Lei Williams

The Vole King

I am so hungry I'm beginning to see things I thought. I had been traveling along this road for days now and I could not be far from my destination, but the more I rattled on without food in my belly, the slower and weaker I had become. If it had been up to me I would have eaten well before I left the last town, but sadly, it was not up to me. It is often not up to me. That is why I left home in the first place. To travel to a place where it would be up to me; a veritable land of milk and honey. I had not been the only one. I had been with a group within a group. It was a migration. Many of us stopped in the last town for food and rest but we found the town was being overrun with illness. It was a vile, breath-stealing plague that seemed to sweep the land just as we had arrived. Like many, I fell ill quickly. My traveling companions, easy rest their souls, did not abandon me but stayed behind to care for me and soon fell ill themselves. Sadly, they both succumbed quickly. For whatever reason, I did not succumb, and when I could breathe again I found that many of the travelers had moved on, were ill, or dead.