Elara Greenwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Elara Greenwood knelt in the cracked flat outside her town and pushed a bean seed into gray soil. She was the mayor here, and she had promised every traveler who crossed the glass wastes a garden and a full cup. But the ground was dead. The last seedling she planted had shriveled in two days. Without steady water, nothing she planted would live long enough to feed anyone. She stood and looked back at the low stone wall ringing the town. Once, aqueduct channels had run water along its top. Now the fountains at its base sat dry and cracked. Travelers arrived thirsty and left thirstier. Her promise meant nothing without water, and she knew it. Elara had one place left to try. She walked home to her cottage, where budding cacti crowded the walls and small wind traps spun on the roof. She had built the traps to pull moisture from the air. For weeks they had dripped only enough to keep the cacti alive. Inside the cottage, she pried up a floorboard she had never fully opened. Beneath it, the cacti roots wrapped a hollow space in the earth. She lowered a rope and a bucket. It sank far, then splashed. She hauled it up. The bucket came back full, clear, and cold. She tasted it. Sweet. Cleaner than any water in the town. A reservoir hid under her home. But it sat too deep and too far to help the fields. One bucket at a time would never green the wastes. She needed a way to draw it up fast and carry it out. Elara remembered the broken harvester in her shed. A trader had left it years ago as payment. It was a tall wind trap crowned with green panels and mesh cones, built to gather moisture and store it in clear tanks. She had never made it run. She dragged it into the sunlight and pried open its base. The panels drank the light. The cones turned in the wind. She fed one tank line down through the floorboard into the hidden reservoir. Then she waited. The machine hummed. Water climbed the tubes and filled the clear tanks. It pulled the sweet water up from the deep and held it. Elara laughed out loud. She could pipe it to the town wall. She could refill the dry channels and the cracked fountains. By dusk she had run the first line from the harvester to the wall. Water trickled through the old aqueduct and hit the empty fountain basin below. The splash brought townsfolk running. A traveler cupped his hands under the falling stream and drank. Elara had water now, more than the town had seen in years. But the reservoir under her home had one bottom, and she did not know how deep it ran. If the town drank faster than the deep refilled, her promise would run dry again. Tomorrow she would have to measure it.