"Dad, what lies beyond the sea?" asked a sixteen year old boy.
"..." His father turned and stared at him intently.
"What?"
"Boy, you ask this question every week." He said. "I've already told you: nobody knows. It's forbidden to even enter the waters."
The sixteen year old Kael Thorne tilted his head upwards and squinted. Past the vast hills of trash that blanketed what was once ground, past the area where the trash ends and where the rows of dark, dingy homes start, past the vast blue sky, past the clouds that blanketed the sky, he looked further, further beyond. Even then, he could only just about make out the faintest outline of a bluish landscape that was supposedly the sea. He sighed. 'It's not like I'll be able to see, no, 'sea' what's beyond.' He cringed at his own joke and hit his head. No, not in this lifetime. For all that concerned Kael, it was the edge of the world.
"Boy, stop daydreaming and help me out with this."
Pulled back to reality, Kael turned around. A good distance behind, the robust figure of the voice-or rather, his father, was hunched over, both hands clasped around a metallic grey pipe that was wedged in the ground. How was it wedged in the ground, you might ask? Well…
Kael scanned the area with a complicated expression. From miles and miles on end, there was only one way that could describe it: heaping, mountains of trash.
The Heap. That's what the people called the place. This place was Arkhaven's personal junkyard.
And Arkhaven was, supposedly, The Last Kingdom of humanity, a claim that Kael took with an enormous grain of salt.
Only the lowest of the low lived here. Unable to find their place in the inner city, they flocked here for survival, building small, shabby living spaces that enshrined the mound of garbage. After all, the endless mountains of trash was their treasure, a hotspot where the poor could earn a living. The presence of The Heap as the center of economic activity rightfully earned this outer city the name of Garbage city.
And Kael and his father were such residents of Garbage city, currently carrying out their weekly excursion at The Heap.
"Kael, for god's sake, come help me with this!" His father yelled. Except, it was more like a strained grumble, a shout suppressed from all the strength he put into pulling the metal pipe.
"Coming," Kael shouted a hasty reply and hastily scrambled over to his father.
However, he was suddenly distracted as the outline of a plastic bag protruding out of the ground caught his eyes. On a habitual instinct, he bent down and snatched it up, revealing a half-eaten bagel inside the bag. "It's decent." He shrugged and tossed it into the sack that was slung over his shoulders.
He quickly strode over to his father and placed both his hands over the pipe, similar to his father.
"On the count of three, pull with all your might, ya hear me?"
"Kay."
"Okay, in 1, 2, …." Kael tightened his grip on the pipe as his father counted. "3!" He anchored his feet onto the ground, and pulled with all his might. The pipe refused to come loose without a fight, but, slowly but surely, it inched out.
"Pop!"
Kael suddenly found himself sprawled up on the ground.
"!!!" he hurriedly clenched his nose and scurried to his feet as the unpleasant smell of 500-year old rust and decomposed food matter wafted into his nose.
He then turned to check on his father.
Triumphantly grasping the pipe in his hand, his father inspected it with a wondrous glint in his eyes, before throwing his head back and cackling. "Hahaha, would you look at that?" He lowered his head, faced Kael, pointed at the pipe and grinned. "I just found the perfect component for my gun. Just look at it, it hardly has any rust! And it's the perfect thickness as well!" His voice commanded the attention of everyone around him, not that there was usually anyone near them. The sixty year old man had a head of greyish - white hair that extended down to his face into a respectable white beard. He wore a thin grey coat that hid another brown shirt from within, and had long, thick pants and boots that were necessary for their line of "work" to protect his legs. This was the same fit that Kael was currently wearing as well, except Kael's pants had pockets, a feature that his father had insisted on adding. "It would make life a lot more convenient", he had said that time, despite not having any himself.
'Father's acting like a child.' Kael looked at him with deadpanned eyes. "Okay dad." With a small grin that betrayed his disinterested voice, he turned around again and continued scanning the ground for any more food scraps while his father stuffed the pipe into his own sack.
The government only provided minimal provisions to Garbage city. A chunk of hard, flavourless, stale bread that stuck to the throat washed down with the 250ml bottle of water were the only items that could be redeemed by those that came down to their distribution facility. There was absolutely no joy in that lifestyle.
Because of this, the duo frequently made trips to the Heap every week. Kael was put in charge of collecting food scraps to brighten up mealtimes, while his father collected scrap metal that were used to craft tools in his workshop. On rare occasions, these scrap metal could also be submitted to the distribution facility in exchange for credit points, which were used to buy clothes and pay rent. However, his father disliked doing this, grumbling about it being "A waste of good material."
"Kael, it's about time, we have to start heading back. It's getting late, and we want to return before the vultures arrive." Kael's father reminded Kael, heaving his sack back onto his shoulders.
Vultures was a term used to describe scavengers that fed off of other scavengers. They would appear in the early evening at the borders of The Heap, robbing people of their scavenged treasures, and people like Kael and his father were their prime targets. They were quite a nasty bunch, but alas, that was how the world worked. People had to live somehow.
Kael glanced at his wrist, where a wrist watch sat, a small contraption that his father had given him as a birthday present, after his father fixed up a broken watch he found in the Heap.
On the watch sat the current time. 'It's currently 5 pm. That leaves about 2 hours to make the hike down. However, we need to travel carefully, as one wrong step could awaken an avalanche. Considering the nature of the journey, we can make it with half an hour to spare.'
"Kay." He prepared to head back.
Following his father, they mindfully trudged together in the trash heaps.
Every step shifted the trash, and as hundreds of years old scrap metal, glass and plastic collided with each other, threatening creaking sounds rose into their ears. Nevertheless, the duo didn't feel intimidated in the slightest. They had made enough trips there to learn how to skillfully avoid an avalanche.
In this way, they slowly but surely made their way closer to civilization.
The evening sun hung in the sky, bathing the desolate landscape in a golden hue.
"The weather is pretty nice today." His father remarked.
Kael couldn't help but disagree. While the warmth of the sun comforted him, the shimmering of the trash nearly blinded his eyes.
Nevertheless, the journey was calm and peaceful, a good contrast compared to the dreary and depressing atmosphere of Garbage City.