STUDY - Technical - WRITING

a nEW mORNING from an old Hope

Episode 1 — Memories from a future built on freedom and hope

A new morning for us, Stoutly and Hope. Only that.

The pride of the family name was long lost, they meant nothing. This tradition was lost long before our 24th generation, after the “Great Beginning”.

Our names were given at the suggestion of our parents, Stubborn and Landlady, when they introduced us to the community.

And the community never decided to change our name again. My mother chose our real names, confirmed by the time she spent with the members of our group.

But tradition helped us move forward and today I am leaving for the meeting with our community, in the “Valley between the Islands”. If it is possible…

To organize for this week what each of us must do, for the common interest, for our survival, and the community. You cannot survive alone…

Hope was very weak, and her name did not help her to be able to go with me. She stayed with the children.

I asked her to leave alone after I took a photo for the memories that would comfort her if I didn’t return… On one of the rare, almost clear days, without a blizzard…

For her or our two children, Searcher and Awe…

When I left the camera to him, I saw the image of our original parents seven generations ago. Before we left for the last time…

The other generations of our group had no traces, no memories… Because of the last Predator raid… Seven generations ago… Any of them would have been…

But they left the children everything they needed to continue life, contact with the community, and what we do every day… This string reaching us, like a tradition to live, to move on…

Now I’m on my way, taking care not to leave any tracks leading to our shelter, avoiding the traps left by us or the neighbors, avoiding the roads…

Watch out for signals that may reveal the presence of “Predators”, “Urbans” or “Absolutes” … Signals that would delay today’s journey by a week…

Avoiding those who think they have every right to take anything, even free life… Without even being owed anything in particular…

And thoughts are my only companion for the way to the valley… A road through the forest where the blizzard sings as if accompanied by the echo of an abandoned, ruined cathedral… No beliefs, no traditions… Just wind and echoes…

The tradition… Today begins “Calvary Week” …

From somewhere, it was a tradition related to religion. But the “chorus” of my parents, even of my grandparents, that I caught before “departing” was clear: “No religions, only God!”. What else can I understand?

The “Great Beginning” came with an asteroid that hit Earth. Or with the “Madness of the Absolutes”, with the mushroom of their bombs…

Anyway, they are stories. What was the point of the bombs if the asteroid destroyed three-quarters of humanity?

The “Predators” of those times had taken shelter in the areas of least impact, making reserves, and gathering protectors.

Those who remained sowed desolation, death, rapes, and robberies. Some information has reached us that the “Asteroid” or “Madness” destroyed more than three-quarters of the life that existed at that time.

But the slaughter that followed surpassed all imagination. That’s why those times, of the “Great Beginning” are preserved in our memory after the “Great Slaughter” … Ours or nature’s…

After no generation, the “Predators” ran out of resources. At least those in our area. Those who came from far away, the “Absolutes”, of any community, creed, or faith, stopped killing… Or they did it to preserve their way of being, ritually or according to their laws.

And they were no longer consuming their resources to reach us…

Those called in derision to be “Boor” … Those who knew from their ancestors that “The forest is the brother of the Boor”.

And, over the generations, we had learned to be as isolated as possible, to have agricultural cultures as small and dispersed as possible…

And I’m not referring here to the first generations after the “Great Beginning”. Then we cultivated, in natural caves or dug by us, mostly mushrooms, and developed the system of buried and camouflaged greenhouses.

For agriculture… Cereals, fruits, vegetables, or raising domestic animals…

Winter was omnipresent. Predators were especially active after food. And slaves…

The slaughter, the murder, had long since disappeared because there were too few of us left. And we had learned how to stay safe… Especially from the “Absolute” hypocrites…

Who did their best to get access to slaves… Or food…

But that was only related to the human agglomerations, to the groups of “Urban” slaves. Which still came, from time to time, desperate for food through our areas…

For them or the “Absolutes” …

The people of our community had left the old settlements a long time ago, and had taken refuge in the mountains, and the destruction of the old dam, and the old hydropower plants, in the “Madness of the Absolutes”, had flooded the valley, making it almost impassable… A swamp that seemed endless but had no life or slaves…

A barrier in anyone’s way to reach us, “the Boors”…

But not for the “Urban” slaves, who had to find food both for themselves and for the “Absolutes”, even under the pretext of feeding the community.

Strange obedience… To feed the “Absolutes”, who, as it were, organized the community, to be able to eat according to their laws…

Standing up for what? To eat rationed, to continue to be slaves? Under the laws of the “Absolutes”, under the arms of the “Predators,” who, after all, now prey on others and protect them, for them?

I really don’t understand…

How can you live too much on a handful of grains, mushrooms, or nuts? Per week… In the cold and making so much effort to live, even to reach us, to “Boors” … Plus the swamp had swallowed him; he had frozen too many of them…

Ending their slavery… Even in our defensive traps… Announced by us to drive them away and protect… Burying those who “departed”, pained by their indifference or hunger…

Without understanding why, they felt so blinded and did not do what we did… To choose a place in the wastelands, far from the “Absolutes” or “Predators”, and work for us, indifferent to the danger that we might end up plundered or enslaved…

Anyway, we were in much less danger, better fed than many of them, we were not subject to the laws or the whims of the oppressors, we could have our family freely…

Related to the family, how to accept that your child belongs to the community? How can you give up your freedom, your blood, for their laws?

That’s why, for seven generations, out of the twenty-four, we lived, worked, loved… In relative peace, for seven generations living and thriving, as best we could, in freedom… Life went on with or without us…

And I go to the meeting with the community, hunched under my backpack full of food, hemp-dyed cloth, and “dumplings” of fermented hemp leaves for smoking… To contribute to the community… Or to barter with what I could find useful for my family or neighbors…

Each of us knows what we must do…

To be continued…

Note: Images are created by me, Merticaru Dorin Nicolae, using Microsoft Bing Image Creator.

Dorin, Merticaru (04.29, 2024)