Morning all. Yesterday I took my cold medicine after writhing my morning prompts and the rest of the day passed in a daze, with a lot of napping. Still not 100% but feeling better. There will probably be a nap later on, and I am staying far from people. For now, I am awake enough and ready to try a morning prompt. So Timers set and lets see what comes out this morning.
I think I will need to think about this for a bit. It has elements I like, but I don’t know the story yet.
Thursday, July 25th: Once this was a lake.
Once this was a lake. It was hard to picture it now. The depression in the ground remained, but there was not a drop of water in sight. I could see the dry and desiccated remains of the larger plants that once grew on the edge oof the lake. There was no life left in them. Instead the only greenery was small and relied upon rainfall to survive. As there was little rainfall in this area, the greenery was both small and sparse, hugging the ground rather than rising tall.
I knew the stories of course, everyone did, although very few paid them much attention. It was considered a myth dreamt up by people who were too primitive to understand climate change. I knew the stories though and found numerous records of them from multiple sources written at the time of the lake’s destruction.
It was man rather than nature that caused the lake to go dry.
I walked into the lake, trying to picture what was and square it with the reports. Once people waded into the shallows to cool off when the summer’s heat was at its height. As the land sloped gently for a long way into the lake basin, I could imagine a wide swath of shallows at the lake’s edge. The bed of the lake wasn’t smooth. There were a few raised sections of ground and a wide trough through the center. The trough curved off to the south.
Geologists agreed it was caused by passing glaciers and with no water in the lake basin, I could almost see its path. It exited where the lake stood to the south and there it narrowed, becoming a once deep river. It was dry now as well without the lake to feed it. I knew if I walked to the south I would see the former riverbed like a deeply carved canyon. I knew there would be multiple smaller channels in the area as well. They were not naturally carved, but dug when it was decided to drain the lake. I examined them before, just as I had the barrier to the north. It too was man made. It blocked the river flowing into the lake, diverting it into other channels.
The story had changed in the telling, ancient reality turned into barely believed myth with generations of retelling. The myth featured the locals angering one of the pagan gods in the area. How they angered him changed from storyteller to storyteller, but the result was the same. The god dried up the lake so the people would lose access to water and fish as well as have no irrigation for their crops. With the loss of the water, the town near its shore went as dry ass the lake and people moved away, abandoning the site. It remained a place considered cursed.
Now as the city nearby was becoming more and more built up, the curse no longer seemed potent enough to keep away. The reality was a king rather than a god stopped the water. He sent teams of workers to divert the river and to drain the lake. It was retaliation for their rebellion.
Ten til Midnight 