Erosion

I peer over the cliff’s edge, clouds drifting and swirling around the Mountain. The clouds never cease, protecting the world below from my starving eyes – or maybe protecting my starving eyes from the world. Either way, I continue to watch the mist move, drifting through scraggly branches and whispering through tufts of grass on the mountainside.

The sun begins to set, and I nestle into the grassy patch I’ve been perched in. I watch as the sun starts its descent below the cloud bank, cascading oranges and yellows glowing before me. The wind picks up, and a gust blows my hair out of my eyes. I close them and feel the warmth of the sun against my eyelids. When I open my eyes, the oranges and yellows are dripping to pinks and purples. I wish I could freeze time and commit every orange streak, every ray of light, every purple shadow to memory.

“This is my super secret sunset spot,” my grandma told me the first time she brought me here. “I come here to feel.”

“To feel what?” I asked.

“All of it.”

The two of us had sat in silence that evening, my small, ten-year-old hand in her leathered, seventy-something year-old hand. We stayed until the moon showed her face. My grandma took me back to the sunset spot on occasion after that, but it wasn’t long after our first sunset together that we saw our last sunset together. She passed away in the night only a season later.

A tremble in the ground jolts me back to the present. Rocks roll past me, down the Mountain, bouncing and shattering on contact. Something in my gut tells me that my cliffside sunsets are soon going to be nothing more than a moment in history, frozen in the space where memories are kept.

I head back to the tribe when only an angry orange sliver of the sun is left peeking over the clouds. Rocks and twigs crunch under my feet, and I know I am almost home when the path becomes clearer and quieter. I have returned to the path most frequented. Ahead of me, torchlight flickers in the mouth of a cave. Sounds of life travel towards me, beckoning me home. As I climb the steps into the mountain, I can smell cookfires boasting of seasoned dinners, the smoke wafting lazily up, out, into the night.

The cave opens up to a cavern. Now the smoke from the cookfires is curling a wispy finger, luring me deeper into the mountain. My family’s dwelling is carved into the eastern wall of the cavern. We’re only a short walk from the tribe’s farmland. I consider passing home and continuing to the eastern cave entrance – I want to see the progress of the spring crops. I am about to venture onwards when my cousin, Nadia, calls out to me.

“Skylar!”

“Naughty Nadi,” I say. Nadia jogs to join my side and slinger her arm over my shoulders.

“I miss you. Where have you been?” she asks. I lean into her and rest my head on her shoulder.

“I’ve been around.”

“Where, ‘around?’” Nadia gestures with her free arm at the buzzing cavern.

“Helping with the herd,” I say.

“You haven’t been in the gardens in a while.” Nadia side-eyes me. She’s sizing me up, waiting to catch me in another nondescript excuse.

“You know my mom,“I sigh. “Lately I just... I just haven’t had the energy. To deal with her or her expectations.”

Nadia raises an eyebrow.

“She wants me to settle. Find my place in the tribe,” I elaborate.

“We all want that for you, Sky,” Nadia says. Her fingers tighten around my shoulder. Our pace stalls, and Nadia turns me to face her. I can hear my mom, hardly thirty paces away, preparing our table for dinner. She’s bustling around just beyond our open front door, long graying hair twisted up into a tight, braided bun. Never a hair out of place, my mom.

“I love you,” Nadia starts.

“I love you t–”

“Shh. Listen.” Nadia shoves a dirt-caked finger against my lips. “You belong. Even when you don’t feel like it.”

I give Nadia the smile she’s waiting for and kiss her cheek.

“Joining us for dinner?” I ask.

“Not tonight. My mom needs some extra help. Her heart is gettin’ to her.”

I pull Nadia in, squeeze her twice, and gently push her towards her own home.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Nadia says over her shoulder. She gives me a furrowed brow that says Don’t leave me waiting, and disappears around the corner. I take a breath and step through the open door, into the kitchen.

