Dark People

Deep in a cave they wander aimlessly, tired and hungry. They groan and quiver, moving slowly and without any pattern except they seem to like each others company. Their faces change from blank to unhappy and back again as if something painful was affecting them. They are not human, yet they display these eerily similar characteristics. Here they have wandered for centuries, in a constant state of apparent anguish. More than one person had ventured in and seen them. When they saw the being or beings it was as if their mind was captured. At first their mind desperately tried to escape but soon it was enveloped by the deepest sadness they had ever felt. It was as if they had wasted a thousand lifetimes. Once this immense wave had washed over them with the weight of a hundred foot wave their mind was released and they scrambled out of the cave. Their soul was touched in a place so deep that even the most gregarious never mentioned the experience to anyone, not even to warn them. It wasn't that they didn't recall the event, it was that when they thought about it they couldn't speak. As though their voice was locked, their mind frozen. A blind spot had been seared in their brain.

Thousands of years earlier a couple ruled a small kingdom in a mountainous region of what is today called China. Chow's father had ruled the kingdom before him and had accumulated vast wealth in his time. He used his well trained army to extort distant villages who paid him with their crops. With their abundance of food they had plenty of time to manufacture weapons and improve their infrastructure. Their city was well fortified and their houses were sturdy and large. Chow was spoiled as were most of his generation. His father passed away when he was eight which was an immense sadness he carried with him. Hua, his wife was the daughter of Shu a highly pretentious woman who believed wholeheartedly in her people's superiority as well as her own amongst them. These feelings she preached into her daughter who carried on her tradition with impressive vigor. Hua's marriage to Chow came at an early age for them, both were 14. Shu could not have been more pleased.

Chow's father, Jue, ruled with the authority given to him from his father before him. Jue's father had carried on the tradition of his village with exceptional skill. He was stern yet wise and under him their crops flourished as did the village. Anyone who broke the rules of their traditions was quickly dealt with. In this way everyone in the village felt secure and content to carry on their lives without fear. Jue was also exceptionally talented and learned very quickly from his father. As a teenager he began to yearn for more, he needed to do something else, something different. There was nothing to the village life, it could not be a way of life for him. It seemed more like a death sentence. Jue began to exhibit wild behavior, the kind that was bordering on a severe reprimand from the village. He was getting drunk and mocking people. He also led a couple friends who stole some horses and took them riding one night. Taking someone's horses, even if they were returned, was a serious offense. Common sense pointed everyone toward Jue. Although the villager whose horses were taken was sure his horses were taken, his story seemed a little unconvincing so Jue's father chose not to deal with it formally. He spoke to Jue; tried to explain how he was damaging their village. That didn't Jue like his people? Although Jue was still trying to pretend he had done nothing and told his father of course he did and he didn't need to be spoken to about this, he bowed his head in guilt when his father was finished speaking. He thought about all the people, how much joy there was in the village and all the people that shared that with him daily.

Jue's father had always known his son was intelligent but had always envisioned in his mind that his son would love the traditions of the village and enjoy watching over it the same way he did. But Jue's father had grown up in a time of unrest when a warlord has passed through the area and the village had been forced to flee into the mountains for nearly five years. His teenage years were spent rebuilding the damage that was done and thus his appreciation for their way of life had become his passion. He recognized though that his son needed something different, so he began teaching him about mechanics, something he had been working on for a long time and hoped would improve their way of life. He was working on a way of delivering water to the village instead of carrying it by buckets from the river. Jue took to the project and really enjoyed the challenge. Unfortunately it didn't last long, Jue's father died suddenly and mysteriously. Jue felt enormous guilt and confusion. He felt like something was unfinished. He felt so alone, unsure of what to do. Soon he fell back into his old ways and the village began to fall into ruin.