The Forgetting by Sofia Mariah
Transcript:
“This mine?”
“That’s yours.”
“Okay!”
“Hey, wait. Where are you going?”
“I go find other special wood!”
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Same yours, journeyman.”
Same as mine? We didn’t even come from the same continent—you know that, don’t you? Agarwood is only known as xasi or sanchi in Old Assam.
“My name Nagaon—my name, my village before.”
Ah, same as me then—and same as Guildmaster Dhaka too, since he was named after his vanished city, vanished to the First Wave of the Deluge.
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With the Second Wave coming, I wonder how many more villages, towns, cities will be remembered as names, and not even as places anymore.
As I wrote down ‘Tremolo’ in black chalk on the brown, splotchy bark of the preciouswood that Nagaon found, I stood up and looked around me, across to the deck where only commonwood greeted my eyes. It was then that I understood that this was the discovery we were all waiting for.
Very soon after that came the big job.
Sofia Mariah is an educator by day and writer by night. When she’s not busy trying to convince young adults that the world does not have to end with every setback, you can find her visiting as many places in the world that she can before climate change alters them forever. She also has a keen interest in history; her latest project is a sci-fi, young adult novel based on her family’s personal oral history of the 16th century European colonization of Southeast Asia. She holds an MA in English Literature and has published a few of her plays and some poetry. She currently lives in Singapore with her husband and four cats. More about Sofia can be found on her website: https://www.sofiaemme.com/
And Lately, The Sun 