The Green Sun

Chapter 1 - Nia

There weren't always dragons in the Valley, and the people of the town couldn’t have been more vexed when they arrived. “Dragons” is what younger me called the loud, smoking trains that ran along the tracks behind our house every day in Stone Valley. I'd just turned nine the first time I saw a dragon. Soon after was the last time I saw my mother, riding away on one. One night I watched her dash through the back door and skip across the grass as the dragon slowly made its way toward her. Me and Grandma just watched.

The dragon seemed to suddenly speed up as it neared, and my mother had yet to clear the tracks. The dragon didn’t appear to be stopping, so I asked Grandma what my mother thought she was doing running toward this speeding metal beast. She didn’t answer, and my mother kept running. I blinked and she disappeared behind the train as it whipped past us. I must have counted one hundred cars go by before I saw the one carrying my mother. She’d safely hopped onto the first open car and rode away waving one of Grandma’s good white dinner napkins at us. I wasn’t worried at all. That was the sort of thing my mother did.

“Nia! My Nia!” my mother called to me as she blew kisses. “Look at the stars!”

Grandma glared so hard that I just knew she would tip the train off its tracks with her eyes alone. She shooed me inside and shut the door. With both hands on my shoulders, Grandma looked at me and swore:

“You will never follow her! You hear?”

I simply nodded. Grandma had always been the strong, solid type in a crisis. I’d never once seen her give my mother the satisfaction of a reaction to her antics. She never even raised her voice. It seemed, as far as she was concerned, my mother was already a ghost. For the first time perhaps ever, Grandma was afraid.

That was nine years ago now, and the term “dragon” just kind of stuck with me. Anyway, the dragons started running through the Valley several weeks before my mother’s departure. Word had spread that our town was the only town within a hundred-mile radius whose water supply was left uncontaminated following the Slippery Farms factory explosion in Rapture City thirty miles west. It didn’t make much sense, but no one asked questions.

Nia kneels at the foot of her bed speaking to a makeshift laptop screen with wires sticking out all over. Several tattered notebooks and sheets of paper covered with scribbles are sprawled across the mattress in front of her. She hears footsteps quickly approaching her bedroom door.

“Nia? Who are you in there talking to, girl?”

“One second, Grandma, I’m just–sharpening my spear!” Nia lies. She scrambles to collect her papers in both hands, being careful not to wrinkle the corners as she quickly closes them into the laptop and places the laptop behind a wooden board behind her bed. Nia notices she’s missed a sheet of paper and stuffs it into her shirt. She replaces the wooden board and turns to face the door.