I woke up at an hour that only the slaves of Tyr’s iron mine were forced to rise at, and I could already hear my wife outside, just beyond the wall of our house. I raised my head toward the small hole in the mud-brick wall that served as a window. The first thing I noticed was that the sun had barely begun to rise.

I let out a sigh.

I couldn’t believe that I missed my younger days as a slave in Urik, and somehow missed my few dangerous years of freedom with the Spyros’ Circus even more.

“Draxel is still sleeping; he won’t be out of bed until dawn’s death, but we really need those ropes to fix our nets,” I heard my wife, Yaaxila, bargaining.

I stared into the darkness until I could make out her shape and that of the rope seller. I swore softly under my breath. Of course, it wasn’t a trader from Balic, or even better, one of those rare silt trading vessels, but one of those “people” - tieflings, as they called themselves.

Facing one of those bastards was like facing a nightmare come to life.

If Yaaxila had told me that her village, those three holes in a hill, was under the protection of a bloody clan of those horned folk, I would have volunteered to test the sharpness of Hamanu’s weapons. Instead, she had only told me that the village was out of reach of Balic’s grubby fingers, and that it was a safe haven for freed and escaped slaves.

Well, it was as safe as it could be if you fancied walking on stilts through the depths of the estuary silt, fishing for whatever horrors your net might catch. Fifteen of us could vouch for it, well, actually only a dozen, since last month’s small incident.

I pulled the blanket over my head and tried to catch a bit more sleep before my wife grew tired of my laziness and came to stir me up.

She really was something. I hated this place, but Yaaxila had a heart as pure as a water well blessed by the highest druid of Athas. She let me sleep only to wake me up slowly with the smell of a warm soup of silt mussels and silt-spawn guts.

Her cooking could have been the envy of any trade lord’s court. For the entire first year in this forsaken place, I begged her to move to Balic and start a small food stand. Her cooking was at least as good as, if not better than, of that irritable dwarf who bought most of our silt-spawn.

One thing was certain: it was far less dangerous to prepare the fatty meat of a silt spawn than to catch one of those creatures in our nets. Unfortunately, Yaaxila loved the freedom of this brutish life.

“Draxel, I’ve fixed the nets. We’ll be ready for the first outing.” She paused. “You’re coming to Hiyhk’s blessing? He’ll start soon.”

I grumbled an unhappy answer. Every time someone mentioned Hiyhk, the one-winged priest, I could hear hard-won ceramic bits leaving my purse.

However, the aarakocra priest of Air was impossible to ignore. He was the one who blessed our outings onto the silt for fishing, and who told us when to stay ashore to avoid sudden storms.

The problem was that, like every cleric I had ever met, if we were warned of disaster, it didn’t mean we could rest in our mediocre huts and enjoy a bit of time to ourselves. By the Dragon Almighty, no, we would instead be expected to perform and participate in something elaborate, complicated, and worst of all, boring.

Of course, I had to keep all this to myself. There wasn’t anything else to do here, and everyone else was eager to participate.

The young aarakocra priest had one of his wings amputated in childhood, in whichever city-state he grew up as a street urchin. A typical enough story that resonated with the few of us who hadn’t been born directly into slavery.

He had arrived shortly before me, and somehow established himself as the spiritual leader of the hamlet. Everyone was grateful for his blessings.

Everyone except me, apparently.

I arrived last, as usual, at our hamlet’s “square,” which was little more than a large flat rock overlooking the silt estuary. At the slightest wind, the silt could rise high enough to block the sun, but today the spirits seemed to have already blessed us.

The sky held a soft, burnt-orange hue as the unforgiving sun continued its ascent. Beautiful. It was a rare moment of bearable weather.

Then Hiyhk raised his feathered arm and mumbled some nonsense prayers as he fanned the air toward us. A small whirlwind formed on the flat rock in the middle of us. Usually, we’d receive a burst of wind and sand in our faces. But today, the whirlwind died just as it seemed ready to take shape.

