Note to readers: “2200 Blues” is a novel in progress, and each chapter is an early draft in its unfolding journey. Your thoughts and reactions are invaluable, guiding its evolution and refinement. 2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.
Guilt wracked Nickel for the next few days. While the Thraíha were agitated about the strange visitor who had happened upon their settlement, he was consumed by his conversation with Steve. He spent hours sobbing in a rock crevice within the rocks surrounding the Thraíha temple.
The shock, disappointment, heartbreak, anger, outrage, and immense guilt over how he’d yelled at Steve—the man who was the reason Nickel was still alive after crash landing in the Desolate Canyons—flooded him, all on the day Nickel had been initiated as a Thraíha. It all felt like a cruel joke.
The rigor of the Thraíha lifestyle started to feel cumbersome beyond its usual difficulties. While waiting for the next hunt, he was tasked with many of the same activities as before. He could barely keep his mind off his conversation with Steve, regretting how it had quickly turned from a sweet and warm reunion to an uncomfortable and ultimately tragic falling out.
Steve was the adult he could count on to know about the canyons, about Hedonim, and the world around them. He was someone who’d seen more of the canyons and knew about the world. Nickel was now surrounded by adults of the Thraíha who only knew the world through the lens of their culture, of magic and spirits. Nickel had no doubt that magic and spirits existed. He’d had enough experience with visitors to know that. At this point, he knew it wasn’t simply mirages in the fog, as Steve had once explained to him. Though, it might be that in part. That was the point—Nickel didn’t know where the effects of the orange radiation from the nuclear power plants began and the magic apparitions ended. And Steve was the only adult he’d met here—the only person he’d met in the canyons who’d seen much of it, who knew the former, who was from the Past World, as the Thraíha would put it. And Nickel had insulted him, enraged him, and stormed out of his own hut.
When Nickel returned from the rocks surrounding the temple, Steve was nowhere to be found in Nickel’s sleeping hut. Nickel didn’t see Steve anywhere else, but he didn’t bother to ask anyone about his whereabouts.
It didn’t matter because no one asked Nickel about Steve’s whereabouts either. He was long gone, and the times when Nickel had run into Farrul again, nothing was mentioned. Feeling uneasy about facing Farrul after their confrontation at the top of the temple, and his falling out with Steve, Nickel dreaded a confrontation or greater disliking from Farrul. To his surprise, Farrul hadn’t said anything about either of those things to Nickel. He’d shown no potential conflict with Nickel. He had shown his usual ambivalence and a greater sense of disinterest. He’d always been difficult to figure out or discern. Though, he was sleeping in a different hut than Nickel. He’d been told by Akela that Farrul wanted to reside closer to the farm now that he was tasked with more agricultural duties. Though, Nickel couldn’t help but wonder if that was due in part to an aversion to Nickel on Farrul’s part. A way to avoid him without facing him for his perceived slights or misdemeanors. In fact, was Farrul’s greater disinterest in talking to Nickel that—
“Thraxxa, for Father Hawk’s sake!”
Nickel whirled around to face Luvele, the caretaker of the kupernacle garden. She was glowering at him as she stooped over a pair of bladed stone shears, surrounded by rogue plants that she had been shredding. They were invading plants, different from the kupernacle leaves lined up ahead of her and in the bed where Nickel knelt.
Luvele was a stout woman in her later middle ages. She had a round face with curling black hair, cut short to help her travel in the muck around the overgrown algae and wilderness outside of the Thraíha settlement. She was covered in brown Thraíha overalls and had large beady eyes that seemed to watch everything under and in between the plants of the garden, kupernacle or not.
“Sorry?” Nickel called, raising his eyebrows. That word seemed to be what he was owing the most these days.
“Boy, you’ve barely been cutting your share of the leaves!” Luvele shouted at him.
“Huh,” Nickel muttered, looking down at his hands. His stone blade was hanging limp from his palm in the dirt where he’d cut the last kupernacle leaf to the right several minutes ago.
“What are you daydreaming about?” Luvele asked in her high-pitched voice.
“Oh, nothing,” Nickel said, staggering to his feet. He picked up the blades he was using before, holding them at his sides. He looked around, tracking where he would begin cutting away at the leaves again. The damp, almost sweet scent of the sliced kupernacle leaves that he had cut had grown less pungent since he had last cut them open with his blades.
