This story started out as an exploration of how becoming har might truly change the life of a deaf person and from there blossomed into something bigger than that and finally into an unlikely friendship/romance story.

Characters
Original character and one canon character as yet to be named.

Spoilers
Containers spoilers for Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit, Book 1 in the Wraeththu trilogy, plus hints of the other books.

Sequels
Once this story was over, many people asked me "What happened next?" that I decided to do a sequel, catching up with Moon and his pearl many years later: Moon and Son.

Chapter 1

They found me at the bottom of a trash heap. Well, not literally but that's the way I always tell it because it's actually quite close to the truth, if not the actual truth. The actual truth is that they found be living on a trash heap, specifically an old city dump.

It wasn't in the main part of the city, but on an outskirt, close enough to the dead metropolis that I could see the forlorn, abandoned towers but far enough away that the squatters and fighters of the inner city wouldn't bother me. The dump had gone from being a place of waste to a land of plenty. It was my garden.

There is a bit of irony in this, but I was living off society's refuse and if irony would keep me fed, so be it. I wasn't eating leftover food, mind you, but the products of that leftover food and leftover compost dumped years before -- the tomatoes that had grown into full-fledged tomato plants, the squash and strawberries and peas that had come up from the rotten produce tossed into garbage bags or mixed in with the compost. Years before I arrived, they had grown up out of the dump and gone wild.

On that fateful day, I had been in residence for probably about three years, serving as their keeper, the gardener of the dump. It was late spring and I was tending to the tomato plants, pulling out the weeds that had inevitably begun to choke up the soil. I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday. All the weeds were piling up in an old plastic crate I had taken from the dump and in fact I was about to call it quits, as by then it was mid-day and the sun was high, my stomach just beginning to growl.

I didn't know it, but I was very fortunate to be living the way I was. When I was hungry, I always had food, lots of it, fresh at hand, at least in the warmer months. Winters were harder but even so, I'd made it through, living on foods I had prepared and stored myself as well as food I'd extracted from the dump -- canned vegetables, canned fruit, even a jar of honey I'd once found. For lunch I was going to eat some of the sweet green vines for which I still have no name. From experimenting the year before, I'd learned they weren't poisonous and were eminently digestible. Eaten with the squirrel I'd trapped and killed that morning, it would be a filling meal.

With that in mind, I tossed the last weed to the top of the heap and picked up the crate to take it across to where I kept my own compost pile or, really, weed dump. The sun was bright and even with the visor I wore over my eyes, it made me squint. The sky was too clear for me and walking with the crate, I wished as usual for overcast skies. You see, my eyes have always been a problem -- just like the rest of me. Pale, pale eyes I have, pinkish, and they are very sensitive to light. I've since read that often my condition causes poor eyesight, but luckily with me that had never been the case. Just as I could see the distant city skyline, I could see the vegetable plants and flowers around me. And I could see the strangers who had arrived. I was about to backtrack into explaining my condition, but now that I've mentioned the strangers, I've come to the point of this writing anyway, which is to explain how I went from being a lone gardener in a trash heap to being what I am today!

There I was, carrying my weeds, and there they were, a group of three... individuals... standing at the periphery of the dump watching me. I can imagine what they saw and so I'll tell you now: A boy, about 14 years old, medium-height, wrapped from head to toe in faded old clothes and rags. I had a long-sleeved shirt and long pants, a pair of old boots, and a hat with a visor in front for my eyes. Only my hands and face were uncovered -- that and my hair, by then grown clear to my waist.

I wasn't covered up for vanity. In fact, even in the somewhat chilly temperatures of late spring I was hot. Still, covering up wasn't a choice, it was a necessity. Without covering up, I would be burnt -- badly. I wouldn't get a burn and then tan either, I would simply burn. My mother had learned the hard way this way the case, watching me as a young child burn bright red until on several occasions I had become feverish, overheated. Finally she had learned that were there concessions that had to be made for my condition. You see, I'm an albino. My skin isn't quite pure white, but it's pale and pinkish, translucent in places, and my long hair was pure white, from the day I was born until today. I'm a child of the moon, not a child of the sun.

It was because of this that I was living in the garbage dump. I suppose really it was lucky, as I was never really hungry and I had found shelter and safety, but what had driven me out there wasn't luck, it was desperation. I had no one to protect me anymore. My mother didn't exactly reject me, but she couldn't care for me, not with the world going the way it was. And not after they arrived in the city, whoever they were. People were dying of sicknesses, attacks, of madness. Women seemed to be particularly vulnerable. She had to hide, she told me, she had to run. She left me behind.

I was probably around ten years old at the time she left me. I want to say that being abandoned what a traumatic experience for me but really it wasn't as bad as you might think. After all, I'd always felt it was up to me to take care of myself and I wouldn't be able to really rely on anyone else. I couldn't connect with anyone either, make friends. Nobody ever seemed to understand me. My mother had understood me, but others didn't.

It wasn't just how I looked, which was enough to make everyone stay away from me. It was something else, something I haven't mentioned although it's very important.

Quite simply, I was deaf -- and in fact I still am. That day in my garden, in my whole life I had never spoken and had never heard a sound. To a certain extent this had made me vulnerable in the inner city, but eventually I had learned to make up for that deficit by keeping my eyes wide and exercise street sense. Finally, however, after too many close calls, people and other creeping up on me when I couldn't hear, I decided I need to escape the city. I'd made my away out to the dump and there I lived alone, where being deaf was no disadvantage at all. In fact, living alone, I didn't have much cause to even notice my deafness; there was no one there to try to talk to me.

So that was me, a deaf albino boy living in a dump, tending a garden while swathed in old clothes and rags. And then they came. And that changed everything.