Chapter 3 - Under The Same Sky

Grandma

I would often sit at the feet of Grandma.

She always wore khaki. Draped in a shawl. Small, but resolute. Echo of a time and place I will never visit.

Sandpaper hands. A lifeline that extended beyond her palm, dark and thorough, as if sketched by God himself. Her voice cracked like logs in a fire - deep, wholesome, warm as liquid butter.

They called her a mad woman. The last one.

You would remember. You were there with me, always. Hand in hand. The soft mound of your palm flesh. I traced it over and over as we listened. We thought Grandma didn’t know. But she did. That smile at the corner of her mouth while she glanced at the two of us.

She knew.

She approved.

She prayed for us.

Remember when she told us about a blue and green marble, millions of light-years away? A planet that came before this one. She called it her mother. Holy. Divine. Said it was both language and lore.

But. Seven continents. Killed one by one. Burned until green was stripped from bone. Water poisoned. Air gasped. Land gave in. Animals vanished. Plants shriveled. The planet turned grey. All this was fact.

Not story. Not fairytale.

A waking nightmare.

The Elders before Grandma warned her. And she warned us. We said she spun stories. We said a greater world awaited us beyond the sea. But we always doubted her. Didn’t we? Too strange. Too unreal. We were of forest. We were of fields. We laughed when she told of bricks that reached the sky. Or carriers that don’t require animals.

Our friends would tease us about Grandma. And we’d agree.

Us. Idiots.

The adults built arks and set sail South. Warmer waters. Fruits that bruised under three suns. The suns that barely rose here. Always hiding behind the gentle clouds threaded against the angry sky.

When it rains, it rains fire here. Melting ice. Floods that sweep away crops. Otherwise it remains cold. Silence and frost.

For miles and miles.

Until.

This.

---