Was that… a pink cloud in the sky?
I had been raised all my life not to question things. Even so, I had some big things to question. Peculiar things.
First of all, why had I never left my village in all my 13 years of life? Mother had never ventured out, nor had Father. We all stayed strictly within Wheatenborough’s foggy confines – I’d never even seen the next village over. I was led to believe London was right near us, in some sort of a direction and in some sort of an amount of kilometres which was constantly changing. It didn’t matter much, because we never had gone there. Or any of the surrounding towns. It seemed even the elders were forgetting placenames these days, pent up in here.
Oh, right – secondly, what in the world was the matter with the elders? They’d always been here, at least while I’d been around. And as long as Mother, and as Father, and even as Grandmother… but why? For what purpose? They barely did anything, us civilians worked entirely on our own all day. So what was the deal with these elders, knocking on our doors once a week to check on us?
Thirdly… when had it last been nighttime? I’d never seen a nighttime in my life as far as I’d been concerned. But we all talked as if it was just the middle of the day, and as though nighttime just happened while we were asleep. I’ve never woken up in the middle of the night before, in some attempt to test this theory or catch out the elders on a lie. So I suppose I could believe it. It just… feels suspicious.
Whatever. These sort of walks through the village paths always left me alone in my thoughts, barely able to see anybody else’s silhouettes cutting through the mist.