I awake in my sleeping bag.
Through squinting eyes, I see Borox’s face. His eyes wide, but sleeping. Always sleeping with those wide eyes.
Out of my sack. On with my undergarments, work robe and pill hat. My chest is soaked from a dream sweat. I had been running in the dream. Was I being pursued? I cannot remember.
Some of the others are stirring. A stench fills the air from a bedpan used during the night. I choke on the foul odor.
Walking down the mineshaft to our last work area, I hear only my own footfalls, and the distant moan of the billows forcing air down into this lowest circle of hell.
My coarse, cracked fingers clutch the pick handle. Lamplight illuminates a circle before me. My free hand skims the wall as I walk, bouncing over roughly hewn rock.
There are eight hundred miners, but not a sound of hammering on the mountain walls. I will be the first. Today, my hammer will be the first. I rear back with my tool, my mighty weapon, the one that gnaws at mountains and fells them. I strike the wall, and my life is changed forever.