My mother always told me I had a chameleon soul. Ever changing, ever adapting, rarely showing my true colours, too content with hiding and blending in with the washed-out hues of life to bleed past the lines between safety and danger. I used to believe she was right. Now I know how fundamentally wrong she was. The beating rays of sun that plagued me wherever I went were not ideal, although I cannot begin to fathom a situation in which breath-stealing heat would ever be desirable. The dry, cracked ground beneath my bare feet burned and sent jolts of pain through my body with every step. I adopted a peculiar skip to my walk, anything to reduce the amount of time my skin was in contact with the wretched earth. It had no discernable benefit. Of …show more content…
It was after one of those cycles that I found myself amongst undergrowth with scratches stinging every inch of my skin and a large gash across my forehead. Blood, the fluid crimson river, dripped steadily down and splashed onto the ground, subsequently absorbed by the cracks in hunger. I watched for some time. Some ineffable detachment filled the gaps where my emotions should have been. Drip. What had happened to me? Drip. Where was everyone else? Drip. Where was I? I thought more thoughts without any sense of panic. Touching my fingers to my scalp, I felt my hair matted with blood. Looking back, the only reason I have concluded that meant I didn't cry for help nor feel anything emotionally was a combination of survival instinct and a grim resolve. I'd always thought from the very beginning of the drought that it would kill me. It appeared, at the time, I was