Chapter I
The Silver Sands
White sandy clouds blew across the small desert town of Caeresh. It was a ragged haven of long-time fisherman from the sea border and adamant traders from the inner desert regions. Yet to me, it was no haven at all. It lay somewhere between the Island of Distraught and Cape No-Hope.
The small fishing shops and market bistros in the town were closing. The sun was setting with an orange glint on the world. The pale clay buildings in the desert town were the usual dusty, worn-out color that every building in the desert likens, no matter how new.
I sat leaning against an alley wall, curled up into a pitiful ball of dismay. People passed me by as if the sight was commonplace. It was. The issue of the ever-growing population of orphans in any desert town or city-state was never seen as resolvable. We were first in line on nature’s unspoken death row.
The street dogs howled in the distance. I hid my head between my knees as tears silently caressed my grubby little face. The sun cast shadows around the alley corner, and they fluttered suddenly as a boy crested it. Upon seeing me, he stopped and stared for a moment. I didn’t look up.
“Are you alright?” he asked sympathetically. I had never expected to be addressed by anyone, but I turned my face toward him and rubbed my eyes. I did not know him, yet then again, I didn’t know anyone. As a seven year old orphan girl in a town of stubborn sand sea dwellers, a kind and sympathetic face was foreign and unsettling, and yet somehow, still appealing.
His raven-black hair curled in little wisps around his face, encircling his deep green eyes. Firm and strong, his gaze melted into my broken existence like water into parched sand. He looked several years older than me, a teenager.
He donned typical desert garb of the poorest classes: dingy, loose beige pants made of a light, thin material (to keep one cooler in the desert heat) and a sleeveless shirt of a similar sort in a dusty tan color. He wore no shoes, but instead the soles of his feet were wrapped in thick strips of leather hide to protect them from the scorching sands, a common foot covering.
I pondered what might have struck him to pay me mind. True, anyone could tell a child alone on the streets was distressed whether or not one displayed it, but a soon-dead child couldn’t be helped. Charity was aberrant among penniless sand sea dwellers.
He bore a noble face. Though hidden under an impoverished life’s unrelenting grime, he remained pleasing to the eye. He had a sharp smile that was neatly smoothed at just the right places to make him have an uncanny likeness to kindness itself. He stepped forward and reached out a hand to me.
I said nothing still. I could not speak for myself, and I expected him, just as everyone else in the world, to leave because of that. He was different though. He did not leave, nor did he let me.
I stared into his deep eyes, and then looked down to his outstretched hand reaching to help me. My fingers tensed and dug into my legs. Who is he? …Why does he care? I rubbed my left ankle with one of my right fingers. “What’s your name? Come on, I won’t hurt you,” he assured. Uneasily I took his hand, and he pulled me up out of the dust. My head still hung low. “Any family?” he asked. I shook my head. “A place to stay?” he questioned further. No again.
“Come.” He smiled, taking my tiny hand. He started to lead me down the alley with a certainty and calmness in his pace. “I am Jiang,” he started. He waited for me to answer, but I said nothing. “My family and I are living back in the Swarm District. We have our own little spot there, but you are welcome to come.”
Family. He had a family, and I was not part of it. I couldn’t go with him. That would be too much to ask of anyone. I pulled my hand out of his.
He stopped. “What’s the matter?” I shook my head, starting to back away, but he caught my hand. “Hey, what’s wrong? Come on, you have to come see my family. You would like them, especially Sage. She would be so happy to have another girl with us.”
He didn’t wait for me to reconsider. He simply pulled me along through streets and alleys until we had come to the edge of the Swarm. The Swarm District was where all the street ‘urchins’ and homeless families lived. It was essentially a dump comprised of life’s rejects, all piled into one corner of the city. Every town had a Swarm District, and some larger cities even had multiple.
The great white desert, Silver Dust, is brutally hot and equally unforgiving. Named for its silvery-white sands, it is home to thousands of tiny scattered towns, the capital of which is the royal city, Kadiisan. On that day that I met Jiang, I never would have thought that I would see the capital city.
