A Long Road (everything is an allusion)
by Maiji/Mary Huang


if birds are born to fly and sing
then man is made to weep and dream.

Mines are strange creatures. A mine is a man-made structure, imposed upon an unpredictable environment and enforced in response to its dispositions. Built with a singular goal in mind, it slowly grows into a sprawling, tangled mess of passages in which one can easily become lost.

There is an old mining town located near the southern tip of Cross. The distance between Salva Drift and the neighbouring village is only a few days' ride, but the road to or from Salva Drift to any other city is quite long. The aura of the town itself is similarly intimate yet distant. Despite being bustling with activity, there remains a feeling of dust-covered isolation.

Mining is a strange pursuit. One works constantly with other labourers, and yet the task can be the loneliest in the world. It is a way of life for some, and becomes a way of life for others. It is often a stepping stone to a more desirable place, but oftentimes the next stone never materializes. Perhaps it is a cosmic joke that those who dig deep in the earth carry memories of such lofty dreams.

Mining is a dangerous pursuit. The poison deep within the earth is released, seeping slowly into the air, a silent and invisible death. Thus a canary is brought deep below the surface. When the poison rises, the songbird stops singing, for it can no longer breathe. It dies soon after.

The air in Salva Drift is quietly caustic. It solidifies into a powder, forming a warm, sticky blanket that coats the lungs and gradually tightens, sears, and eventually suffocates. For those who are new, visiting, or simply passing through, it can be quite a shock. For those who have lived here long enough, it is barely noticeable.

Somewhere beneath hundreds of worn feet trodding the hard Salvan ground:

1. A small yellow bird tied to a string has been lost in an empty mine and no one notices. It had grown so accustomed to the string that it rarely wandered off by itself and they took it for granted that it would always be there.

2. The man is having a difficult time finding his way out of the tunnel and he curses himself for his poor sense of direction. He suddenly lost sight of the entrance to the mine shaft only a short while ago but it feels like he has been searching forever. The others who were with him have all disappeared. Every so often he hears voices but they are always too far away. His lamp is running out of fuel and it is beginning to grow dark.

3. Much time passes. It is now too late to search for the bird. There is little chance it has flown away as its wings were clipped a long time ago.

4. He finds a canary hopping among the rocks and wonders how it managed to make its way deeper into the mine. Someone has tied a second string to its other leg for no discernable purpose. He is surprised to discover that it can still sing.

5. It is an easy enough task but it takes him a while to catch the yellow bird. He unties both strings and sets it back on the ground. It lingers a short distance away and does not run off. He throws it a bread crumb for no reason other than the fact that its survival up to this point is deserving of admiration.

6. More time passes. It is very dark and he can barely see anything that is not directly in front of him. The bread crumb seems to have sustained the canary longer than any one bread crumb should be able to. The tunnel does not seem as long as it was when he first started wandering in the Salvan mines.

7. It is now completely dark. There are no other options but the thought that the bird is not alone leaves him oddly content.

8. It is entirely possible that they will one day find a way out. In fact it will be happening very soon.

9. He does not yet know it but the yellow bird is about to make its final performance.

It is a long road but one thing is certain.

Tell me how far you imagine the distance of the exit to be.


Author's Notes: Weird dream about actually writing this … and the end result looks almost NOTHING like what I started with. Don't mind my technical inaccuracies xD; My sis noted that I could take out the names of the town and the continent and it would be completely unrecognizable as an SO2 fic. True; I thought the analogies might have been overly blatant and obvious ... but perhaps not?