The Water Wars lasted for 20 years before the treaty allowed for the purification of the oceans. Thousands were killed for resources and thousands more died of dehydration. I was 2 when the Draining began and my parents worked tirelessly at the distillery for our weekly gallons and rations. Left with my grandmother, I learned what life had been before the war. Before the land crisped and withered under the unforgiving sun. Before life became chapped and brittle and leathery. She spoke of water parks, in her hoarse voice, of green grass and plants and trees that lined the streets. She wove a world of plenty, of farms with rich soil and stores lined with every fruit you could imagine. Ones I’d never even seen in person. Watermelon was what she missed most. She died when I turned 7 and I could not miss the relief that crossed my parents faces as we committed her back to dust among the others that had passed in the community that day; that there would be just a little less thirst and a few more ounces for the three of us.

The effects of the Draining were slow. Over the first few years faminine worsened. Beaches became crystallized and shorelines slowly receded. Then the droughts worsened and remote places that still received rain began to go months without. Business boomed at the disterllery and rations increased, but so too did the wailing and frequency of the dust storms that berated our canvas house. People had become nomadic prior to work at the distillery. Poverty and wandering for resources became the binding of small communities. Scarcity, though, makes for weary neighbors, and families kept to themselves as much as possible.

Sand and dust and a depleting ocean is my view as I maintain our tent and forage to supplement the weekly MRE rations. Sometimes I can find mushrooms or I get lucky checking my traps. Any fresh meat is worth cooking. Now that I am 15, my parents frequent home less and less. Choosing to live primarily in the company town and visiting me twice a week to re-up my supplies. I noticed their clothes change years ago; gone with patchwork sewing of scavenged cloth my mother pieced together for the family. Now they are clean, clad in monochrome sweat suits, they smell slightly of salt and citrus and they are well fed and hydrated. They encourage me with stories of life at the Distillery and the community there. They seem so less concerned about survival and more interested in the gossip of who is new to the line, who is hooking up with what supervisor and who is risking everything to smuggle contraband into their community. All they can talk about is when I turn 18 and can apply and move into the company town. I will receive my own rations by then.

Trapped inside, alone, hunkering down against the howling of the wind there is something disturbing amid the noise. A screeching, that tears on incessantly with the wind. Something that makes the air chill more than it should for a rainless, summer storm. Something distinct and chilling like clawed, darting shadows in the day or like boney fingers wrapped around my throat whispering my name at night.

_Yara_**_!_**

Even panting, eyes open, I can still hear it’s drumming promise of return. I can hear it gaining momentum with every passing day, clawing to unearth itself.. Something is being released, slowly and painfully awakening from the depths of the dwindling ocean. Something is coming for us all.