The Century

It was the end of the century. There were no roads in sight, each one peeled up and off the earth like tape. Each one rolled up like a ball and tossed into the corner. Except, there weren't any corners, so they lay like huge boulders strewn about, oozing the spilled blood of a thousand years worth of machines, oozing the liquid marrow of the dinosaurs. In between the boulders lay the cities, shrunken down to small patches of mushrooms. Above were the eagles, their silver feathers like sharp knives cutting at the brown sky. Inside, we were all mothers holding on to something lost, like lace on the edge of an ancient dress. Our hair filled the rooms, golden waterfalls, brunette streams, black rivers, red kelp. We were submerged, surrounded. Under the water we could speak freely in the lost tongue. The men held their bellies and timed their heartbeats. The women chewed slowly on the roots of the Aarak tree, mending their cuts with watercress milk fresh from the animals. The centuries had piled so high, the edges of the mountains were hard to see, though, at this time, most of them were flattened, except for a small cluster located 23 kilometers north.