Light Over the Mountain by pandemonium_213

Chapter 2: The Wine-Dark Sea

The Guardians took us to the sea before they tore us away from everything we knew and everything we were. There a camp of many tents had been set up on the shores for all the orphans that the Guardians had gathered. We saw no mothers and fathers, no aunts and uncles, no grandparents, but only the Guardians who had taken the forms of men and women of our kind.

"Why is the sea so sad and brown?" my sister asked when we stood together at the surf's edge. I had seen the ocean before but she had not. "Mama said it is the color of dark wine. You said so, too."

I told her that I did not know why the sea looked so sad. I did not know why we could not see the sun in the daytime nor the moons and the stars at night. Instead, the sky was always grey, just darker or lighter depending on whether it was day or night.

Other children lived in the same tent that we did. One tall boy was brash and bright. He acted like he was our leader, ordering us around and acting braver than he really was, but he stank of fear and sorrow. Another boy smelled of curiosity. He pounded shells between rocks to break them and pulled out the writhing slime that lived within. A tiny child whose odor was that of damp earth and green things tried to stop him, tears running down his face when he grabbed the other's arms. The boy with the rocks slapped the smaller one, knocking him onto his back. But a boy whose scent was that of kindness and pity helped the little one up, drying his tears

My sister cried every night, and I rocked her in my arms, singing the lullaby of the wine-dark sea and the stars in a violet sky our mother so often sang to us. The boy with the scent of kindness and pity sat by me when my sister could not stop weeping. He rested his thin arm over my shoulders and held her hand. He sang the lullaby, too. Then another child joined the song and another and another until all of us sang while our world died.