Hiyhk’s pitch-black eyes blinked. The young priest seemed genuinely surprised, if not shocked. He raised his face towards us, and slowly glided his eyes from left to right as if trying to read our minds.

Our hamlet’s elder broke the silence, “What is it, wind-blessed one?”

The aarakocra paused, searching for words. His expression, usually hard to read, showed hurt as his eyes rested on the ground. “I… the wind spirit… left.”

A curious murmur rose among us, “There… doubt… in wind spirit… power.” Hiyhk said defeated.

Shit, I thought. We were surrounded by a deafening silence. I was convinced my heart’s banging would give me away. I loudly swallowed my saliva, sure I was making everything worse. My wife grabbed my hand, and squeezed it in this manner that was both a reassurance and a threat.

The discussion flared up among our people, and I made sure to throw a whole ceramic piece into the donation vase. For once, I was the first one to donate, and that was probably more than what I had given in the last two months combined. My wife squeezed my hand even harder.

“So, are we going out or not?” asked one of the hardy fishermen.

“Well… I think it might be safe to wait,” the elder hesitated and glanced at Hiyhk. However, the aarakocra grabbed the relics he had laid on the ground for the ritual and left without a word.

“Blessed one, is it safe or not? We need to know!”, shouted the youngest fisherman, Innel, who was the elder’s nephew.

My wife pulled me aside and whispered, “Draxel… what was that?”

I knew she meant my generous donation.

“Did the wind spirit threaten to empty your lungs of all its air?”

I cast a meaningful glance at the rest of our hamlet, “No…no, I’m at peace with the wind spirits, I, uh, just wasn’t too eager to test my faith with the rest of the people here.”

Yaaxila kept quiet, thinking. “But a whole ceramic? We’ll need to go in the estuary today, and pray the spirit took the ceramic for generosity rather than foolishness.” I doubted any spirit would be that naive, but kept that thought to myself.

We weren’t the only ones who decided to hit the silt. Slightly more than half of the fishermen geared up. The weather was peaceful, and few of us could afford the luxury of losing such a day, blessings or not. The most devout stayed and prayed to the spirits for our safety, or so most of us wanted to believe.

I checked our stilts, especially Yaaxila’s, since they were a new pair after she had broken the previous ones. New stilts always took time to get used to. This wasn’t a circus act where we knew exactly where we were stepping.

Here, we didn’t exactly walk blind - our paths were memorized and markers warned us of the treacherous areas, but one ugly gust of wind could stir the silt enough to change all that.

Yaaxila went back to one of the tieflings who had reappeared at the outskirts of the hamlet. They rarely came in during daytime - they knew many of us were, rightfully, unsettled by them.

I wasn’t sure if it was the same tiefling as earlier. This one wore a large, thick black cloak, hiding most of his body.

When my wife came back, I asked her, “Same bastard as this morning, or do you know their whole clan?”

She smirked, annoyed, and tossed me a tiny bottle. “A gift. A lucky charm from them. They said you should smash it on your thick forehead if your luck runs out.”

I sneered and took a careful look at the light-blue bottle. It seemed to be filled with compacted silt, with a dead butterfly resting on top. Some mysterious symbols were roughly scratched on the glass. Pretty.

If it wasn’t cursed it could be worth a pretty coin to the right person.

It probably was cursed, though.

“Did they really say that?”

“They like me! I’m nice to them… you? Meh.” she said followed by a wink.

They’d better be nice to her, I thought. She’d pulled one of their offspring out of the silt years ago. I mulled that over in silence as we finished getting ready. We saw some of the fishermen already heading out in pairs, holding their nets and slowly dropping them as they spread apart, keeping their distance from one another.

The elder came over to help us position ours properly.

“Girl, you don’t have to prove anything. There’s no shame in waiting for a proper blessing,” she said, pointedly ignoring me.

She didn’t exactly hate me, but it wouldn’t be much different if she did. In her eyes, I was the lazy city-state boy.

