Black-Eyed

 A themed, timed writing exercise.

Everyone wrote down 5 traits of their culture and exchanged notes.

I picked these from the pile: - Know too much about each other and have our noses in people's business; - Hospitable, giving, helpful; - Reserved/not open to different people; - Everyone knows what's cooking; - Don't know how to enjoy silence/may think of it as offensive

The first prompt with these traits was: “Write about how this culture came to be.’’

It's a matter of windows. And eyes are windows on the soul. Ours were all blue. Yes, it is a matter of windows. When there's not a lot of sun, you need to make them wide, and can't afford covering them with curtains. Our people came to this valley seeking refuge from persecution, and the tall mountains surrounding it gave us the right shelter, and little daylight. So looking into each other's home is normal, and smelling each other's cooking too, and commenting on it, of course. There's always this feeling that if you don't say what you think, you're hiding something. That's because when we arrived in this land we needed to be sure nobody was going to disappear one day and go back to the others, the black eyed ones, and tell them where we had gone, so that they could come and get us. We made a haven for our bodies and souls here, generation after generation. We were not closed to outsiders, though. The rare traveler was welcomed with a warm meal and introduced to our finest spirits. But then he would have to tell us everything. We would not bother the foreigner with our own stories, but his, that's a different thing. I'm saying "his" because we had never seen a female traveler entering our valley. No clue why, the only ones passing by have always been men. Our enemies never found us, to our great luck, and slowly but steadily our numbers grew, our houses widened and grew sturdier, and we all knew what everyone else was up to at any given time. Which was immensely reassuring.

The second prompt: "This culture has forgotten about its roots but it is reminded at an unexpected moment"

She arrived at sunrise, just when the roosters were starting their dissonant concert resonating from farm to farm. She was alone, and she was not like them. Tall, black eyed, her fair skin covered in tattoos, she walked solemnly as if leading a procession along their main street. There was nobody around, but she could see easily through the wide windows into every house and shop. The families asleep together in their large beds, the single men and women on their couches. She could figure out immediately the tidy and the sloppy ones, those with the remains of their dinners still on the table waiting for a morning inspiration to be cleaned up, and those with everything neatly stacked to dry and ready to cook and serve breakfast. She stopped in the main square, in the very center of it, dropped her backpack on the ground, raised her black eyes to the rosy sky, took a deep breath, opened her throat and screamed. A bone-chilling, gut-wrenching, mind-boggling scream that got everyone suddenly awake, achieving what the roosters had lost the ability to obtain with their boring, expected cries.

Soon everyone was gathering in the square, some still fastening their belts, some adjusting their shirts, some just wrapped in blankets over their night robes. She kept screaming, and screaming, and screaming. There were words in there, some of them realized, it wasn't just a howling siren. There were words in a foreign language none of them could understand after all that time, but the words resonated through the valley, up the mountain sides, and they said something simple: "They are here!"

A rumbling like thunder could be heard in the distance. They had been found.

Third prompt: End with "The only future she has to offer is a repetition of the past"

The old enemy had found them, and came to get them after so many generations, even the oldest one of them could not remember why they had been persecuted in the first place. That was something that had been gladly left out of their lore. They just knew they had to leave and hide, and that they had found shelter in the shadowy valley and that for a long time the only occasional male traveler had come by, and had been welcomed, fed and interrogated before being given the right to go on.

They couldn't even understand the enemy's language anymore, so long was the time since they had escaped. They had been gathered and forced to leave their homes, put on a long convoy with no windows at all, brought to a strange, huge, circular building with no roof to shelter them from the rain, and there they stood, not knowing what to expect. An old man came, he spoke from a podium, and he spoke their language! Everyone gathered close to listen.

- Sons of the abomination, progeny of demons, we finally found you and will not show mercy to you, just like you did not show it to us.

- We were the ones who had to flee! - they protested - and it wasn't even us, it was our great great great grandparents! Why did you take us here? Let us go!

- Sons of the abomination, progeny of demons, what your demonic ancestors did still cries for revenge.

- We know nothing about it!

- You will soon.

The old man went on explaining to them what their ancestors had really done. They had spread a plague that took only the female, and only those without blue eyes. Almost all daughters were stillbirths, after their spiritual leader had proclaimed only blue eyed ones were worth living. They had then fled the country, leaving it to its fate. And for a long time, only men could grow to be adults and then die alone. There was no antidote, no escape. Black eyed girls died by the thousands. Until one was born, black eyed, and survived. She gave birth to many, and they survived. The plague was vanquished, and the people were again able to grow, have families, children who would marry and have children. And eventually, one of them found their enemy. So their queen had decided what to do with the blue eyed enemies, and while a sliding roof closed the strange building and the gas started hissing from the vents, they heard the old man's voice announce it: "The only future she has to offer is a repetition of the past".