The Cracked Earth

The last well in Varsha had run dry forty-three days ago. Meera stood at its stone lip and pressed her palm to the carved rim — waves, fish, shapes her grandmother had cut into the rock when water still meant something here. She closed her eyes and reached down the only way she knew: not with force but with listening, the wordless attunement her bloodline carried like a second heartbeat. Deep beneath the city, slow and ancient and almost asleep, she found it. Water.

The find didn't make her feel triumphant. It made her afraid, because it was very far down and the city was dying today, not in a month, and bringing it up would be the hardest thing she'd ever attempted alone. She opened her eyes. The cracked street stretched around her. Children sat in doorways because it was too hot to play. The market smelled of dust instead of rain. She took one breath and went to find the Council.