“Skylar, just in time. Stir the stew,” Mom says from the table. She’s tossing together a bowl of carrots and eggplant drizzled in juices from the goat meat. Dad plunders into the room rubbing his eyes. I stir the stew, and Dad plops down across from Mom.

“I saw Nadia on my way in,” I say. Mom shuffles over to me and samples the stew.

“Add salt,” she orders. I do as I’m told. Mom moves dirty cooking dishes into a bucket.

“How’s Nadia?” Dad asks, indulging me.

“She seemed fine,” I say. “But it sounds like Aunt Drea’s heart is acting up.” I watch Dad’s face out of the corner of my eye. He doesn’t seem surprised, but I see his eyes drop sadly to his hands.

“Nothing new,” Mom says. It comes across passive-aggressive, like Mom is irritated with Aunt Drea’s faulty heart. It’s not the first time I’ve picked up on this tone from Mom when talking about Aunt Drea. The bitterness doesn’t seem to extend to Nadia, although it is familiar to the bitterness Mom would direct towards Drea and Dad’s mom, Grandma.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask Mom.

“Nothing, dear,” Mom says, her tone ringing an octave higher. “Just means Aunt Drea’s heart issues aren’t a new tale of woe.”

“You’re so calloused,” Dad says lightly. He walks over to Mom and kisses her forehead. “Now, let me eat.”

I offer to do the dishes once we are finished.

“Be my guest,” Dad says. I take two buckets of dishes and head to the stream that runs through the cavern. It feeds into a waterfall that irrigates our farmland. I rinse slowly, picking at flecks of food with my thumbnail. Aunt Drea and her bad heart dance around my mind. The healers have seen similar heart problems in other elderly tribe members. One of the healers claims our mountain air is “thin,” and it exacerbates poor heart health. Another healer promised Aunt Drea a healthy life if her chakras were aligned and clear. Whether it is thin air or misaligned chakras, I know Aunt Drea is struggling. I wonder what Nadia will do when her mom is gone.

After the last dish is scrubbed clean, I gather my buckets and turn back for home. I’m almost back to the door when another tremor rumbles under the soles of my feet. Dust and clods of dirt rain from the cavern ceiling. I grip the buckets of dishes and widen my stance as I look around. People are peering out of their homes as rocks roll and shudder on the ground. There’s a cluster of stalactites just past our home that hangs over Aunt Drea’s dwelling. Chunks of rock are raining from the cluster, pelting Aunt Drea’s sod roof.

“Mom, Dad, I’m going to check on Aunt Drea!” I call. I set the dishes by the door and dash over to my aunt’s home.

“Nadia?” I whisper-yell as I let myself in through the front door. Their kitchen is tidy. A small dish cloth hangs beside the kitchen basin. Two wooden chairs face the dinner table, where a vase with a bunch of wildflowers is centered. There is a sitting area to my right. Floor cushions surround a faded rug, and a candle burns on a side table. They’re lucky it didn’t fall onto the rug during the quake.

“Skylar?” Nadia appears in the hall leading to the bedrooms.

“I just wanted to check on you and your mom. The quakes weren’t stopping, and some of

the rock overhead looks like it’s due to fall straight through your roof.” Nadia smiles softly and touches my arm.

“Thanks for checking on us, Sky,” she says.

“You and your mom need to relocate,” I say. “I’m telling you, the rocks are going to come down on you.” I gesture up at the ceiling. “These quakes are getting worse.”

“I don’t know that Mom will want to do that,” Nadia whispers. “She’s not doing well.”

“Please, Nadi, I’m worried for you guys.”

“I promise I’ll talk to her first thing in the morning,” Nadia says.

Back in the cavern, women are sweeping debris from doorways, and a few men are relocating chunks of rock that had fallen on the walkways. I overhear someone tell their pestering child, “Go back to bed. Everything will be back to normal in the morning.”

I’m not so sure we know what normal is anymore.