The boy blinked awake with dust on his tongue.
His eyes didn't like the light.
They hadn't liked it for weeks now—ever since they'd started drying from the inside out.
He rubbed them but it only made them sting more. So he stopped.
His name was Kanan, though no one had said it in a while.
The hut he lived in was cracked and leaned too far to the right. It smelled like sweat, smoke, and ash that had long stopped rising. The roof had three holes in it. Rain never came through those holes.
Because rain didn't come at all.
He sat up slowly, bones pressing skin from the inside like they were trying to leave. His limbs creaked. His head ached from standing too fast. He gripped the wooden staff beside him. It was too long for his height, and too heavy for his arms, but it helped him walk when the shaking got bad.
There was nothing in the hut. Not even the rats anymore.
Kanan walked outside.
The village greeted him with silence, as always. Twelve huts, maybe fewer. No names. No doors. No colour.
A place that had forgotten it ever existed.
He walked to the centre, where an old cooking pot sat in a pit of ash. Nothing had boiled in it for years, but it remained. A monument to memory. A joke without a punchline.
There were only two things to eat these days:
Insects and hope.
And hope had even less meat on it.
Kanan crouched by the edge of the well—bone-dry—and scanned the cracks in the stone. Nothing. No beetles. No larvae. No breakfast.
He pressed his palm against his stomach, not to calm it—but to feel something.
Still there.
Still waiting.
Footsteps approached. Slow. Uneven.
The elder.
He didn't have a name anymore either. Everyone just called him "old man" or nothing at all. He was wrapped in a cloak stitched from mismatched fabrics, and his beard looked like it had been dipped in chalk. He carried no staff. Didn't need one. The earth bent for him out of respect. Or maybe it just pitied him.
He sat beside Kanan and stared at the same dry nothing.
They didn't speak for a long time.
Then the elder said, in a voice that rasped like leaves scraping bone:
"I once tasted rice."
Kanan turned to look at him. Not fast. That took too much energy.
The elder's eyes were closed, like he was seeing something far away.
"It was white. Hot. Soft. It stuck to itself… and to your fingers. Like a promise."
"Tasted… like clouds, if clouds were kind. Not sweet. Not bitter. Just full."
Kanan didn't respond.
He'd heard the story before.
So had everyone.
The elder told it every few days, like a prayer. Or maybe a punishment.
Still, Kanan closed his eyes too.
He tried to imagine it. Rice.
A food that didn't crawl. That didn't wriggle. That didn't bite back when you picked it up.
A food that made you full.
He'd never tasted it.
Never even seen it.
But it lived in him like a word he'd never learned how to speak.
The elder shifted. Coughed twice. Then he said:
"If you ever find it, boy… don't eat it all. Share it. That's the rule of rice. It was never meant for just one."
Kanan nodded. Not because he understood.
But because it felt right to agree.
The sun climbed higher. The heat pressed down like a warning.
Kanan stood, legs trembling under his own weight. He moved toward the outskirts of the village, stick tapping the dirt with each slow step. He wasn't looking for rice.
He was looking for ants. Or a worm. Or maybe something worse.
He didn't dream of escape. Didn't imagine a better world.
But sometimes, when the day was quiet and his stomach was louder than his thoughts, he would whisper one word.
Not like a wish.
More like a question the world kept ignoring.
"…Rice."
[To Be Continued…]