Seed Vault (Part 2)
By Marika Bailey
The desert rain has lulled me and I sleep all the way through the daylight hours. It is only when the light recedes and the temperature of the desolation plummets that I awaken. Minn has gathered close to me, her large musky bulk keeping me warm. Around us, there are ice crystals on the grey earth, gilding the parched shrubgrass.
It does not get this cold in the village. Our air and earth are protected by the founding guardian line that rings every settlement. So we do not have the same extremes on the red as there is in the desolation.
That last morning I left the house early, before Manman woke. Sometimes it felt like she only ever slept when I did. Passing the small garden where dasheen and eddo burst happily from rich soil, I went out to the borders of the red. Riding my manicou, Minn, it was a few minutes from the house to where the staggered boundary of stone ancestors marked the end of the red and the beginning of the desolation. I’d heard that the larger settlements had multiple rings of boundaries, pushing back back against the grey sands. But we were a young town, and had just the one.
Being out, I never wanted to turn back. It was the fire on the horizon that brought me out of my small room and smaller bed. The sands, grey, white, and black, flowed in an ombre dance as far as the eye could see. As tidal as the broken piebald seas.
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