Ham’s village of Dusk was a part of the land of Dank. In Dank, it was always dim and dreary. The sun, when it managed to peek through the ever-present overcast, was weak, wan and woeful. The inhabitants of Dank – the Huddlers – went through their days with their heads down, their shoulders hunched, and with a look of fear and anxiety shrouding their faces from waking to sleeping. Whenever possible – when they weren’t working, schooling, or doing chores – they would spend their time together, huddled against the darkness. And their dreams were, as you might imagine, dark, dim and dreary.
For the most part, Huddlers spent their time on the necessities of life: growing and gathering food, patching together clothing, fixing leaks in the roofs of their homes. As much as possible, they did their chores together, huddled, feeling hopeless.
Nothing ever changed in the land of Dank. The Huddlers lived in the homes that their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had lived in. They grew and gathered their food from the same fields and trees and in the same way as the generations before them. When one of their homes was damaged, they used the same tools, in the same way, to make repairs. No one had had a new idea, or come up with a new way of doing things, in living memory. And the Huddlers had very good memories. Of course, they didn’t have a lot to remember, since things just didn’t change.
