SSCS 01: Installment 2 of 31
Because the Desert is a Great, Broad Beast of Memory
This is Installment 2 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘Because the Desert is a Great, Broad Beast of Memory’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
Previously…
They fill the valley rim-to-rim. A carpet of amethyst and ruby. And they wait for their bees. Or they wait for their scouts to come home.
…Because the Desert is a Great, Broad Beast of Memory
Installment 2: 18.0510
Their bees were last seen at a time when the mountains surrounding their valley were green and lush, when the monsoons brought waterfalls spilling down the cliff-sides, and yellow-bellied frogs hid, or slept, or hunted beneath their leaves.
Their bees gathered themselves full of great frills and ruffles of pollen, and sparkled in the sunlight.
Their scouts left home more recently, perhaps only five-hundred years. Their scouts know that their valley is circled now by a vast, sandy desert. Their scouts know what it is to wait in hope, and the way that the empty, blue sky cuts down like a scythe from above and sets crystal edges to the fields of amethyst-petaled stillness.