The Day of Reckoning | Word Meditations 61/366

The Bloody Revolution started in the main village square one Wednesday morning as the sun was reaching its peak and breaking up the white stones in its heat. The whole village had gathered in the square since morning, after the dawn’s work in the fields to decide upon the import of the new trees. Fifty families in all were living in the village then, mostly descendants of a migrant generation that had gathered around the fertile fields a few decades before. Living isolated from the world and by their own means, they had grown accustomed to their limited way of life. But the new road of the state had discovered them, connected them to nearby villages, and brought them the means of progress.

It was a big day for the village, the Day of Reckoning — though it was a false day. The villages elders had originally called it the Day of Beckoning to impress the message that they were the ones summoning the nearby villagers to them, and not they the ones going to them for help. But that would never be remembered in any of the subsequent songs and history books. The poets and scholars of younger generation all called the day the Day of Reckoning — affected in their misreading by the day’s subsequent events — and often wondered what wisdom their elders had possessed to have chosen such an apt name on that burning morning before the events ever took place. Even the party of the Sarcastics wondered publicly what evil plans the elders had had in mind beforehand to give then day such an ominous a name — not one of them questioning the validity of the name itself.

*Opening from an original story that’s yet to be written.