4338.212 · July 31, 2018 AD
Silver Water in a Silent World
Karen walks until the camp is a memory behind her. The silence here is absolute—no birdsong, no insects, no breath of wind through leaves that don't exist. She carries her jar of spiderlings and a heart full of questions she can't answer. Then, cresting a low rise, she sees it: a basin cradling pools of silver water, hidden and waiting. Some places don't need to be built. They just need to be found.
The silence swallows everything. No birds. No insects. Not even wind. Karen walks through a world holding its breath, boots crunching against dust that rises and settles like something resigned to stillness. Back in Tasmania, the air hummed with life—trills and rustles and the whisper of eucalyptus. Here, there is only absence.
But absence, she knows, is not the same as emptiness.
Her eyes read the landscape the way they've always read landscapes: the subtle undulations, the patterns in the soil, the places where water might gather and seeds might take. Somewhere beneath this desolation, life is waiting to be coaxed back into being.
Then she crests a rise, and the world opens.
A shallow basin. Weathered rock. Curved earthen banks cradling pools that shimmer like molten silver in the afternoon light. An oasis hidden in plain sight, protected by ridges and time.
Karen stands frozen, vision flooding her mind unbidden—terraces, trellises, canopies of green rising from this cradle of water and stone. The sanctuary she's been imagining finally has a home.
Chris finds her there, silent and still. No words pass between them.
None are needed.
