Aurum

Chapter 1 - Initium

beginning /bɪˈgɪnɪŋ/ noun

noun: the point in time or space at which something begins

June 6th 2066.

I keep writing that day down like it might make things better, but in reality things are staying just the same. Perhaps I should start from the beginning with the basics, though I don't want to bore you too much.

It was a Sunday.

I remember that day well, just like any normal day in a small town on the outskirts of Lotterly. It's a peculiar name for a city really, Lott-er-lee. I think they chose it because it sounds like "lottery", but in reality, your chances of survival here are as slim as winning a million dollars on a rainy Thursday evening in July. My father still bought tickets once a week though.

Our city is pretty iconic, in the sense its whole infrastructure is focused around the landscape. Most cities build themselves into the land: break it, move it, temper with it and stuff. Lotterly however, is completely at the hands and fate of the Earth. Anything that Mother Nature does, the city breathes in its endurance and has to deal with it. The people of Lotterly share the same characteristics, at least where I come from, that is. Does it make me racist if I say I hated this place and its people? I want you to understand me.

On the western side of the city, a huge river sweeps across, with a thick belt of marsh and bog deadlier than a serpent's bite. One step wrong and you'll find yourself thrashing in a pit deeper than you bargained for, and tangled in a web of reeds and kelp that almost seem to shoot out and drag your limbs under further. During the early winter, through the frostbitten window panes you might see a few water spouts appearing, spiralling up and out of the cold water and racing around before disappearing into the black depths again. Hell became wind and water.

The other side now, in the east, towering above any skyscraper you can imagine, are the solemn plateau ridges. Sheer sides coloured clay red climb higher and higher into the sky, so high that on an overcast day, no one can see the top. Only one person has made it to the top of these ridges, only one man put himself to that limit. They like sponsors in this place, but they don't like responsibility. When he reached the top but didn't come home again, the concern petered out. No one knows what happened to him, or what's out there, we just knew we didn't care to try anymore. These mountains of death are unforgiving, and save no one. Hell became earth and fire.

Lotterly, the small city, is located smack-bang between the river edge and mountain bottom. Sheltered from many forms of weather from the plateaus but open to many other forms of weather on the river side, temperatures reach similar levels to that of a Sub-Saharan desert in the summer, and in the winter, plummet to degrees struggling to stay near freezing most days. The sandstorms we receive are terrific, and you never know when they're coming, they just do and it's up to you to get on with it. The sandstorms arrive quickly and cascade over the top of the plateaus, and from afar, it looks amazing. All you can see is a cloud of tan-dirt, galloping over the head of the plateau before firing itself over the edge in a wave of grit and wind.

I had my first sandstorm race when I was seven. My mother and I had been at the market when the sky turned red, father's beer foaming and popping in the brown paper bag as we made the run to the old Caddy. As the rumble of the storm hit our feet, I lifted myself into the cab, my mother shutting her door just as the wave washed over us. In all of its strength in clay colour, I basked in terror and awe at its glory. It rippled and ran like water, and I wanted to reach out the window and touch it, feel it, even though I knew my conscience was wrong, because I had learnt that most of the time it was anyway.