Waxy moonlight slid through the open barn door, and dappled Ynnam with a pale gleam. It gave him an almost ghostly quality. Possessed by a perfunctory sense of obligation, he clenched and unclenched his hand rhythmically on the giant silkworm’s spinneret. As he massaged it a cascade of silky slivers oozed out into a burlap sack waiting below. The hairs lining the silkworm’s skin bristled as he squeezed. Ynnam patted its flank soothingly, his mind floating off somewhere else entirely.

To outside observers the process would have appeared deeply revolting, but he was more than used to it so didn’t bat an eyelid.

He was a squat and somewhat chubby boy, garbed in scruffy overalls and a thick coat.

Sharp gusts of tormenting wind whistled through the barn’s rafters and made him shiver reflexively. The bulky winter clothing he wore couldn’t stave off the unbearable cold that permeated throughout the air.

The dimly lit barn he crouched inside was long and narrow. Inside it, a dozen other silkworms squirmed in their straw filled paddocks, chittering quietly to themselves. This year’s harvest had been especially poor, so the silkworms were less plump than they ought to be; their skin sagged and drooped as if they’d been deflated.

The agonisingly dull routines, that farm-life required, felt especially monotonous for Ynnam today. He often foresaw a grim future, in which he was an old man that’d never left the farm in all his life. Only so many more years could be spent in this place before he could bear it no longer.

Ynnam’s grizzly bearded father crouched next to him in the barn, engaged in the same activity although having markedly less success. A long frown curved across his heavy-jowled face as he struggled to squeeze out the silk. He puffed deeply on a fat cigar, creating black wispy tendrils that floated up towards the barn’s ceiling. Neither of them said a word to each other as they worked, as was the norm. It wasn’t that Ynnam’s father didn’t love his son, rather he simply didn’t grasp he concept of love to begin with and so was oblivious to his sons’ requirement for it.

Ynnam’s father belonged to a generation of insular ex-pioneers that’d settled the most inhospitable corners of the South Pole some decades previous. Despite the golden age of colonisation having well and truly ended by the time of Ynnam’s birth, his father still obstinately refused to embrace the changing world in which he found himself living. Instead he adopted a simple if hermitic lifestyle, free of urban strife and industrial labour.

“Gotta make a trip up north te’ bloody capital in a couple o’ days time.” Ynnam heard his father grumble, feeling faintly shocked that he’d decided to speak for once. He hoped his father would for once ask him to accompany him to Deadshell; the great city of which he spoke. Ynnam had never been there before but was enthralled by the way his father had described it to him. He spied the brilliant orange hue on the horizon’s edge, that emanated from the marvellous city.

Ynnam often daydreamed about travelling to it and seeing it for himself. Historians and theologians asserted that the city was as old as time itself. It was far from conventional in its construction. Ynnam took a great deal of interest in the architectural wonder that it plainly was. The experience of growing up on a shoddily constructed farm gave Manny an appreciation for its intricacy and grandeur. The bulk of the city was nestled inside a colossal empty snail-shell, whilst small communities, like the farm, existed on its outskirts. Ynnam stared wistfully off at the shell-city. He studied its beautiful spiralling patterns with admiration. Innumerable bridges and ramparts were built onto its edge. Looking very closely, he could even see small holes in the shell from where it had become damaged during sieges. Ynnam sighed, lamenting the fact that trips into the grand city never involved him- the city’s single greatest admirer.

It was Ynnam’s brothers’ responsibility to trek to the city and peddle their silk in its sprawling market districts, whilst he stayed home.

“people always need silk after all. I’ll ‘ead up there in a couple o’ days time. See if I can’t get a good price for em’” Ynnam’s father grunted

Ynnam nodded, his eyes bright and attentive. He wished his father’s sudden burst of talkativeness would continue. He even dared to wonder if he might go on to talk less about practical and boring topics of conversation. Silk prices held little interest for Ynnam. He was disappointed to see his father retreat into himself once again and return to his usual silent state. He returned to his work, feeling somewhat disappointed.

Curled up in a black heap amongst the barn’s strawy debris was their domesticated leech, with a sturdy muzzle covering her blood-hungry mouth-hole.

“That’s a good girl” Ynnam said quietly, running his hand along her segmented body as she snoozed peacefully next to him.

