Dust.

The sun never set in Solis. It rolled back and forward across the sky, teetering atop dust clouds, its scorching glow forcing thorough tight shutters and curtains designed to keep it out. When we went outside, we shielded our retinas with thick goggles, and draped our skin in heavy cotton - we weren’t to expose ourselves, though its fierce presence was always felt. From when we were young, we heard stories of how the heat from the sun had sucked up the water, and of its immense brightness that was capable of blinding us if we looked at it. So, we lived in the shade of large sandstone buildings, roofs towering over our heads as we swarmed together like flies.

A spring in the center of town supplied us with water, though it was often undrinkable, and we sourced food through trade with other towns. Suncorp was the company that ran the town. And all the towns. They sold us sun goggles for exorbitant prices, and taxed us highly for our water usage, profiting off our misfortune. Their presence was like the sun, unending - there was no privacy.

Suncorp, the endless light of the sun that destroyed all that was not hidden, and the constant haze of dust that crept into every corner drove us all insane.

But with the sun, there was also shadow, which lurked in breezeways and passages, it’s cool invitation of a break from the sun a plight which lured many young folk to remove their goggles, only for the shadow to disappear and leave them unprotected. Deceitful, a game. They were known as the blinded, the ones who had removed their goggles. Many believed that Suncorp controlled the shadow, blinding those who had betrayed their rule, and keeping their secrets hidden, but I never believed that one company could have so much power.

My grandmother was one of the blinded, but she never told me how. When I was a child, I spent many days looking into the glazed white of her eyes as she told me stories of a time before the dust. I heard of the sky’s openness, how she would lay underneath its watchful expanse, of how the sun once brought life, and of the danger of the shadows. She also told me tales of Heliodor, a man who was once rumored among many to be the dust-breaker, the one who could part the dust. When I knew her, she was always tattering on about him.

“Heliodor will save us,” she often went, “Heliodor will part the dust!”

I thought that she was joking, pulling my leg in an attempt to make light out of our situation – I thought it was insensitive to joke in such times.

Though with her last breaths she had gazed deeply into my eyes, telling me that I must find Heliodor, and it no longer felt like a joke.

When I was younger, I was afraid of my grandmother, spooked by the ancient white of her eyes, and unbelieving of her ridiculous tales. I thought she was crazy, and that she had gone nuts from sun exposure, that she was a joker. Though as I aged, and I left my childhood behind, entering a cruel world rich in sorrow and duplicity, realizing that her hope was maybe the only thing that kept her going, I too took on that hope. Though even as an adult, I was often awoken from sleep by the memory of her words, and the deep haunt of her gaze.

When she died, she had left me a necklace, a thin silver chain, and a heart shaped pendant that hung from it. Intricate filigree patterns wrapped around the pendant, and in the center, a small yellow gem was set. I wore it always, hiding it under the thickness of my clothing, careful not to expose it to the fierce sun, and hoping that Suncorp wouldn’t take it from me in one of their inspections. I only discovered many years later though, as I fiddled with the pendant in my hand, that when I pressed the yellow gem, the pendant opened with a click, revealing a faded portrait and a pressed flower. In the picture, which must have been taken before the dust, my grandmother sat on a chair, dressed in blue, the same locket around her neck. Her eyes weren’t glazed with white, and they sung even in sepia; she was beautiful then. The flower was light and blue, and I was afraid that it would crumble in my fingers, become part of the dust, so I never touched it.

On days when I couldn’t sleep, I often opened the locket, hoping that within the beauty of my grandmother’s eyes lay the answer to all our problems, where to find more food and water, how to get more money, or even how to part the dust. But my mind always drew blanks.

One day, as I trekked through the mazing archways of the suburban sector into town, I became aware of a crowd that gathered around the stump of an old tree. Civilians stood in lines, covered by their drapes, and among the lines walked the Suncorp inspectors – I quickly ducked behind a column, hoping to evade their gaze, but I should have known better as a gloved hand grabbed my arm from behind, a large suited figure dragging me into one of the lines.

Inspections happened often, and I was never all that afraid of them. I had always thought that their purpose was to scare us, to make sure that we knew how powerless we were, but to be scared was to submit to Suncorp, and I would never.

They marched slowly through the lines, looking us up and down, watching for any unusual body language or clothing. And as an especially large figure approached me, staring at the place on my chest where my grandmother’s locket had started to creep through my clothes, I knew that trouble had found me.

His gloved hand reached up from his side, and grabbed the locket from my chest, quickly pulling it towards him, and with the movement, I too came forward, surprised by the strength of the chain. I panicked, and lifted my hands to the locket, where we now were both in a tugging match. His movements became more forceful, and I felt the chain give way and slinky around my neck. And as he continued to tug, and I refused to let go, a thick shadow descended upon us.

In the cool darkness I heard the kerfuffle of the surrounding citizens and inspectors as they ran in opposite directions, but I still refused let go of the locket, slowly shifting backwards to escape the shadow, easing my right hand free of his grip and flailing it around in an attempt to stop him. My hand forced forward and grabbed at his clothing, and I pulled it back towards me, parts of his uniform coming loose. And at last, with a final large shuffle, I had eased free from the shadow, pulling him with me out into the light of the sun. His hands quickly fell limp and he stopped gripping at the locket as I saw the sunlight that poured into his open eyes, an untamed roar emanating from the hole that was his mouth, and as I looked down, I saw that I gripped the locket in my left hand, and his sun goggles in my right.

He dropped to his knees, and groped at his eyes with his hands, tears squeezing through his gloved fingers, and flowing down his arms, but I paid little attention to his pain, as I observed the glow coming from my hand, or rather from the locket.

I lifted it towards my face, observing the yellow gem which was now very much aglow under the sun, a glow which swirled and spread through the silver filigree of the locket. It started to get warm in my hand, and I moved my face backwards in time to avoid the path of the large golden beam that now came from the gem and lifted upwards into the dust. The dust around the beam started to spin and move, glowing with the same warm yellow, a glow that spread outwards, until the entire sky was swirly and yellow. And suddenly, like a clean slice through meat, the dust parted clean down the middle, gathering and falling in a seamless haze towards the horizon, giving way to the blue behind it, and calming the sun from its fiery turmoil.

In the following days, we all celebrated for the dust had finally cleared; the sky that my grandmother had spoken of truly was as beautiful as in her stories. We all removed our goggles outside, no longer fearful that the sun would blind us, and we fashioned new, lighter clothing, which allowed us to feel the warmth of the sunlight on our skin for the first time in our lives. And from my neck I wore my grandmother’s locket, the yellow gem still glowing under the light of the new sun.

With the breaking of the dust and the calming of the sun, Suncorp no longer controlled the shadows, and they no longer controlled us. We could live without their taxes and protective equipment, and over the coming weeks, with the talk of uprising passing among civilians, Suncorp dissipated and left, running to the shadows where they now festered in fear of us.

And after all these years, I had realized that my grandmother’s tales were wrong. Heliodor was not a man; it was a gemstone, a gift from the sun, one which had been under our noses the whole time, but in my attempt to keep the locket safe, I had never exposed it to the sun.

One day I opened the locket again, feeling the embrace of my grandmother’s eyes, and for the first time, I eased my fingers into the locket and grabbed the small flower, its petals crumbling, but revealing two seeds. Shuffling towards the stump of the old tree in the suburban sector, and sitting at its base, I planted them and hoped that under the new sun they would grow, hopeful, as my grandmother would have been.

So, from my spot now, under the watchful expanse of the sky with the hope of new life, I felt my grandmother with me, and we sat all day, charging and soothing our sore minds.