Salvation
Week 3, Day 3
The sky here was always an impossible blue. Marina could not replicate it, despite years of experimentation. That was the primary reason she didn’t want to leave. What new home could have such a sky?
Others thought her foolish. The crushing drought had dragged on for so many years. Crops withered before harvest year after year. The village’s numbers faltered and fell. If they didn’t leave soon for more fertile territory, the only people left would be dried-out husks, too old to birth the next generation.
Tensions were growing. Soon, unless Marina could find a miracle, there would be a schism, and their community would be destroyed.
So she was up on top of the mesas to pray for an answer. There was a time when each mesa held farm plots, and people could be found working the soil and tending plants here. Now, most people scoured the deep, shady valleys between the plateaus in search of game that hadn’t yet fled or edible plants that cling to the cool, dry riverbeds. Marina walked alone among the abandoned plots. In her wandering, she soon left the cultivated lands behind, aimlessly walking, simultaneously reveling in the blue blue blue above her and despairing of their hopeless situation. It was foolish to expose herself in this way. Soon, the dry heat would desiccate her. Already her mouth felt like chalk and her eyes like fire. She did not notice when she passed from distracted wandering to stumbling delirium. The sky filled her vision now, urging her onward. And so she continued, one foot in front of the other, chasing the sky that promised her an answer, a solution for all her problems.
With her vision thus occluded, she saw not where she placed her feet, and knew not when her foot found, instead of dusty earth, open air. And so she tumbled down into a canyon, but she was not afraid, because she knew this was what the sky had wanted her to find.
At the bottom, she found not hard ground, but water. She hit the surface hard — hard enough to wake her from her dreamlike state and drive the air from her lungs. The water closed above her and her momentum slowed. Her eyes, still open, could see the wavy streaks of blue sky still beckoning her from far above. Her lungs began to scream for air just as her feet touched the rocky bottom. She shoved off, up, pulling herself toward the surface with urgency but without fear. How could she be fearful? She had found salvation.
A natural spring, cool and vibrant, had sprung from the heart of this little canyon, and filled the bottom with a deep pool. Overflow fed a new stream, and Marina followed it to where the plateaus were worn down into a wide, low desert that stretched as far as she could see. But the desert was coming alive — vibrant green lined the banks of the new stream as it spilled into its new path.
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This is a story-start — if you’d like to see where the story goes, “clap” for it. My “winning” start (based on number of readers who clap for it) will be developed further and might grow into a full short story!
