The first time I felt a sense of belonging was in a small village called Umena just outside of Saga. The village was inhabited by a few hundred people, a few thousand if you would count the slaves and the military personnel.
Even though it was called a small village, it held some importance and was protected by Mareo warriors trained by the Mareo. There was a reason the village was not entirely a small village, the main part of it was where all the military personnel lived in and around Umena Castle. In the village lived about sixty families in total, the rest being the servants and slaves. The rest of the village was inhabited by the lower casts, which were the farmers and fishers. Since the peasant lower courses were the elite of the village and most often the wealthy ones who had the access to crafts and trades, they were the ones who had the better living conditions of the lower classes.
While I was still living in the village at first, I was sure to listen to the villagers when they talked. I was listening to them when they said that I should be better off as a simple farmer or fisher. I would heard them one night. It was the night with the full moon. In the darkness of the night, the starry sky was easy to see. The moon was shining, but it was odd. It was missing its usual brightness due to the occurrence of some time before. The area around me was black, no one dared to light a fire or a lamp. Not even one of the guards.
"Full moon tonight," one of the villagers had said in the darkness.
I was sitting in the grass, looking up at the night sky.
"People say we haven't had a full moon since ten years ago," I heard the villagers say.
"And we haven't had any light for a week," another voice approached me.
I heard two of the villagers talking to each other about the occurrence that happened the previous week. The world had gone dark for a week. At first, all the villagers were happy about it. They were excited and grateful because of their lack of work and because there was no moon. The lack of moon was the first time in their lives that they had been able to rest, because the moon was always shining.
However, as a result of the lack of moon, they found out why they had not seen one in the sky. The black wall rose up everywhere around the village. It was just like a wall, black lines appeared in the sky, radiating even in the darkness of the night. The people were confused. The sudden appearance of the black wall had caused almost everyone in the village to scream. However, it was silent their next scream. At that moment, the moon stopped shining. The second the black wall appeared, with no warning and no explanation, the moon was gone. The villagers looked up at the sky in disbelief. Although they had originally ran away from being agitated of not having work, they now realized the moon was gone and seemed to be unable to appear again. This was the trigger of their next scream, their sorrowful screams.
The sun began to shine the next day. The people were glad. At least they knew something else existed on this planet. However, soon afterwards, the sun kept on shining and kept on bringing warmth. Although the villagers were grateful for the sun, it brought another problem. They had no water, food or enough resources to survive. The days didn't pass by as usual. They weren't working out of doors, doing whatever they usually did. The villagers had no idea where they would find water. They didn't know where they would find water until they came across an old river that flowed through the village. After they searched the village for the water, this river wasn't the solution to their problem, because the water from the river was heavy and too salty.