin with age - our eyes degrade, our hearing vanishes but the voice will endure. The voice behind me was a testament to that. Before turning around, I reached up under my mask to rub my eyes, blinking as I was forced to look up from the yellowing paper to take in my environment once more. I reached up, and the man who the voice belonged to took my hand, pulling me up to my feet, then a little bit off of them as he always did. The man was big and broad shouldered, like you'd imagine a bear to be if they weren't so dangerous. His hands were rough and calloused - everyone's were from using axes or pulling sleds, yet they were still gentle. I liked him - he called himself Derren. It was a funny thing, names. Specific sounds people made to refer to other specific people. Though names changed with time - at least the one I wore did. Derren smiled kindly, his teeth a dull yellow. They were always that shade - but according to Cornell - our eldest member who's family seemed to stretch to before the darkening, the traders and other towns had seen people with teeth bright white, like the stars in the sky. I never understood why they'd force their teeth to be white - didn't their teeth want to be themselves? But then again, I didn't understand a lot about the old world. Like how hundreds of years ago, according to the stories Cornell tells us, we used to live in large stone and iron jungles, making our homes inside great stone spires. He says that it's because people liked to be around eachother, but I can't imagine being in a family bigger than our little tribe. It didn't seem like we needed a name, though other tribes and towns liked to keep names. It didn't make much sense to me why some people did and others didn't have names, but when have names ever made sense? Why was Derren a "Derren"? Why not "Cloud"? Or "Earth" like his voice that always seemed to ground me? Names were an odd thing though, and long ago I had learned that questioning them was a lost cause, as there were questions that even the elders wouldn't be able to answer. But then, I was grounded once more by the voice, snapping me out of my thoughts. "Come now little bird - the hunt is beginning. We will need your crossbow. The herd is coming up on a river - we might be able to pick off more than just one or two elk this time. They'll keep if we pack them tight in snow and ice. I nodded happily, and placed my book back in the satchel I always kept with me. We had 2 long guns of course - another name I never understood - but Cornell and Darren never used them for hunting. They said it was important to keep them for if we ever met a group that tried to attack us. I didn't see why they would - there was no one who was a better shot than Tom - he was only a few winters older than me, and no one was better with a spear than Sorna - she was about my age, though looked a bit older too. And of course we had my crossbow, which I built myself. With all of this, why would anyone try to fi-

"Hey bonehead!" a voice once more snapped me out of my thoughts. But this one wasn't a deep and rich tone. No warm earthiness or weatherworn familiarity in it. Rather this sound was squeaky and high pitched, like a guitar strung too tight mixed with a fox's squealing. However, rather than the gentle kindness of Darren's name for me - this one was not in reference to myself - rather the face I chose to wear. My bone mask, one I enjoyed keeping on at all times. It seemed this voice - Thomas - didn't like me for it. I didn't know why, I didn't want to talk to him or deal with him at all, but he kept coming back. "C'mon, your tongue frostbitten?" he asked, jabbing a finger into my stomach. Thomas was only a winter my senior, but he had filled out rapidly growing into an absolute moose of a man. He towered almost 2 heads over me, and I had to retreat from the constant pushing, or risk falling over. Thankfully he couldn't see my face, but Thomas was probably the one person who actually scared me. There were a few people who frightened me, but he was the only one who actually scared me. But with a mask, no one could see my face - all they saw was the deep black and the pale white of bone, and the quiet glint of my eyes deep behind the mask's sockets. I glanced around, and seeing no one around, I sighed. Focusing back on him, he was reaching towards me. "Why don't we take a peek under that mask?" Words were always strange. Someone could say one thing, but mean a whole nother thing. He said the words, yet he meant that he didn't care about boundaries, and simply wanted what he felt like, when he felt like it. Thomas was the one person I knew that scared me. But I had my boundaries, and I refused to let them be crossed. And so when his hand touched my mask, I lashed out. My body twisted, throwing my hip and back into a punch straight into Thomas's elbow, knocking his hand to the side and by extension knocking my head to the side as well. But he had been stunned as I was hoping - he wasn't used to people fighting back, they usually just gave him what he wanted. But not me, I never gave in - so he focused on me more than anyone else, I think just trying to break me. So I took off, kicking up snow in my wake as I ran. The rest of the tribe was just behind the ruins of an old house, using it as a windbreak and pulling the wooden supports out for fire. I skidded around the corner, almost slipping but pushing up off the ice to right myself to a few laughs. They didn't know about what had just happened, and I wasn't going to tell them. "Hey! What sort of a bird forgets her claws?" A new voice, one far more comforting to me. This one washed over me like a gentle stream over a cut, soothing and cool. Not a biting cold like the winter wind, rather a gentle cool like a stream after the Thaw, or like what Cornell described a pool to be like in the middle of summer. This voice however carried none of the weathered earthy tones of Darren though - rather the voice was more airy, above the troubles of this earth and blowing in like a gentle wind to caress you. I looked up, seeing Sorna smiling down at me.