His father grumbled disapprovingly at Ynnam’s affection for the creature. In his typically obtuse way, he’d forbade him from naming the leech, due to his disdain for sentimentality. Ynnam still referred to it as ‘Slimy’ in private, when he knew his father wouldn’t hear. Leeches were prized for their resilience in the cold climate hence why his father tolerated it, although Ynnam simply enjoyed its company without any concern for its practical advantages as a beast of burden.

“That’ll have to do” a cloud of white breath escaped his father’s cigar stuffed mouth, before he exited the barn

When his silkworm had given all it could, Ynnam deposited his and his father’s sacks of freshly spun silk inside a storage cupboard at the back of the barn.

Crisp white snow crunched underfoot as Ynnam ambled out into the darkness outside. It was midday, by Ynnam’s reckoning, although the sky was a dark shade of blue. Darkness lasted half a year in the South Pole; night and day often looked much the same.

“You’ve seen better days, huh” Ynnam sighed as he studied his family’s ramshackle farm. The farm compound itself consisted of a modest collection of rundown buildings. Repairs were costly due to the expense of imported timber, so the farm was in a near constant state of disrepair. Coarse white flakes of snow had worn away the paint on the farm’s buildings. Streaks of brownish orange stubbornly held out, although they were peeling and faded.

Ynnam’s brothers, Jurva and Urye, had left before dawn to help out a nearby farm with an infestation of snowskins- invasive reptiles that preyed on unsuspecting livestock.

Ynnam eagerly awaited their return, if only for something more fun to do. His father wasn’t an advocate for fun and games. His expression remained serious even upon the most joyful of occasions, and Ynnam had never heard him laugh.

“I think summat bad’s ‘appened at Lurthizky Farm” Ynnam’s father mused, leaning against a fence post. He puffed on his cigar and looked far across the glacier towards the horizon with a grim expression.

“Yeah I thought I saw smoke. Do you reckon they’ve been overrun? ” Ynnam asked, attempting to broadcast a veneer of maturity.

His father remained silent, then furrowed his brow and walked away briskly to resume his chores. Ynnam knew better than to press his father further, lest he arouse the temper that bubbled underneath his quiet exterior.

“Ya’ know… Their skin looked awful flaky. Pump em’ some water will ya’ son?” his father mumbled through a mouthful of cigar smoke, gesturing off vaguely at the giant moth larva back in the barn.

Ynnam was irritated by his father’s non-sequitur of a reply but obliged him nonetheless. He siphoned pale brown liquid, from a nearby water pump, into a bucket which he then placed in front of the silkworms. They buried their gaping maws into the water, their necks undulating as they took huge thirsty gulps. Ynnam heard a snowstorm whirling somewhere off in the near distance, possibly threatening to head towards the farm. He ignored it. Work had no continue, snowstorm or no snowstorm.

Smoke continued to billow across the horizon, near the Lurthizky Farm; Ynnam did his best to ignore it.

On it went, just another ordinary day at the farm. Minus his brothers for company. However, normalcy was interrupted when night fell and Jurva and Urye still hadn’t returned. The dark blue sky had turned a shade of deepest black. He and his father called out their names across the glacier, stricken with worry. Black clouds loomed above them. The snowstorm Ynnam noticed earlier had by this time revealed itself. He watched despairingly as it ruthlessly tore across the glacier, consuming everything in its path. Ynnam peered hopefully through a pair of binoculars, trying to make out any human forms hidden amid the tempest.

After a long while of desperate shouting and searching, the pair of them resigned themselves to a restless night’s sleep, hoping the boys would return in the morning.

“They’re probably just ‘avin more trouble than they expected. Don’t worry yer’self, they’ll be back tomorrow. Wait and see” his father had said, ignoring Ynnam’s sceptical stare.

Later, at around midnight, Ynnam found himself staring up blankly at the wooden beam above his hammock. The snowstorm from earlier loudly whooshed around outside, making the window shutters rattle. As he fretted he imagined Jurva’s disembodied head lodged deep inside a hungry sandskin’s stomach, being slowly digested. He imagined Urye’s half eaten corpse laying in the snow and staining it red. He tried to escape these morbid patterns of thought but only found himself indulging them all the more as the night wore on. Sleep found him eventually, but his worries continued to plague him in his dreams.