2016Bluestone

After the Storm Gabriele Morgan

The village had pitched their tents long ago, before the ground had dried up, when the world was still green there. Over time, the sun came closer and scorched the earth, and the children of the village learned to live in the heat, learned to grow expectant of the bright white skies that blinded, of the light to sear their skin. They learned to hold the fire within themselves so it could not burn them up. But the chief ’s youngest daughter was a storm wrapped up in skin, her body cool to the touch and the veins in her wrists dark blue. The village children would hold their wrists to hers, compare their gold to her indigo and laugh.

Mama, Mama, look how different we are.

She learned to hide the rivers flowing through her veins in carefully concealed buckets behind her eyelids, neatly stacked and never toppled, each labeled in perfect penman- ship:

Different, different, different.

They taught her to have clear weather, told her that her eyes should never cloud over, that brightness was a priori- ty. So she mad it her identity, learning to live with buckets constantly poised to overflow from behind her eyes. When the ocean inside her grew too tempestuous to con- tain, she was driven from the village, told that she was cursed, her water was unclean, told she should have kept her skies more blue. Floods are not as easy to ignore as 30