I open my eyes and the world is golden brown, waving slowly back and forth, kissing my neck with its warmth. High above—blue, all blue save for the shining orb at my back. My eyes lose their focus at the sight of the undulating grain. I shift my feet, kicking up dirt and rocks and worms. I breathe. And then I kneel, put my hands in the dirt, and strain to feel the vibrations, hoping, maybe, the field will understand my plea and show me the way home.

I close my eyes and concentrate.  The tremors are too light to read, too faint to impart meaning.

Everything is in motion; everything has a pattern. Meaning in chaos.

I sense something in the sky without seeing it—a cold, a darkening—something between the sun and the earth. Slowly I open my eyes, stand, and turn to face it.

Squinting, I can barely make it out, but there it is, lingering, meandering, no, traversing the open space between there and here—a black, lifeless cloud of dust.

We won’t have too much time now. Maybe the rest of summer, maybe more—too distant to say for sure—the only certainty is that it is arriving soon and it will mean death for most, if not all.