Twisted Tales for Twisted Minds

No Name

Their nation had always been called "the nation"—there was no name for it, no more than you named dirt, the ocean, or the sun—each was a single entity, nothing to compare it to.

Now, the moons? There were three of them: Harper, Piper, and little trailing Drummer.

Harper never left the sky, staying enormous on the rim of the world. Its face was vast and complex, pulling so hard on the ocean that a noticeable mountain of water stretched out to try to touch their neighbor. Some much more fanciful folks claimed the world was Harper's moon.

Piper marked each month by its ever-changing phases, while Drummer did the same for every three—nearly two days behind the solstices and equinoxes, but they, too, pressed close to the southern rim of their sky.

But still, the nation didn't have a name and didn't need a name. There was only one people, no matter how many hues they were.

That is, until they came. Machines brought a vast desert out of the ocean's depth, through the southern rim, dividing the eastern ocean from the western ocean. They only ceased raising barren land when they touched the old land's shores. And then the machine's master's came, people of no earthen hue.

These others came to conquer, but they were well-matched against the nation, in spite of their advanced technology. So, the battles raged on, year after decade, century after millennia. Nearly three thousand years have passed.

The nation now has a name: Terre-Mar. The people have a name: Mar. The land was called Terre, words that once meant people and earth, in a tongue now all but dead. The enemy was called Auth-Mar-Met. Auth: strange soil, Met, not, modifying the Mar of people. The eastern ocean, with its bulge towards Harper, was now Plat, and the west was Pert, for ancient sea terms for the sides of a sailing vessel.

In the nation's frustration, they even gave their sun a name: Frer-Bracht-Che, or "there better be only one".

But the names were superficial changes. Most lives plodded along the same, except for those drafted into the Terre-Marran Army and who were written off as dead in their family's books, not to be free among their own kin again.

So this terrible lot fell on a young son of Hill's Den, from the Lake family, of the Patriarch's Sister's Line—in fact, the least of all his people. Young Praul went from being almost nothing to being nothing.

So many older brothers and cousins were jealous, but he was bewildered. He wasn't even eligible for the allotment at his scant fourteen summers—two years too young—and he looked even younger. It took him all of his death's ceremony to come to grips with what had happened. He was dressed up in a burial robe—too big for him—sitting in a cart bound for god knows where, likely for some battlefield, where his blood would mingle with the ancestors and enemies alike.

He, who had dreams of becoming a scholar!

And it was already too late to tell his mother how much he would miss her. He didn't think his father would care, but he had a feeling that his being picked was devastating to her.

Legally speaking, he wouldn't be allowed to write to her, ever. He had 40 years of service to give, and then he could go home. Maybe. Rumors were that this was rare, as forty years would be hard to survive.

The last thing Praul would give up was his name. In a land that used to be nameless, now its sons are, as they went off to die in war.