The Black Sun

Prologue

          It was warm that morning. Senna can still remember it, etched into her mind to never be forgotten. The sky was clear and the sun beamed over their island village, with dark-skinned people chattering at every corner and under every tree. The waves lapped at the ocean shore, a gentle hand that caressed your feet, wishing you a good morning each day. 

It was everything that Senna had loved. She could feel the soft breeze kissing her cheek, the mist falling from the air dancing across her nose, the whistling of the flowers and leaves as the wind ran through them. 

She was walking to the market square; it was a small assortment of different merchants who called your name with a smile and asked you to try some peppermint pineapple, freshly grown. Senna had bought tons of food: coconut cream, pineapples, bananas, betel nut, cassava, sugarcane and yam. There was a celebration tonight. 

It was her coming of age; Senna was turning fifteen, the time where each girl is now recognized as a daughter of the island. It was her duty to keep the men of the island safe, to harvest the fruits and vegetables, to tend to the livestock, to clean the hulls of the boats and wash the clothes. She loathed being so ignominious, so degraded when compared to the sons of the island. She wanted to venture into the horizon, she wanted to sail across the seas. 

Then, the skies turned a venomous shade of black, dust and pollution fell onto the island, like rain. The white sand turned to grey as the giant hulls of the American-European boats glided onto their shores. Men in black suits climbed down chutes and ladders, guns blazing and glinting under the soft summer sun, now concealed behind thousands upon thousands of smoke. 

"Get down on the ground now!" Senna fell to her knees, her hands over the nape of her neck as she let her groceries roll down the hill to her home. They tumbled and fell, her feast destroyed. Euro-Americans were never good at hospitality and even as they invaded her home, they made her feel like a stranger. 

All Senna could hear was the sounds of gunfire and shouts from the villagers, as she cowered under a tropical bush full of lively and pink flowers that now wilted under the strain of pollution. She hid there, for hours on end. It seemed like an eternity, like forever had passed before the last bullet was fired and the men climbed aboard their boats with hundreds of pounds of the precious emeralds and jewels that they had called divine. The precious, holy emeralds that blessed their island, a gift from the gods and goddesses of the sea. And now, these men had hurled them on their black boats and sailed away, leaving the island to mourn and to die.

Senna was no longer fearful, she was angry. Her eyes were clouded with red as she burst from the bush, rage and fury billowing in her mind as she rushed down to the shores, her soles stinging as the black sand stabbed at her feet. She couldn't even feel it.

"Come back, you bastards! Come back and fight us when we're ready. Bring your guns, I don't care. I'm going to send a spear through your head, you heartless barbarians! COME BACK!" She threw her hands at the sea, at the boat that never heard her words and disappeared beyond the setting horizon, where the sun fell in defeat. She collapsed to her knees, feeling the now calloused and rough hands of the sea scrape her knees and listening to the sounds of the waves as they crashed onto the beach. She didn't move until the hands dragged her away and up into the village. And Senna, herself, was defeated.