Blazing Blue

The air was hot, thick as treacle. Ahead, the water-trader’s caravan.

Once, her mother had said, water fell from the sky. And just before it came, you felt a prickle in the air, like the world was about to breathe out.

“Twenty,” he said. His fingers glittered gold.

“Twenty!”

“That’s the price, spit-drinker.”

She almost laughed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d tasted spit.

She reached for her pouch, but stopped. Her skin prickled. Was that… she gasped, looked up.

No. Wishful thinking. The sky was blazing blue.

She paid the man his twenty, and trudged into the dust.