Dreams of the Ark

Predictions of an approaching rainstorm, borne in on radio waves and ushered onwards by enthusiastic newscasters, marked a pleasant deviation from the clichéd desert heat and sandstorm reports of everyday. Again and again, the same forecast was being repeated as people milled out of their homes – ants climbing out of an anthill.

Faded, jaded yellow leaves shivered down the road, tracing complex dancing patterns along the dirt lines, rejoicing in the hint of distant ocean in the air. In the distance, the clouds rumbled an ominous thunder; lightning bolts split the sky in uneven halves. But as the storm drew closer, so the storm crows gathered.

A congregation set up shop in the busiest part of the desert town and proclaimed the coming showers as the blessings of a benevolent god. Time slowed down and eventually came to a grudging halt: new mythologies evolved tales more fantastic and perverted than ever before; black hearts spewed chasms darker than the titans' deep space abyss; housewives wove their yarns too, trumped only by heralds of the benevolent god who announced their mission to bring justice to the Bacchanalia of the town in light of divine revelation. Soon, a procession gathered.

When the clouds burst, the rain washed away everything and everyone; the sins of the sinners and the piety of the pious; art and music, life and form, the homes and the roads; it rained until the ocean was one with the desert.

And thus, god quenched the thirst of the desert; with the grey of the ocean, the red of life and electric star-dust.