Mama has always told you about that other time, before the snow stopped falling and the ‘ships sailed away into the sky. She was only a little girl with a big belly when it happened, but she remembers. She tells you of the colored fish, no bigger than your fingernails, that made rainbows in the crystal-cold rivers. She talks of children who thundered, naked, into great pools of water and filled their cheeks with mouthfuls of liquid candy.

“Dirty-toed children?” you exclaim, envious despite your disbelief. Your ankles sting in recollection of the switch they took to you the last (and only) time you were stupid enough to try such a thing. Mama makes a sound that doesn’t sound like laughter.

“There was a lot of water then,” she insists in the gurgling voice she reserves for enthusiastic moments. She draws her shriveled arms out to show its wide expanse. “More than enough to fill three Camps, if you so wanted.”

You never believe her, but you like the pictures she puts in your head. They distract you on those other days, when you have to leave her to join the Gather on the baking shores. There are no other children your age – Mama says you were the last born to your Sector – but you don’t mind. You figure the other kids would only cause trouble (crashing sandy-toed into the precious clear-water) and the elders hardly pay attention to you, anyway. While they work their gums and mumble about the heat you are free to stray behind and stuff your sleeves with sea-glass.

Mama says it is a bad thing to think too much (“it scatters your work ethics”) and sometimes she cries to think that you aren’t pulling your weight. When you show her the sea-glass you gathered (“watch the colors, Mama”) she cries even harder, until you have to scrunch your eyes and shake your head and swear to redeem yourself to get the tears to stop. Before she rolls over to sleep off her exhaustion she makes you promise to get rid of your collection before they find it. Your vow is a solemn one; after that you stop emptying your sleeves in front of her.

You are only half a liar; you make up for your crime whenever you can. (Productive work ethics are your Sector’s motto, after all.) You know already that it is no use crawling through the sand on those Gather days, that they create the chore to get you and the elders out of their hair. There are no mussels to be found amid the expanse of glittering rocks and washed-up skeletons; the gull-eggs have all been cracked or eaten or shriveled into fossils beneath the white sky. Instead you focus your energy on crouching waist-deep in the Poison water, trying to forget the salt chewing through your skin as you squint between the rocky crags in search of the palm-sized crustaceans that dwell there. The harsh light burns their sensitive shells and leaves them crusty (you’ve seen the remains of the less fortunate ones) and you’re almost sorry to drag them from their hiding.

Your stomach soon quenches your sympathy.

Mama tells you of the times when the men would weave wooden rafts that took them to the middle of the Poison water. The larger fish prowled there, and the men had to be careful and keep a lookout for sharp fins when they lowered their nets to harvest the mussels that slept on the water-floor. You shudder as you chew the meal you captured, happy to have been born after the time of soil-trees and monster-fish, though you keep these thoughts away from Mama. You don’t like to see her cry.

“Someday you will have to fare without me,” she tells you following your final meal together. Her eyes are sunken as wrinkled at the edges, and though they shine there are no tears. Somehow, just this once, you wish they were there. “Someday. But you won’t leave me before then.”

It is more of a plea than a statement, and you have no heart to smother her hope. You stare at the tips of your salt-corroded fingers as you put a blanket over her fear and tell her what she wants to hear. You neglect to mention the meeting they conducted that morning; your Sector’s decision eludes your tongue. You dampen your lips as you pull the old afghan over her broken knees and bring ease to the frightened set of her mouth.

“Don’t worry, Mama,” you tell her in a voice that refuses to tremble. “Sleep, Mama.”

You don’t have to coax her – these days even the simplest of movements exhaust her – and as you watch her breathe you realize that it was all for the best. They know better than she ever did. You will have one less burden to carry, one less weight to drag through the sand. Despite her promises you know that her crippled legs would never carry her across the extensive Gather. It had to be one of you.

You tell stories to stifle the sounds of Camp-breaking outside. Your tales grow more and more enthusiastic as the muffled thumps of old rope and collapsing tents resonate deep into the starless night, ferocious as the howls of the extinct water-cows. Mama will not hear you, but you feel obligated to speak all the same, though you leave no mention of your guilt or of the black feeling in your chest. You will not think of morning or of rivers running dry. You will not think of your Sector’s new motto (survival of the fittest). You have to swallow to block out the look in Mama’s eyes when she finally crawls from your tent to find herself in a new wasteland, void of everything but your sea-glass, glittering in the hostile sun.

(“Watch the colors, Mama.”)

But the night is long, and you find the time to lose yourself in your own words. You will give back to her one by one, story for story, and as dawn creeps closer you will keep an ear craned for your Sector’s signal of departure.