Green

Just as the first hint of orange light touched the horizon, she approached wakefulness. For a few hours she fought consciousness. The world was green in her dreams. She knew the color green from her lover’s eye, from the eerie sheen of algae infested lakes, the weeds that burst through cracks in cement, but the world was overwhelmingly brown. Her dreams, however, were padded with lush green carpet. It was both a floor and a organism, bursting with layers of life. It was bristly and soft, it both itched and caressed. Its smell was slightly sweet. It was good enough to eat. She rolled in it, and pressed her face down into it, breathing in its scent and feeling its texture. She opened her mouth to take a bite of it.

The sound of lightning woke her. Her eyes fluttered open to a room full of bodies. Little bodies curled into bigger bodies, bodies taking more than their fair share of space, and other bodies curled tightly into compact shapes. Her eyes fluttered closed again. Sweet soil. Delicious tender grass. She heard another clap of thunder as clouds rolled over the sun. A fat, delicious, raindrop splashed onto her lips.

The wail of a baby pierced her fantasy. Not yet. She could feel her body aching from yesterday’s labor. Another hour of rest, she begged the sun. The child’s cries were stifled as its mother stuffed his mouth with a nipple. In her dream, the sky was overcast. The crack of thunder and the boom of lightning shook her pasture as the sky began to open. Wonderful, fat drops soaked her entire body. She willed herself to open her mouth wider, to take in a mouth full of fresh rain, but she knew it would be salty. It looked like rain, but it would taste like blood.

“Wake up!” A rough, calloused hand shoved her. A few seconds respite and then another shove. “Wake up, Lily!”

She awoke to the sight of, large, glassy, quarter-sized brown eyes illuminated in the near darkness. “I’m up, Addie.” She rose swiftly, then moved quickly through the sea of bodies towards something obscured. Another crack of lightning sounded as she tiptoed around middle-aged men, sprawled spread-eagle. Mothers curled around their sleeping babies. Elderly couples with their arms around each other. Toddlers using their parents’ bodies as a mattress. Some were beginning to stir. She saw a mother breast-feeding discreetly.

“Good morning.” There was already a pot of water on the fire to boil when she reached the kitchen. Addie sat on the floor counting potatoes, separating a small pile from a sack. Fifty potatoes would feed fifty people this morning. She took a seat and picked up a knife sharpened out of stone. “How did you sleep?”

“I dreamt of my meadow again.”

“Mmm.” Addie nodded. “What time of year was it?”

“Spring, I think. It was raining.”

“Were there flowers?”

She thought for a moment. “Yes, but they weren’t the focus of the dream.”

A few moments of silence, and then, “I would love to be in a field full of yellow flowers.”

They worked together to feed everyone. The sun was fully risen by now, its beams of light leaking through boarded windows. Mothers combed children’s hair with their fingers. Babies cried for the tit. Men brushed dust off their clothes, like zombies brushing off the dirt of the grave. Across the room, she connected gaze with him for just a second. His emerald eye glinted as he winked at her.

“Lily, can I have an extra ration for my sister?”

She turned to a wannabe Oliver Twist. “Maybe if there are leftovers.” He nodded quietly and moved away. She remembered the story of Jesus feeding thousands of people with just a few loaves of bread and wondered if it was a metaphor. They were all forced to make difficult decisions when it came to rations. Everyone suffered a little so that everyone could be fed. She prayed they would have meat soon.

The young land surveyors of the group began to congregate near the door. They ate their potatoes and spoke in hushed, urgent tones. In another corner, caretakers gathered the children too young to work, placating babies that did not want to be separated from their mothers. The elderly and the sick stayed where they were, curled up alone, or in each other’s embrace. Everyone else began to make their way to the next room. She glanced around to ensure that everyone had been fed, and then followed them.

Light spilled from the open door like a portal to another dimension. Above, portions of the roof were destroyed to allow natural light to filter through, while also giving some protection from the poisonous rain. The floors were completely torn up, leaving the skeleton of the house’s foundation exposed in a grid. Between beams, the small green leaves of potatoes were barely visible. She tiptoed across the room to where he stood, proud and tired. There was no hierarchy in their home, but he was her undisputed leader. In another time, he grew up in the outskirts where families whispered criticism of societal solutions and attempted to grow food in the dust.

“How are we on irrigation?” She asked.

He shifted both eyes to her small, heart-shaped face, one blue, and the other the color of her dreams. “Not good.” She looked up. A glaringly bright sky contradicted the sounds of lightning clapping in the distance. A fighter jet zipped by miles away, barely visible through the holes in the ceiling.