Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Time: 6:05 PM
Song: Windy
Artist: The Association
Mode of Consumption: Listening to The Association “Live” album
Note: Last night at
Write On, we were provided with a Word Collage to inspire us to write something.
Here is what I came up with. Below also is the collage.
The Exile
The three judges refused to
hide their bias. The jury comprised of six elders probably cast their stones
before Bela spoke even a word in his defense. The mere illusion of fairness and
justice was nonexistent.
Still, he spoke, his breath
stupidly wasted.
“Shear conspiracy!” he
proclaimed.
“An unwillingness to see the
approaching dangers!” he warned.
“Tiresome reliance on
antiquated fantasies!” he finished.
None of it won sympathy from
this lot. Any ears that might have bent to his cause were barred from the
hearing, and even if they had been allowed in the gallery, any outward display
of unity would have exposed the underground resistance, ruining years of
patient planning and social jockeying.
Bela was screwed.
And so it was, on the third
turn of the summer moon of his twentieth year, Bela Alum was cast to the
wilderness by the colony of his father and his father’s father. Given nothing
but two skins of water, a spear and rations that might last him a week.
**
His escort to the perimeter was
comprised of two nameless guards, bulging men adorned with bronze breastplates
and feathered helms. Leading them was Snick Rork, the court’s chief bailiff, a
round man with thick calves below his burgundy robe. Bela’s hands were bound
before him, behind a servant carried the meager possessions he would take into
the wilderness.
“You know, my boy, the most
dangerous muscle is the jaw,” Snick Rork croaked as they neared the perimeter.
“Most other crimes, they might have just taken a finger or a toe, or maybe just
put you on mine duty for a month, but if the old jaw weakens and the tongue
gets running like yours, they can’t bear to have you around anymore.”
“I seem to remember the
colony’s tablets saying something about man’s freedom starts with his tongue.” Bela
said, keeping his jaw very tight as he said it. He’d not let a sniveling toad
like Snick Rork see his fear.
“Aye, it does, my boy, but
that’s why the jaw better be strong to keep it from getting loose.”
Ahead the thirty-foot stone
exterior walls of the colony loomed. Beyond that, the wilderness. That’s all it
was known as, and the tales of what lay beyond were as wild and unbelievable as
the fantasies the elders told of how the colony arrived to this world on flying
ships, exiles as it were, from whatever home they had once known.
“Why don’t they just execute me
then?” Bela asked.
“To kill is against the code of
the colony’s tablets,” Snick said, “you know that as well as I do. Not even the
highest judge can shed the blood of the vilest man.”
“So, they exile me, and I die
alone out there, probably soon,” Bela said.
Snick didn’t hide his grin as
he turned before the wall. They were in its shadow now; a stone staircase
scaled the side to the top.
“Have you ever been to the top
of the wall?” Snick asked.
Bela looked straight up.
