Description
Duma, whose name means Thunder, or Roar, is the older brother, and he is a head shorter than the younger one, and he has made peace with exactly none of it. He is awake before the village. You can hear him from the far end of it, and the sound is a man counting, and he is counting because he has set himself a number this morning that is higher than yesterday’s number, and he will reach it.
The thunder comes before the storm. It is not a warning the sky gives out of kindness, it is the sky announcing itself, and the boy was named accordingly. He tells you what he is going to do and then he does it, and the telling annoys people, and he has noticed and does not care. He is faster than a thrown spear. He has been faster than a thrown spear since he was a boy, and he has spent every morning since making the gift into a discipline, because he decided young that a thing you were merely given can be taken back, and a thing you have built cannot.
He teases his brother about the size of him and always has. It is the one joke he owns, that the small one came first, and he will die with it. Understand what sits underneath. He is the elder, and among his people the elder goes ahead, and Duma has never for one hour of his life considered letting anyone else stand in that place, least of all the brother he loves. Thunder arrives first. It has no other function. It goes ahead of the storm so that everything with sense has time to move.
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