The snow fell fast and steady. Veila stood, arms crossed, and watched the large flakes accumulate on the world around her. In a life of bleak expectations with even worse disappointment, one of her only favorite things was this sort of calm, quiet precipitation.

Behind her, in the largest tent in the village, the council had convened. The group of men would allow their teenage counterparts to listen in and learn, but Veila, as a female, had been regularly forced to leave before the deliberations began. However, she found that if she simply waited for the arguing to begin, no one seemed to notice her slip in.

As Veila waited, the sound of footfalls crunching in the snow preceded the appearance of Orna and Derda. The two hunting dogs moseyed through the snow, their massive paws leaving well-defined prints. They trotted right up to the tent and nosed their way inside. Even the dogs enjoyed more respect and privilege than Veila. The exasperated sigh she expelled enveloped her vision for just a moment before evaporating into the surrounding stillness – a wispy resistance against this frosty oppression. Veila’s eyes began to ache as the moisture welling in them further dropped in temperature. She glared into the weak breeze that wafted endless cold puffs against her face. She liked to think that each time she resisted the cold, she lasted a moment longer, however minute. But every modicum of progress was more control over this scornful hellscape. And someday she would traverse this plain, beyond the hunting fields and distant hills, to some other world beyond. But for now, her aching eyes were causing even more tears, and her silent rebellion would have to continue another day.

Veila twisted out of the wind and ducked under the tent flap where she was met with a blast of warm air, the smell of dirty men, and the sound of crackling logs and bickering voices. In the center of the tent sat a large stack of firewood, already partially collapsed as it roared and popped. The embers snapped high into the air where they were siphoned through the vent hole cut in the center of the canvas roof. Swirling lines of orange and yellow danced above the fire as they ascended to their death above.

Brunt, as the warden, sat in a tall chair – similar to the one in his family hovel. The other council sat on benches that formed a circumference around the fire. The younger men were seated at their fathers’ feet. They sat quietly and took in the heat and arbitration, fidgeting when the verbal exchanges became more heated than the fire.

“We already agreed we won’t move till the warm green comes!” Brunt barked at the others between heavy, hacking coughs. “We push ourselves to the limit for these bits of meats and roots each week. We can’t break down the whole camp and drag it with us. And what of our women and children? They won’t last a day on the open tunda!

Veila fought back the urge to protest. She would last a day. She would last many. The other elders did protest, between Brunt’s painful hacking, but most fell in agreement to his simple assertion of fact.

“Brunt is right,” said an old man named Drunor. “We are stuck for now. But the warm green will come. It always does.”

“Yes, but when?” a dark and burly man named Keeba replied. His brown skin glistened with sweat in the pulsating light of the fire. “Many of these young’uns don’t even remember the last warm green!”

“The warm green will come. It always comes!” Brunt shouted. “We have both of us seen six of ‘em, Keeba, you and me! And Drunor has seen how many – nine? It has been seven long darks since the last warm green. Am I the only one that can keep track? Are we teaching our sons anything for the days to come or just to hunt for this one?”

In his frustrated rebuke, Brunt had nearly pushed himself to his feet by bearing his weight on the arms of the chair. But once he passed the crescendo of his outburst, he fell back into the chair painfully. The landing caused him to cough more. This time he turned his head away and obscured his mouth with his forearm. When he pulled it away, a bright red spray highlighted his leather-bound wrist. He wiped it away quickly, but several of the others saw it too. Their microexpressions betrayed them for just a moment before they were able to subdue their visible concern.

Brunt continued to wipe the blood off his arm as he glared around the circle. The other men were now silent and avoided his eye contact as best they could.

“Can’t even look at me, huh?” Brunt muttered. “Can’t even look at your warden?”

Veila had wondered how long her father’s illness could be kept from the others. It had been over a month since the blood first showed. Brunt had instructed Veila and her mother to even keep it from Adum.

Veila studied every scarred, wrinkled, and windburned face that sat around the fire. Each one was washed in shuddering shadow. Each one looked grave and solemn. Their stony resolve belied the anxiety-inducing existential crisis that welled inside them. Feelings of uncertainty that they could not articulate even if they wanted to. They had sat and watched their warden – their leader – slowly lose his fiery charge over the last few months. Now they watched him, the man to whom they had pledged fealty for the greater part of two decades, as he buckled under the weight of his responsibility. His rugged appearance and scathing tongue had, indeed, fooled them. His enfeebled lungs were no match for this affliction. They had seen it take man, woman, child, and beast. The sickness did not claim all, but it did claim many, and those few who did survive were never the same.

The awkward silence mutated to a fever pitch for just a moment before Brunt exploded out of the chair and whipped it at the fire.

“You’d be lost without me!” he screamed with a grizzled wheeze. “You’d be lost and dead!”

He turned and stormed out of the tent. All eyes followed him until his exit, where they stopped on Veila, who stood with her arms crossed to the left of the entrance. Veila’s stoic posture lost some of its structure as an uncomfortable buzz started to grow around the circle.

“Brunt has the blood cough, and now he doesn’t even control his women!” snarled one.

“He’s never controlled her!” spat another.

Each additional protest caused another bitter old codger to clumsily gather his robes and shuffle out. The greasy curls and stringy strands that clung to their scalps disappeared into the patchwork camouflage of greyed and worn pelts that made up their tattered garments. As each one vacated the tent, they made sure to elbow past Veila on their way. The darker man named Keeba stopped at Veila’s side on his way out. He neither turned his head nor redirected his eyes. Veila did the same and looked instead at the bundle of grey and yellow-streaked dreadlocks that lay down his back. Countless years hung before her face in the clumped, multicolored cords.

“He had a good run,” Keeba said quietly. “Gooder than most.”

As Keeba stepped out, Veila noticed many of the younger men stayed behind to imitate their elders’ bickering skepticism, each taking a turn to overtly glare in the young woman’s direction. Veila made sure to return each of the icy gazes with her fiery one. The one pair of eyes that met Veila’s with a soft and pitied regret belonged to the smallest and most timid young man. His name was Pesh.

Matt Hebert is an engineer and self-published author. His dopamine-fueled creative pursuits have spanned from chicken keeping, sand sculpture, acting, and public speaking, but writing is nearest and dearest to his heart. He lives in Bellevue with his wife and two daughters. You can find him on Instagram at @jerkofalltradeshebert or email him at matt.hebert.books@gmail.com

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