Waiting

There is a road. The road travels up a hill. Upon the hill stands a house, and in the house is a woman. The woman is searching for something. Her eyes scan the windows. She stands and peers into the distance, trying to make out shapes in shimmering mirages and gusting sand. Her back is straight, and her shoulders firm, but the clothes she wears are fixed with dust, and her eyes are weary. The light beats down on her neck, but she is used to its weight.

The sky is green.

There is a faint odour of ash in the air, of fire and brimstone, and once living things left too long in the sun.

The woman paces along wooden corridors bleached white and cracking. Walls flake paint. Flutes of light descend from a hundred holes in the ceiling. This is the only shelter the woman has found in a long time. She doesn’t know how long she has been waiting. Long enough for the water to run out, long enough that the cool puddles she found under what shade was left have dried up and left the ground parched and wanting.

She is unsure if the aching she feels all around her is the ground or her body.

Once the woman was not alone. Once there was a spring that dipped down into a valley flooded with sound and living things. She remembered. The cool spray of water vapour in the air. Spreading branches and gentle light. The heated touch of fingers entwined, the beating of another heart.

And then the earth heaved to and fro, and the sky tore and crumpled, and emerald and jade bled into the blue.

And then for a long while there was a great rushing of humanity into the wilderness, an onrushing tide of panic that swept them up and carried their beating hearts far away. Fires burned starkly against olive evenings, until they could not be renewed. So the woman took the hand she held and led them onto the road.

The road is old, and well travelled. There are others like them, journeying along under a viridian sky. This way, they tell her. Follow the road. Whispers of their destination, of high walls and twisting towers, cobblestone floors ‘neath graceful arches. Fountains, water flowing in cascades and sheets. She is amazed. She has forgotten what it is like to dip a hand into a rushing stream and draw a fluid arc in the air.

She smells only ash, only fire and brimstone.

As time passes, so do friendly conversations and strange fires. Their best company is themselves, anyway.

There is a new odour in the air, greasy and rotten. She is reminded suddenly of a swollen tomato bursting in blackish ooze.

One night she clings tightly to her companion. To let go would be to leave the only thing she knows behind. She feels like she has lost herself, that the fibres of her being are unravelling under a sky transformed. Her mind rattles with the anxiety of the unknown. She holds on, eyes opened long after the other slips into sleep, mouthing words into the air.