Desertion
A Micro Fiction by Anne Howkins
The weather girl hasn’t slept for weeks, months even. Her bed surfs from cyclone to cyclone, climbs record breaking highs, plummets to ever deeper lows. She zooms each hourly report from her kitchen in front of backdrops of deserts and wildflower meadows. She knows she’s not kidding anyone, but hey, we all need to dream. Between her bulletins she scrolls through TikTok and Instagram clips of the Atacama Desert, tries not to weep at the memory of sunburnt skin and the exquisite longing of a parched mouth.
Her husband kayaked away days, or maybe weeks ago, dissolving into the deluge that has become the new normal. She’s given up waiting for his promised message of safe arrival. Words like moor, harbour and beach have floated out of her comprehension. She’s not sure if there’s anywhere to arrive at now.
The weather girl doesn’t know when the rain will stop. She doesn’t know if there’s anybody out there, watching her, but she knows that she must keep going, because if she doesn’t, who’s going to tell the world that tomorrow will be dry and sunny? And that the Atacama Desert is still the world’s driest place?