The storm roared above our heads, heavy masses of sand dragged by the violent winds beating up the top of the shelter over and over again. Many of the older folks looked up, worried. The lips of some of them, like Amtrafdal and Gnarstoum, moved in silence, possibly reciting a prayer to the sand spirits, or maybe to the one god, for those who believed in it.

Oblivious to the very real possibility of us getting all trapped inside this dark hole, Pfshardnand and Stjevinyet, the little kids, chased each other around, laughing and screaming with glee. After living these events two to three times a year since they had been born, the noise didn't impress them much.

Sitting in a corner between my parents, I considered what I should ask about this time.

We had established as a tradition, my parents and I, going back to when I was six years old, that I could ask about anything during a sandstorm, and they would explain everything to me in any amount of detail I wanted. I was becoming a question-asking monster back then, and not as indifferent to the sandstorm terrors as the other kids seemed to be, so my parents had to find a way to keep me calm during such times. Now, five years later, it was increasingly difficult to find an interesting subject to ask about.

I had already covered baby-making a couple years ago - and how glad I was that my parents had found me as a baby and adopted me, so they didn't have to do that anymore. I'd also asked pretty much everything I could think of about the sky peoples. It was a subject that interested me greatly due to the mystery surrounding them - nobody was really sure if their existence was historical fact or a mere legend.

I, for one, was absolutely convinced they were real. What else could explain all the old instruments, shelter-like structures and other contraptions scattered around the plains? We didn't even know how some of them worked, or what they were intended to do in the first place, even though people still put them to use in the ways they saw fit. I, for example, had been found nestled inside some kind of large metallic crate. Nobody knew what it really was, but some nomad tribeswoman had certainly found it useful to protect her baby until it was found by a charitable couple.

Skeptics would say that a long time ago, our own kind had known how to build and use those things, but then a catastrophe hit, destroying a lot of the technology along with the knowledge to create everything anew. That was the straightforward explanation. No need to hypothesize any kind of sky peoples. Flying, everyone knew, was impossible, unless you were a bird. And even birds couldn't stray too far up away from the planet's surface because of the falling force. Peoples from the outer sky? Nonsense!

"Pfshardnand! Get back here! Be quiet for a minute!" Tralkstimt yelled her patience with her younger son running too thin.

The question occurred to me, then. It was a random question, but an interesting one, now that I thought about it.

"Why am I called May?"

"What? What do you mean?" my mother asked, confused.

"That's my question. Why is my name May? Everyone else seems to have a proper name, a long name, full of consonants. And I'm just... May. Is there a reason?"

My parents exchanged a look. It was similar to the look they'd exchanged when I asked about baby-making, but somehow less amused this time.

"Well..." my father said. "We don't know either. That name was given to you by your birth parents."

"How do you know that? I thought you'd never met them, that they were nomads!"

"It's true, we never met them, but..." They exchanged the look again. "You wore a sort of bracelet when we found you. It said your name."

"What? How come you never showed that to me?"

"We didn't keep it. We sold it to Mastragadt," my mother confessed. "It was such a strange contraption! We were afraid it might be cursed. You know what they say about the nomads' magic..."

Mastragadt was the closest thing to a village wise man we had. He liked to collect the weirdest, most useless ancient contraptions and studied them. Some people were afraid of him, said he was some kind of wizard, but those same people would turn to no one else when their utilities started to act out.

It was still dark outside when our group made its way out of the shelter. Its outer surface would have to be swiped clean of the heavy layers of sand the storm had laid upon it, but that was work for the next day.

As soon as I was out, I ran and ran, toward Mastragadt's hut. I was waiting by the door before he himself had time to get there from his own storm shelter. At last, I saw his thin figure approaching, the beard and long dishevelled hair making it seem like he had a disproportionately large head.

"Mastragadt! My bracelet! Do you still have it?"

His bushy beard distorted over his smile.

"May... I knew you would come ask about it someday." He unlocked his door. "Follow me. Try not to touch anything"

I did try. It wasn't easy. Inside, rows upon rows of the most fantastic implements piled in apparent disarray. There was, however, a certain order to it, no doubt, since Mastragadt headed straight for one of the smaller crates and retrieved a curved metal band, handing it to me. It was heavy, despite its small size. It wouldn't fit me as a bracelet anymore, but I could imagine it around a baby's arm. I examined it from every angle, inside and out. Nothing.

"There is no inscription," I uttered, disappointed. "My parents told me it said 'May'."

"Oh, right. Give it here."

Mastragadt took the bracelet to his workbench, pulled a couple of wires from a large black box and connected them to it. After a couple of seconds, a small red dot appeared on the outer surface of the bracelet. And then it spoke!

A distorted female voice came from the bracelet, repeating over and over again:

May... May... 38... 61... May... May... 38... 61...

"What... what do the numbers mean?" I asked, as soon as my heart slowed down a little. No wonder my parents thought that thing was cursed. A talking bracelet...

"That's the question, isn't it? It took me a long while to find the answer."

"Which is...?"

His fingers tapped the workbench and he looked at me, studied me.

"I could tell you. But for you to believe in me, I'd rather show you."

It was dawn when we left the village, the sky acquiring a bluish tint where the sun was about to rise. When we lost the huts back in the distance and sighted the Mount, the whole firmament was already its usual reddish colour. We descended the Mount into the Crater by mid-afternoon. It was just down there at the bottom, when Mastragadt headed toward an entrance to a cave, that I started to have second thoughts. What if he really was a wizard? What if he hurt me?

I followed him inside. The cave was shaped like a perfect hollow cylinder. We didn't have to walk very far inside to find a door. This must have been some kind of ancient shelter.

He opened the door and we walked into a much smaller room. The opposite wall was made of glass - I could see the soil through it and it was cracked in some places. There were two chairs facing a room-wide dark panel in front of them. I gasped as I saw an off-white skull over the back of one of them.

"That recording in the bracelet was corrupted, you see? I found the original here, after years of searching."

Mastragadt touched the dark panel and it lit up. The same female voice filled the room, clearer this time.

Mayday, mayday, 38579, 614363. Mayday, mayday, 38579, 614363.

"So the numbers..." I uttered.

"Are the coordinates for a place. This place."

"And Mayday? Is my full name Mayday?"

Mastragadt shook his head, looking at me with compassion.

"That one took even more research. I found it in a book sold to me by a nomad. It's not a name, it's a distress call. A signal that was used by aircraft to call for help."

I couldn't believe it.

"Aircraft?"

"Yes, May. Vehicles that could move through the air." He opened his arms, taking the room in. "Your bracelet, that crate you were found in... you, May... didn't come from the nomads. You came from here. From the sky peoples."