“Have you been sleeping?” Luvele asked.
Nickel rubbed his eyes.
“Yes,” he complained. He sighed. “Actually, no, not enough.”
“Well, hurry up with the cutting, and go to sleep early today!” Luvele said. “They won’t let you on the hunt tomorrow unless you’re well-rested.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Nickel said, nearly falling down in the bed of kupernacle leaves again, nearly falling to the side on the way down. He left a mark in the dirt where his blades cut a small furrow next to the plants. He continued the sweeping motion of hacking at the stems at the base of the kupernacle plants, trying to retain his sleepless focus. While he worked, he could feel Luvele’s eyes on him.
“Why haven’t you been sleeping enough?” Luvele asked. Nickel took a deep breath, dusting dirt from his tunic.
“I don’t know,” Nickel lied. “I’ve just been thinking a lot.”
“About what, boy?” Luvele asked.
Nickel grumbled incoherently.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Luvele said. “I need to know why you took the place of Farrul and another boy today, but can’t keep it together for the work.”
Nickel closed his eyes.
“The Mother Hawk can bless you all she wants, but if you can’t put in the work, then you can’t follow Father Hawk to the hunt!”
“Aaaaaarghhh,” Nickel grumbled louder.
“If you can’t tell me the truth, then you’re out of here and into the stables,” Luvele said.
“Tell you the truth?” Nickel said, frowning. “If I just keep working, wouldn’t that be fine?”
“Stables,” Luvele asserted loudly, pointing at the cows ahead of the kupernacle plants behind her, past the arch of the remaining rusted metal roofing.
One of the cows, a yellow animal splotched in purple, gave a gentle moan from the stables’ clearing.
Nickel’s heart sank. It was always a hassle to take care of the cows and get down in the muck of that clearing’s thick dirt. The soil that had been amassed was concentrated in this part of the Thraíha settlement. Being outdoors, it was carefully confined to an area of the settlement where it was rammed together in a thick patch to buffer against the corrosive fog and where it wouldn’t spill onto the rock surface where it would be bound to dissipate.
“Please, I’ll finish my work here—I’m almost done,” Nickel complained.
“Too late,” Luvele said. “The sun should show any moment now.”
Nickel groaned. Sure enough, the sun appeared through the foggy atmosphere, a rare respite of greater transparency at the zenith of the foggy atmosphere. It shone through the large gaping hole above them in the structure of rising walls that made up the Thraíha farm.
Nickel walked out of the garden, knowing that the afternoon sun was the mark of the next work shift, now made unavailable to him by Luvele.
He walked into the muck of the stables, passing under the arch of the metal overhead and through a wooden gate into the muck of the stables. Stepping inside, the sickly pungent scent of the dirt hit his nostrils, causing them to flare as he cringed. It was a sickly but earthy smell. He preferred the thin sweetness of the kupernacle leaves. The walls of the metal enclave were closer to him now. They stretched over him, joining in a curve at the roof. They were thicker and covered more of the surrounding space than the air of the garden. The metallic scent of the rusty surfaces, splotched in brown, was strong, mixing with the dank sourness of the dirt to produce the mix of claustrophobia-inducing sensations that made Nickel hate working in the stables so much. The damp slushy feel of the dirt clung to his legs as he waded through it, causing the wet cloth of his pants to stick to his skin.
“Fuck you, Luvele,” Nickel muttered under his breath as he struggled towards the lazily lounging multicolored cows stranded at the end of the stable.
“I don’t know what that means, but I heard that!” Luvele called. The Thraíha only swore in Thraíha. The closest they shared with Nickel was “hell.”
“Ah, Farrul, good thing you’re here!” Luvele called. “Your friend Nickel decided that today was not a day to have slept.”
Nickel stopped walking through the muck, turning around to see Farrul enter from the other end of the farm, at the wall opposite the garden.
Nickel had learned from the book he’d stolen from the temple that it had formerly been one of the active nuclear power plants within the canyons that powered Hedonim before it became an AR hotspot. He hadn’t yet been able to read too much more, but he surmised from diagrams that the sprawling, looming enclaves of old, sheared-away steel were the carcasses of old extensions of the power plant or nearby buildings meant to support its operations. The twisted metal spires and enclaves had a grotesque appearance, leaving the whereabouts of its inhabitants and visitors shrouded in shadow and obscure spatial location.
G.R. Nanda 