He stopped at an alley corner. Three large wood planks, a torn canvas fishing tarp, and a crate of junk. This is what made up their little territory in the Swarm. The planks and tarp were set up as a barrier in front of the corner to keep other urchins out. I squeezed Jiang’s hand as I stood watching.
“She has no family either,” he explained. Either? I pondered. “She will stay with us.” Two boys and a girl a few years younger than Jiang stood before me.
“What is her name?” the girl asked. Jiang looked down at me expectantly. They all waited. My gaze fell to the dust. I had almost forgotten I couldn’t speak. This was why I couldn’t be part of any family. No one would take me without a voice.
The girl looked me over critically, as if searching for something in my existence. She couldn’t seem to find it. “My name’s Sage,” she started conversationally, “and this is Zhan,” She pointed to the boy next oldest after Jiang, “and Zehkren.” She pointed again. Sage looked into Jiang’s eyes as if trying to get him to help her welcome me.
Jiang fumbled a moment searching for words, but then continued for her, “I’m sixteen, Sage is twelve, Zhan is ten and Zehk, almost nine.” My eyes passed over the two dark-haired boys and went straight to Sage. Her pure blonde hair cascaded like a waterfall down her back, falling just past her waist. Though marred by dirt, her face was as if it was carved by a master craftsman who could make angels’ faces look petty in comparison.
She didn’t have any foot coverings like the boys, but I didn’t pay mind to that. What I saw was her clothes. Yes, she wore a scraggly, mangled, tawny gunny sack dress, but it was a dress. I stared down at my disgraceful, scratchy brown pants and shirt shamefully. I’m not even wearing girls’ clothes.
When she realized I was slipping away in my mind, feeling unacceptable before them, she quickly advanced. “You can stay with us here, though we don’t have much. Don’t worry, it’ll be alright.” She smiled brightly. Sage came forward and tried to welcome me into their cove. She took my hand and pulled me in, but I wouldn’t let go of Jiang’s grasp.
“Come on,” Jiang urged, “You’ll be okay with us here.” So I walked back into their nook with him, which was very dark by now, as the sun had waned away. I sat by Jiang in the dark as Sage attempted to bridge the gap between us.
“Jiang works in the fish market sometimes, or when they let him, at least. It helps us a lot.” She sat cross-legged in front of me. Zhan and Zehkren slumped down on the ground nearby. They had not spoken since I came.
Sage elbowed Zhan, and he complied by trying to conjure something conversational, “Uh… we help with the fish sometimes too, er, with selling them, I mean.” He didn’t attempt more than that. Zhan was stout with a sturdy build, yet still, he looked very agile. His face was a bit less refined than Jiang’s, but did not appear unpleasant in nature. He had long dark hair pulled back into a young artisan’s braid, with little pieces of it slipping out over his face to accent just the right curves of his jaw.
Zehkren was more of a talker than him. He moved in closer to the rest of us. “Zhan and I are brothers,” he explained.
“I’m older,” Zhan asserted.
“Yes, she knows that already,” he chided. Brothers? I thought. That means that the others are not their real family You would think it would have been obvious to me, seeing as the others looked nothing alike, but I was too young to consider that. Zehkren turned back to me and proceeded to explain their history, which was brief.
“Our mom died when there wasn’t enough food for all of us. We never knew our dad.” He looked at Jiang. “Jiang and Sage found us when we were six and seven.” Zhan sat silently dragging his fingers through the white dusty sand, with no particular purpose, while his younger brother talked.
“We would never have made it without them,” Zehkren thanked indirectly. He stared me in the eyes when he spoke, except a time or two when he talked about Jiang. Then he looked him in the eyes, but Jiang just sat listening. He had not let go of my little quivering hand all this time.
He continued, “Sage doesn’t know where she came from. She’s been wandering the streets as long as she can remember.” Something that intrigued me about him was that he spoke with his eyes. When he talked, it felt as if he could use those bold mechanisms to look down into your soul, and use it against you should he choose. But he didn’t.
He looked no deeper into your eyes than you looked into his. They were brown, as dark as ebony, and deeper than the sea. His hair only complimented his ebony eyes. It was wild and untamed, a crisp black-brown, and it stuck up in tangled, jagged pieces off his head.
