The Glass Mountains

The range of climates on my planet -- Artekka -- is staggering, but in the sector where I was born dust rises like steam from the fields, and the dogs groan all night from the painful dryness in their throats and from the bites of legions of sand fleas. We take for granted the sounds of their groans filling the night, just as we take for granted the sound of the wind blowing across the plains and the sound of sand raining on our homes. The founders named my sector Bakshami: "dustfire."

As a young girl I'd learned to accept the land of dustfire and to feel safe there, but I never thought about whether I loved my homeland. I lived there the way all my ancestors before me had, and the way I assumed all my descendants would. That was just the way it was.

During the driest season the dryness ate at my eyes until they itched so much I couldn't stop myself from scratching, even if I'd already scratched my lids bloody. My lips cracked, and the air I breathed bore a mix of sand and dust so light and buoyant it seemed almost capable of levitation on a windless day. The only time I'd ever seen a person -- a stranger -- cry, the sight amazed me because I couldn't believe that water from his eyes could be wasted in such a way, over nothing.

Bakshami was not without charms. By day the long, sleek dust clouds with edges as sharp as razors circled the sky like the rings of certain planets, and at night the moons illuminated the sand dunes and lit up the dusty clouds in the air and shone on the fervent faces of the storytellers as they regaled us with tales of worlds beyond even the faintest stars in the sky. The leaves of the dry but regal tansan trees would rustle prettily as we listened to stories, and my youngest sister, head in my lap, would smile in her sleep.

One languid evening while my family relaxed at the storytelling, I looked up and saw a wave of sand in the distance rise and swallow a man. The man, a stranger, had been walking with difficulty near a dune; the wave devoured him and then settled down immediately. The man disappeared, and all was peaceful, the moons gleaming off the still sands just like always.