Everyone said the first steps on stilts were the hard part. They were wrong. The hard part was the moment the rock gave out beneath you and the silt began. If we didn’t find our markers by the feel of our stilts, we’d waste precious time. The plan was always to push out to the deep end, turn, and drop the nets. No one in their right mind felt like staying in the middle of a living death trap.

“I’m good,” called out Yaaxila as she advanced in the silt.

“Just behind!” I rushed behind, and felt my left stilt slide on one of the rocks. “Dragon’s piss!” I shouted as I jumped twice with my right stilt to avoid a face-down fall in the silt. Just as I regained my balance and found my footing, a gust of wind drove coarse silt into my face. I would have sworn more, if it hadn’t been for getting my mouth filled with sand.

Yaaxila, goggles over her eyes and mask already up, shook her head slowly. “You good?”

I put my goggles on and my scarf up. A thumb up was my silent answer. We kept moving, pushing fast to make up the lost time.

We split to give distance between us so we could drop the nets in the silt. As we dragged the nets back, the people who’d stayed on solid ground looked very small and much wiser than me. Our nets got heavy quickly, a good sign, but it also became an effort to pull back to shore. As we approached, we could see at least one silt-spawn already fighting for its life in our net, and as long as we didn’t catch a silt-horror in our nets, all was well.

As we reached the shore, what we hoped was a good first outing was a disappointment. We did catch a silt-spawn, a young one, but it fought like three. Bastard. Hopefully, the silt-crab cages we left late last week would hold a better catch.

Yaaxila and I went in opposite directions towards the various cages and angling to meet back in the middle with our catch. I had barely reached the first cage marked with a small red flag when I saw those slimy white tentacles, nosing up from the silt near the furthest cage.

A silt horror - not the big kind, I hoped. Nothing to do but go still. Stop breathing if I could manage it. I couldn’t even scream to warn Yaaxila of the thing in the silt. If I was lucky, it would feed on the crabs and move on. The marker on the far cage jerked left and right.

A rising plume on the opposite shore of the estuary caught my eye. I turned my head slowly, worried it might be the wind rising. I caught myself doing a quick prayer to the local Air spirit, reflecting that those were the kind of moments that made devouts out of unbelievers.

A loud yapping and grunting came from the plume, and it was moving fast. Moving fast straight toward us. My prayer had been answered. It wasn’t the wind. It was bad enough that it spooked the tentacles, which left the cage alone and moved away.

I turned toward Yaaxila, she gave me the look: What is it, and how fast should we run back to the shore?

I still didn’t dare to move, worried the silt-horror was waiting for me to make the mistake of moving an inch.

“Silt runners!” someone shouted.

I didn’t even look back at Yaaxila as I rushed towards the shore. There was no time to waste. Those nasty, halfling-sized lizards ran on the silt itself as fast as an elf runs in the open desert. I could hear the curses coming left and right from the other fisherman, and could see people in our hamlet grabbing their weapons.

When I finally dared to look if my wife was catching up, I could see the silt-dust rising where the runners were coming from, closing fast. Somehow, I managed to outrun every other fisherman, but Yaaxila was lagging behind and was facing the silt runners.

“Yaaxila! Here!” I managed to scream as I counted at least two dozen silt runners. She remained immobile as if waiting for them.

“Dragon’s piss! You’ll get yourself killed.” I kept swearing as I rushed back toward her to shake her out of her stupor, and grabbed one of the crab-cages heavy with silt crabs.

Stumbling toward her, I finally realized why Yaaxila had remained behind.

“Innel has fallen, he’s down here somewhere.” she said, throwing a knotted rope down into the silt. I threw my safety rope as well as I looked in terror at the charging silt runners, if we didn’t get Innel within a few moments we’d all be dead.

“You sure!? Did you see him falling?” I yelled as the wind suddenly gave a kick of silt into our faces, blinding us.

“I got something, yes, yes, it’s Innel!” she shouted. But it was too late, the silt runners were about to overrun us, I hurled the crab-cage at the nearest one and caught it square in the torso. I watched it sink straight into the silt. One down. Far too many left.

