I’m Locked in a Nice Motel Room Working On My Novella

It’s called “The Future Tense of Water” and has the confusing locations noted in the last blog post.

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1.

There are marks in the landscape. You can see them everywhere. A palm print in ochre. A spiral of dots. Masked dancers etched into the stone of a canyon.
Water has come and gone here, come and gone again. At dusk, there are insects in the long grass, and horsetails growing ancient and segmented in the marshy earth. These are old, much older than flowers and the pollinators they depend on to bring forth fruit. Small frogs are chirping. The great rock walls are red, the fields green, the sky darkening, and a sliver of moon rises above the river. When there is a river. Sometimes the river flows. Sometimes the canyon is dry. A twisted gnarled pine tree adds a small ring each dry year, a wider ring each wet.
The stars mark the sky. Polaris points true north, but it won’t always, not above this canyon, not from this latitude, not from this world. The North Star will no longer be polar, just one star among many.
The morning star rises and sets, as does the evening star. They are the same star, a wanderer. Some call it after the goddess of love. For others, it is a warrior who descends cyclically into the underworld.
The river flows. It runs dry. Two figures are etched in rock, huge queens with headdresses and feathered masks. They seem to be holding hands. Right now, the river flows, but no one knows the future tense of water.
The canyon is vast and silent, except for the sound of wind, and then of a child singing.