For a brief moment her smile returned as she watched her youngest play with his new toy. As quickly as it came, it faded. Tomorrow, the man would arrive to take Mitiku away.
Life in the Murgoth Desert can aleady be hard for the common folk living outside the big cities. For parent, the Last Birthday serves soley as a reminder of this. For the child, it is a joyous event – perhaps their last.
History
For millenia, communities have clung to the small oases that pockmark the Murgoth Desert. Small springs connect the surface to an aquifer deep underground, and slowly refills these oases. Humans, however, reporduce and consume the water faster than it's replenished. If these communites grow too large, water becomes more scarce than it already is and crops yields diminish. And so the practice of families selling their excess children to the wealthy began.
While this celebration can be performed for any child, they are usually under ten when it occurs, and almost always the youngest child in the family. Ahead of their birthday, the community makes several toys tfor the child. On the day itself, the child is showered with these gifts and everyone swims and splashed in the oasis – something that is almost always forbidden in all other circumstances.
The following day, as arranged by the parents ahead of time, the "patron" arrives and takes the child away. Once they are out of sight, the community will never speak of the child again, as if they never existed.
Usually the children are purchased by wealthy families looking for servents or manual laborers. While slavery is officially banned within the
Murgothi Confederacy, this is viewed as altruistic behavior in law, and is therefore rarely punished.
In more recent years, the
River Blight that has begun ravishing the towns along the
Gods' Gift. In response, some of these towns have started observing the Last Birthday as well.
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