Then Jiang told his story, “My father was a fisherman. He worked hard at his job, and had to travel out to the coast often.” He leaned back against the wall and stared into the dark. “One day he never came back… The traders who sold his catch still let me work at their cart occasionally, so I had a bit to stay alive on.”
His voice was monotone when he explained his past, not like how it sounded when he found me in the alley. “Our house was taken when my father didn’t return. I found this corner in the Swarm District, with Sage trying to keep it. It was a popular spot.”
“I was only eight then,” Sage recalled.
Just then Zehkren thought of something. “How old are you?” he inquired. A look of terror came over my face as I remembered that I was actually sitting here with them, and couldn’t say a word. I panicked as I tried to think what to do.
“Hey, hey, it’s alright. You don’t have to tell if you don’t want,” he comforted. “I was just curious, you know. You look a bit younger than the rest of us.” Ah, yes. That was the other issue. They were all older than me. How could I stay with them? I supposed that I had better get it over with now, so they could kick me out already.
I pulled my hand out of Jiang’s and tried to put up seven fingers, and I think I held up the right amount. Seven was the closest guess I had to my real age.
The boys squinted in the dark at my fingers. “Seven?” Sage confirmed. I nodded. “Just like Zhan when we found him and Zehk,” she bubbled, with a slight smile in her voice. There was a pause of silence.
Zhan finally spoke, “So do you even talk? You haven’t told us your name.” I felt like the question had bit me, and Sage and Zehkren could tell. Zehk elbowed Zhan with a scowl. Zhan grumbled, “Hey! What was that for?”
“Don’t be so rude, Zhan,” his brother scolded. “She can talk when she feels like it.” But I couldn’t. My head hung and I shook it shamefully.
No, I can’t. My lips crumpled up together as I tried to stifle my childish tears. Jiang sat up and leaned in low toward my face.
“Hey, what’s wrong? It’s alright, don’t cry now,” he soothed.
Sage jumped at the opportunity to show her motherly kindness. She moved right over and wrapped her arms around me. “There there, it’s okay now. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want.” She stared down into my hazel eyes, and looked as if she had found something. Maybe it was what she had been looking for when she had looked me over the first time. Maybe. But maybe not.
“Do you know your name?” she cooed.
I shook my head. No.
“Can you talk?”
I stared into her big brown eyes. Tears seeped out of my eyes and down my dirty cheeks. No. I never have. Ever. I buried my face in her tattered dress, silently sobbing. She stroked my ragged brunette hair. It was choppy and short, with locks no longer than a finger’s length each.
“Do you want a name?” she asked. I gazed up hopefully into her eyes. I noticed now that they were mysterious, like nothing I’d ever seen. As if they had an entire other life behind them. They somehow seemed to always to be gleaming, even with no light left to shine on them.
Sage thought hard as she looked at me. The boys were silent, as they were not going to tread in on her moment. She searched for a name, and it seemed as if it took every fiber of her being to do it. I thought finding a name would be easy for any girl, but apparently not.
She announced finally, “Veraelis.” My eyes lit up with excitement. “It means ‘tenacious’,” she explained. I had no idea what that meant, but I didn’t care. I had a name. I realize she never once considered whether or not I would like the name she picked, she just chose. No doubts or reconsiderations.
“Well then, Veraelis,” she purred softly, “it is rightly time to rest for the night. You can sleep by me.” And I did. Jiang, Zhan, and Zehkren were grateful to turn in for the night, so they gathered their ratty burlap blankets from the crate of junk. There was only one for each of them, so Jiang gave his up for me. It made me feel bad, but he wouldn’t have my refusal.
I lay next to Sage as I listened to all of them breathe softly in slumber. This was home to them. Maybe one day I would feel that it was mine too.
Hours passed into the night, and I listened to the silence sleeplessly. Silence had always haunted me. Taunted me. Tortured me. From that moment on I vowed I would break it somehow. Someday.
I'll start by saying that I really liked this! I'm going to go through with nit-picks first and then give some general comments. 
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