Najin

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

"Hey, what's black and blue and green all over?"

"Your face if you don't be quiet and hand me that spanner! This flux capacitor isn't going to fix itself!"

Sometimes he didn't know why he bothered. The sneer on the face of the hatchling next to him looked ugly and unnatural, and Najin turned away to reach for the tool in question. The bowels of the generator that they were currently working inside was a wash of darkness with spots of color appearing here and there thanks to the brass lamps and the sparks from the tools that other hatchlings like them were using. There had been a time when he would have been curious about his surroundings, but Najin had learned long ago (much to his disappointment) that it was nothing but an endless tangle of wire. Here he was encased in copper. It was by his sides and above and below him. It was in his lungs whenever he inhaled. In the back of his mind, Najin worried that he had been hatched in this featureless place, but the Workshop's leaders had never been keen to share anything with him or the hatchlings that he toiled with.

For all their talk of purpose and the pursuit of knowledge asking them too many questions could...would land you in a hole so deep you'd never see the stormy skies again.

Why were the leaders the only ones to age? How did they keep the rest in their little bodies? What was this project that they were working on deep under the ground? Adela had whispered those questions to him in the dark as they worked and then louder in the dormitories until the leaders had taken her away. They claimed that she had been sent to work at another site, but he knew better. He should have stuck up for her instead of jibbering riddles to himself to block out the sounds of struggle when they had taken her away.

"What disappears as soon as you say its name?"

"The spanner Najin! Give me the spanner!"

"People buy me to eat but never eat me. What am I?"

"Will you be quiet?! If this sector's output isn't up to par, we'll both be in trouble!"

"The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?"

The spanner clatters to the floor, and there is a sigh that comes from deep within his chest that he never notices. His new partner is too afraid to cause a ruckus, and he walks down the long sparking corridors as if in a dream. Years upon countless years spent in this giant machine. His knowledge of the tunnels and his body that has been small and stunted since before he could remember allow him to escape the Workshop flawlessly. If they sent people after him, he would never know as he was lucky enough to slip into a carriage bound for the borders of the Sunbeam Ruins. From there it was a blur of kind faces, but the ever-present sunlight wasn't for him. He was too close to the storm clouds, and it was best to put as much distance between that and himself.

"Tall I am young, Short I am old, While with life I glow, Wind is my foe. What am I?"

"A candle." The Skydancer answers even though she is looking at him worriedly. Her long face is framed in the hood that is something of a uniform for those that had found him wandering. Treewardens they had called themselves. He found it fitting.

"We should find the nest he wandered away from." One of them says, and the Skydancer shakes her head. It seems as if she is listening to something that the others, the Wildclaws, couldn't hear. Finally, she gives him a secret understanding smile, the first in a long time since Adela had disappeared.

"What belongs to you, but other people use it more than you?"

"My name." He answers promptly. "I am called Najin."

"Well, Najin. I think it is time to bring you home."