Bernan
Please enjoy this flash fiction piece I wrote!
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I never met many people. I saw more death than I did fresh faces. Most of them were good people, but not Bernan. Out of everyone I ever met, Bernan was the worst. Maybe he was like us once, or maybe he came from somewhere else. I didn’t exactly have a chance to ask him. Wherever he was from, he was cruel, and I don’t know why. He was the kind of cruel that would make you write some cliché description of how his fingers looked like claws, or his hair was dark and greasy, or his eyes were like slits. But Bernan exhibited none of those traits. He was clean and stood tall, and to lay your eyes upon him would set your mind and body at ease. Not to mention he glowed. Literally. Anyway, that’s not important.
Three of us arrived on the shores, the last three from the perilous fourteen-year voyage. Bernan was there to greet us, among several others. Based on what we were told of The Colony, being met with a welcoming committee seemed to fit the utopian image that the new land was painted as. Back in The Darksea they said that The Colony had foliage of gold and emerald grass, crystal water that ran through riverbeds of silver stones. I don’t know why I believed that. A fourteen year voyage was not something that anyone would make twice for the sake of returning to The Darksea. None had ever come back to tell us the tale, but legends were still passed around like a plague. Or, like some kind of anti-plague. Hope.
But in that moment we didn’t need hope. We no longer had to cling to it like a sailor climbing ratlines in a storm. After fourteen years on a boat with only a few hundred people you’d be happy to see any new face, regardless of how disgusted an expression they wear. Especially when that number was ever waning, eaten away by sickness, seabeasts, madness, and mutiny.
And then there was the land. Solid ground beneath our feet. Who cared if the trees weren’t gold and the rocks weren’t silver? Who cared if the beach was littered with bones, and smoke billowed into the sky from just beyond the tree line? We sure didn’t. I’d spent over half my life with nothing but waves as far as the eye could see, I was ready to kiss the ground and dampen the soil with tears of joy.
We should have cared, though, and looked up from our celebration. We should have noticed the bones and the smoke and the look on Bernan’s face. We should have noticed that his men were armed, with their swords and knives and spears drawn on us. We should have noticed as they closed in on us, circled us, and left us to join the countless others whose bodies had soiled the beach for who knows how long. But Bernan? He didn’t lift a finger. Just stood there and watched with a sneer as the life was stolen from our bodies on the razor tips wielded by those he commanded. He didn’t get so much as a drop of blood on his white ruffled shirt.
We should have noticed but we didn’t, just like the next ship won’t notice our remains. At least not until they join us.