I grabbed the small mace every silt fisherman wouldn’t dare to go out without, and braced for impact. As I made peace with my ancestors and cursed the silt, a loud crack of thunder came from Yaaxila and I saw her arm go back. She held a tiny bottle, just like mine, and threw it.

As the bottle touched the silt, a second loud boom followed, and all the silt around us opened up, revealing the bed of the estuary. Innel, holding the rope Yaaxila had thrown, looked up at us in disbelief.

“Get up on your stilts now!” we both screamed. The sudden disappearance of the surrounding silt forced the raiding lizards to swerve around us.

“How long will this last?” I asked as I pointed at the bottom of the estuary. Innel was back on his stilts, and the raiding silt runners had scattered. Some circled around us, while most of them ran toward our hamlet.

“Let’s move!” shouted Yaaxila, avoiding the question. Which I knew meant she had no clue how long the miracle she just made would last.

The three of us rushed towards the coast, avoiding and fighting off the few silt runners along the way. We could see arrows flying from the coast toward the bulk of the silt runners, and we were getting close enough that I could see Hiyhk waving his wing and coordinating the villagers to shoot at the silt runners. His wind spirit had returned and directed many of the arrows straight onto their targets.

“By the wind! We’ll make it, we’ll make it.” Innel kept repeating as a prayer.

“Shut up, and hurry!” Yaaxila repeated at each of Innel’s prayers.

On the small hill above our hamlet, I saw a couple of heavily-armed tieflings approaching the coast. Never thought I’d be so glad to see those ugly buggers.

I didn’t see it coming, but heard the loud thump as Yaaxila went head-first into the silt with a runner on her back. She let out a cry as she disappeared under the silt as the creature bounced off her shoulders and sprinted toward his pack.

I grabbed the tiny blue tinted bottle, and smashed it on my forehead, the broken glass making deep cuts, and I felt the warm sticky blood running into my eyes. Then, a thundering boom came from the bottle. Shaken by the cuts and the thunder, I threw the broken bottle where Yaaxila had fallen.

The bottle fell in the silt, and I could feel the burning pain from my cuts, as well as the blood running down my cheeks. Everything came to a standstill. Did I do something wrong? I hoped I hadn’t just wasted the only miracle left in it. When she threw hers, the silt had split open the moment it landed. I wasn’t sure anymore.

The dead butterfly rose from the silt, alive. The second explosion came, and the silt finally opened up. My wife gasped for air at the bottom of the estuary and let out a stream of curses that I wouldn’t have thought her capable of.

“Get up now!” I threw her the safety rope. She pulled on it and got up on her stilts.

“Let’s go.” I paused. “You’re alright, love?” I asked. Her look confirmed that she was, but her expression shifted.

“What happened? You’re bleeding,” she said as I instinctively touched my forehead, still throbbing from the deep cuts on my forehead.

“Didn’t I need to break it…”, her look told me that smashing it against my own forehead had very much been a figure of speech.

Clouds of arrows kept raining down on the silt runners. They seemed to be wavering, as the few that made it to the coast were cut down by the tieflings. We headed north on our stilts, trying to avoid any attention, and reached a rock that stuck out of the silt. We knew it well, as we always used it to take breaks on our long days out.

From the safety of our vantage point we could observe the end of the skirmish. It didn’t last long. Few of the runners reached the coast. Fewer still stayed standing. Then one of the larger ones let out a loud shriek and the whole pack broke and ran. We left our rock and made for home.

Our people were already cheering as we came in. The tieflings had left, but everyone else waited to hug and kiss us. As I helped Innel to the coast, I got embraced and kissed on both cheeks by the elder who cried warm tears of relief. That evening there wasn’t a feast to celebrate, but the elder passed around a jug of something sharp and warm. Between the laughs, I had the bittersweet realization that I would miss this place if Yaaxila ever agreed to leave.