The Language of Ash and Echo

An imaginative composed by Harry (Year 12 Advanced)

I step outside as the grey morning light crawls across the earth. The sky hangs low and dust-coloured, stretching over the endless rows of synthetic wheat like a shroud. The wind bites, sharp with the sting of processed ash; remnants of old cities, crushed beneath ‘efficiency’. 

The dirt road crunches beneath my boots. The barn behind me breathes softly, planks groaning, roof stitched with vines like veins, its skeletal frame refusing to die. To the East, the husk of an old billboard leans at an angle, sun-bleached and fractured; only a fragment remains: ‘...ơi mừng xuân mới’, something about spring and joy. Vietnamese, I think. My mother’s tongue. Culture used to paint the sky in those words, now it clings to broken metal and fading signs.

“John!” a voice calls. I turn. Mai jogs up the hill, breathless but smiling. Too young to remember what the billboard once meant, but old enough to know that something was stolen. 

“I saw you walking out,” she says, catching up. “Thought you’d disappeared.”

“Hard to disappear when the world’s already forgotten you,” I mutter, but she just laughs.

We walk in silence for a while. Not the cold silence that hangs over the workdays, but a more tender kind. The kind that invites remembrance. Below us, the fields stretch like scars, stitched into the earth by machines; uniform, controlled, lifeless. Mai points to the West, where a row of collapsed high-rises crumble into the wheat. “That was a city once, wasn’t it?”

I nod. “District Seven. We used to call that skyline rồng nằm ngủ, a sleeping dragon. Now it’s just ribs in the dust.” She crouches beside the road, brushing ash from a buried mosaic tile. Tiny blue and red squares flicker beneath her fingers. “It’s beautiful.”

“That was a market,” I say. “We used to haggle for street food. Bánh xèo, chè, cà phê sữa đá. You could taste five different regions in one alleyway, and every accent had a unique melody.” Mai stares at me as if I’m speaking another language; I suppose I am.

“Did you live here?” she asks.

I pause, kneeling beside her. My knees crack like bamboo. “I was born five blocks from here. My father sold firecrackers for the Lunar New Year. We used to hang red lanterns from the balconies. You ever seen a real lantern?”

She shakes her head. The silence that follows is heavy; not absence, but mourning. Behind us, footsteps crunch along the beaten path, Lee approaches, his scarf fluttering like a forgotten flag. “You two always sneak off during Sundays.” 

“It’s the only time the cameras sleep,” I reply. He joins us, brushing his hand over the mosaic. His eyes glisten.

“This was a temple once, I used to pray here. Not for miracles, just enough rice to last the month.”

Mai looks between us. “What happened to it?”

“They built peace,” I say.

“And paved over the past,” Lee adds. 

The wind picks up again, lifting ash into the air like ghosts. I see her then, Culture, standing between the shattered buildings, clothed in patchwork silk, arms wide. Her face is blurred, her mouth sewn shut with wires. She watches us, but doesn’t speak. She hasn’t for years.

“They say Sunday will be cancelled next,” Lee murmurs. “No more gatherings, no more stories.”

I rise slowly, joints stiff, heart heavier than it should be. “Then we speak today, loudly.”

Lee straightens, eyes burning. “What do we say?”

“Whatever they tried to erase.”

We walk back to the barn. The others are stirring now, not in silence, but in whispers. The scent of burnt soy and rice porridge drifts from the kitchen, and someone hums a lullaby, out of tune but defiant. We gather around the table, the old wood carved with initials no one remembers. Lee lights a candle, an old tradition, though the wick is synthetic now. 

I stand. “Before the Reform,” I begin, “we were not one, we were many. Fractured, yes, but vivid. We spoke in colour, we prayed in rhythm, we grieved in song.”

Someone claps. Another whistles. It’s soft, but real.

Mai rises beside me. “My name actually means ‘tomorrow’. I didn’t know that until recently, but I’d like to keep learning and look towards the future with you all.”

Voices murmur in agreement. Words rise, some in broken Vietnamese, others in Cantonese, Hindi, Tagalog; uneven but beautiful. Outside, Culture leans against the doorframe, smiling without lips, her eyes wide with wonder.

“You asked me once,” I say to Mai, “if I regret surviving.”

She nods.

“I don’t. But I regret waiting this long to live again.” The barn breathes, not with ghosts, but with us; and for the first time in years, the silence retreats. 

Culture steps into the rising sunlight, and sings.