Batu — A Son of Stone

In Lokmane, children grow up surrounded by things meant to last.

Mountains.

Stone walls.

Family traditions.

And expectations.

Batu has never questioned what he will become when he grows older.

His father is a builder.

His brothers are expected to become builders.

And one day, Batu will be one too.

At least, that is the plan.

The people of Lokmane are difficult to mistake for anyone else in Nduara.

They are large.

Not simply tall, but broad and powerfully built. Both men and women regularly tower over people from the other kingdoms. Travelers encountering a Lokmane warrior for the first time have occasionally mistaken them for something other than mortal.

Batu is still young, but there are already signs of the man he will become.

His shoulders are broadening. His jaw is unusually square, with a deep dimple set into his chin. His nose is broad, and his features have the heavy definition common among his people. But perhaps his most striking feature is his eyes. They are an extraordinarily pale blue, almost translucent. In another part of Nduara, eyes that light might be a disadvantage.

Imagine Batu beneath the relentless sun of Tajiri. He'd probably spend half the day squinting.

But Lokmane is not Tajiri.

Clouds, mist, snow and mountains soften the light reaching their settlements. Generations of living beneath those conditions have shaped the people who call the mountains home.

Their skin is also noticeably fairer than that of many people elsewhere in Nduara.

Batu is still unmistakably a child of Nduara.

He is simply a child shaped by a very different piece of it.

Batu wears his hair in braids. At his age, they fall around his shoulders. One day, they may become much longer. In Lokmane, hair carries meaning. Both men and women traditionally wear long braids, and there is an old connection between the length of one's hair and strength. Hair has become an outward representation of protection, capability and standing among the mountain people. Batu hasn't lived enough life yet to carry the long braids of Lokmane's strongest adults. He isn't supposed to. Some things have to be earned by growing into them. For now, shoulder-length braids are enough.

Batu is one of eight children. Privacy is therefore more of an idea than something he regularly experiences. Someone is always eating. Someone is arguing. Someone needs something. Someone has misplaced something and is absolutely certain another sibling took it. And somebody is always working.

Batu's father is a builder. But in Lokmane, builder means considerably more than constructing houses. Builders shape the structures that allow mountain communities to survive. They build homes capable of enduring harsh conditions. They carve and reinforce shelters and caves. They repair defenses. They work stone, wood and metal. They also construct weapons. A Lokmane builder is expected to understand that everything made with his hands may someday be responsible for keeping someone alive. Batu and the other boys in his family are expected to learn that work. His three sisters are expected to follow their mother. She is a healer.

There is no magic involved in Batu's mother's work. She doesn't whisper over a wound and make it disappear. She knows plants, oils, roots and herbs. She knows which things growing near the base of the mountains can reduce pain, clean a wound, calm a fever or help the body heal and when herbs aren't enough, she uses her hands.

She cleans wounds, sets injuriess stitches flesh and when necessary, performs the procedures required to save someone whose body has been badly damaged.

In a kingdom of builders and warriors, that knowledge is essential.

Batu has grown up watching one parent create the things that protect people and another repair the people who could not be completely protected. There is a lesson somewhere in that. He just isn't old enough to recognize it yet.

Lokmane families commonly pass occupations from one generation to the next.

Children begin learning by watching their parents long before anyone formally calls it training.

So Batu knows the tools. He knows materials. He understands that certain stone fractures differently than others. He has watched his father work. He has carried things. Held things. Fetched things. And undoubtedly been told more than once: "Not that one."

There is comfort in knowing where you belong. But there is also expectation. Batu doesn't lie awake wondering what he wants to be when he grows up. The answer has always been there.

Builder.

His family knows it.

His siblings know it.

His village knows it.

Batu knows it.

What none of them know is whether the world will allow his life to remain that simple.

Occupation isn't the only part of life Lokmane families take seriously.

Marriage often connects families as much as individuals.

Arrangements between households can strengthen relationships, improve standing and create connections that benefit generations.

But tradition does not completely eliminate choice.

A person who wishes to marry someone other than the match their families envisioned can bring that decision before the elders.

Lokmane values family structure.

It does not require two people to spend their lives together simply because someone else once decided they should.

Batu is far too young to care much about any of this.

At this point, being told whom he might someday marry would probably interest him considerably less than whatever his siblings are doing without him.

But these traditions are shaping him nonetheless.

In Lokmane, you grow up knowing that your decisions rarely belong only to you.

There is another reason Lokmane raises its children to be strong.

The kingdom protects Nduara's northern passes.

And beyond those mountains lies something the rest of Nduara does not have to think about every day.

A threat.

Not a story about spirits.

Not an ancient warning.

Something physical.

Something that exists in the same world they do.

Something capable of coming through.

For generations, Lokmane has stood between that danger and the lands farther south.

That responsibility has shaped nearly everything about its people.

Their bodies.

Their architecture.

Their occupations.

Their weapons.

Their families.

Their understanding of strength.

Batu has been born into that responsibility whether he realizes it or not.

Batu doesn't know Kairo.

He has never raced Toma through Ashango.

He has never crossed Duneir's desert.

He has never stood before Princess Zahri.

He has never watched Oceara disappear beneath the waves or heard Siraya insist that the weather is changing when the sky remains perfectly clear.

They are simply children growing up in different corners of the same world.

And Batu's corner is made of stone.

For now, his future appears straightforward.

Grow.

Learn.

Become strong.

Follow his father.

Build things that last.

Protect his family.

Perhaps that is exactly the life Batu will live.

Or perhaps there will come a day when Nduara needs him to build something no one in Lokmane ever taught him how to make.

Either way, Batu has already learned the first lesson of the mountains:

Strength isn't only about what you can carry.

Sometimes it is about what can depend on you without causing you to break.