Purple Morning Glories

There was a massive dam constructed of concrete and boasting giant locking mechanisms. Finely crafted to stand against both time and nature, it shouldered the head of what was once a raging river sustaining a very poor village. The dam had been built to protect the lowland from flooding, and the river now culminated at the dam, forming a giant lake.

But although it had succeeded for decades in drying out the land below, as well as marginally easing the lives of the village up top, the lake had also been gradually growing stagnant in its stillness. Worse, wealthy lawmakers had started buying up the property around it, eyeing industrial development possibilities and betting each other on resale potential. Lot auctions sprang up, and large portions of the nearby woods were razed to put up advertisement boards.

Along came a lone rebel, a fierce ferocity in her voice and a look of intent in her eyes.

From lands unknown, she marched into town and, after boisterous yells for attention throughout the streets, made her way straight out on the top of the dam overlooking both sides. There she thunderously declared that the rich lawmakers were just going to proliferate and spread the mental manacles of Christianity in order to subjugate the locals and consume the sweat of their labor like jackals. With the dam itself as a metaphor, she proceeded to announce that there was a wall in society, a massive false construct standing between them and their full potential as living beings.

“There must be cooperation, not just between people and people, but between people and nature!” she shouted to the slowly growing crowd of villagers. “The land upstream is full of fish, but the land below is starving! To fight against nature is to fight against each other!” Purple flowers peeked out from the braids in her hair.

The announcement was a shock to the quiet community.

But a lot of them were motivated by what they heard, and they brought the topic home to discuss with enthusiasm. Protest committees began to form.

A great debate arose. The dam had been built for a reason, and there were unknown and significant consequences for introducing any sudden changes to land, or to society, after so many years of relative controlled stability. There was a moderate equilibrium here now, one that had not existed during the days when the spring rains fell and the river overtopped its banks and flooded both the highlands and the delta.

Worse, the rich people got wind of the dissention and began to push back with committees of their own, attempting to accelerate plans for the land’s development into gated housing and megachurches.

The fever of the arguments heated up quickly. The steaming pressure for change and evolution was trapped and bottled by a concrete wall of endurance and authority, and there the two sides pressed against each other, a potential harmony utterly polluted by opposing invisibility. Below them all, the land rumbled, triggering warnings on seismometers.

One autumn morning a ratty, strange-looking mutt emerged from the treeline at the edge of the lake and, panting with effort, glanced up to take hold of the sight of a revelatory sunrise. But to his gloom, it was blocked by a towering advertisement board.

At its base crackled a meager campsite, and it was here that the rebellious human was living. Lured out by a promise of the same brilliant sunrise, she breeched her tent at the same moment. She looked toward the east, but enragingly, there was a monstrous billboard in the way. Below it, however, was something strange: a peculiar young animal, looking in the same direction.

Without hesitation she leaned over, called to it, and offered some of her breakfast.

The dog heard the call and, unflinchingly, padded his way over.

From there the two could hardly be separated. They spent long stretches of days deliciously exploring the deep woods, entertaining each other under the shade of the billboards, and finding places from which to observe the passing sun. And every time the rebel went to town for supplies, activism, or adventure, the canine accompanied her like a loyal teammate.

The fall passed, and one late November day the competing invisible forces converged at the uneasy town by the lake.

Due to the elevated unrest and the inevitable clash between the divergent factions of society, a debate was being held at the city hall, the largest and most influential one to date. The future of the dam, as well as the lives built around it, was going to be determined once and for all. Everyone with an opinion hurried from their homes that night, flocking to the hall to lend their voices. Crowds swelled, both inside and out, and law enforcement was called to remain on hand just in case.

And when the time came for the meeting’s call to order, the rebel stood there, mouth open, prepared to shout - but in a flash of instinct, she looked down and realized her companion wasn’t beside her. Below, the ground trembled.

Against the confused cries of both allies and adversaries, the human abandoned the meeting, charged out into the dark night, and called for her friend. Once out of the town square, the empty streets seemed to stretch out forever, halogen lights buzzing overhead and drawing long, spectral shadows across shiny vehicles and greasy dumpsters alike.

Figuring that the crowds had separated them, and pondering if he had gone back to the lakeside campsite to regroup, the rebel hurriedly made her way to the riverbank and searched with concern, her heart worried. And there she heard a haunting sound.

It was a whine, a pitiful one.

The human traced the wail to a spot near the riverside, and there she found her canine companion. Alive but motionless.

“What happened? Who did this?” she yelled with so many indefinable emotions that it echoed for miles, and across time. On investigation she discovered that after having been separated from his partner, the dog had indeed endeavored to return to the campsite. But in the process he had stopped to drink from the lake. And now he was poisoned.

The rebel stood up, shaking with rage. Something broke through inside. She had seen enough.

Again without hesitation, she lovingly picked up the dog and marched directly toward the dam. Once there, she broke in, positioned the dog to see out the window, located the locking mechanism, and triggered its release.

With a godlike cheer, the massive machine groaned to life and began moving. The first trickles of water peeked through, and at the sound of it the dog excitedly perked up.

The river moved ahead and, like a living fist, it punched through the walls and punished the lands below with force and fury, instantaneously carving a new path and altering all aspects of the planet’s surface. Lucrative or not, better or worse, it was the way things were naturally designed to be, and a great rush of relief followed, flooding the bones of the living as they assertively unclenched the fists of millions and submitted all to greater unknowable wisdom.

Alone in the dark control room, surrounded by rumbling walls and the low drone of awakening primal forces, the two embraced silently, overwhelmed with what they had done and experienced.

No one had stopped them because they were all stagnant. They were all back in town, arguing about it, spreading their own poison like a contagion. All that mattered was action, and if not for each other, the two might not have restored the true equilibrium…

The dam withstood the rampage of water, no bodies were discovered, and the two were ever seen again. Thus, mystery surrounds what happened to the rebel and her partner. Most locals believe that the human and her companion were content to be outlaws, and that they simply fled together, to avoid legal prosecution.

Others have mythologized them, saying that they separated following the cataclysm, preaching that the power they unleashed that day was either too great or too terrible for any single mortal mind to live with a constant reminder of.

Some speculate that the human was an agent of higher forces, sent to the river to accomplish one very specific task before moving on to other unknown lands to possibly repeat the process. Others swear they’ve spotted her in nearby cities, having changed her appearance and settled into a more simple life. But to this day evidence of her existence is at best ambiguous, and the only proof lies scattered among the multiple fruit farms downstream that now carry her name as thanks for the spring floods.

Hikers and campers report that melancholy whining can be heard near the river’s edge. And although the source has never been discovered, winds on autumn nights still seem to carry moans, strange and starved. The more rational of theorists who have heard the sound subscribe to the scenario that a pack of wild wolves has evolved and taken over the woods in those sections, and the cries are their way of warning against additional billboards.

Either way, no one else has since attempted to bid on the land - a land that, curiously, has yet to feel another seismic shudder.

The dam still stands, and although it is still rumored to be functional, some unseen force has mysteriously prevented its re-activation. Whether the dam itself is regarded as too dangerous to remodel, or lawmakers are endlessly embroiled in debates with the farmers downriver instead of with the poor villages, or there is too much fear surrounding rumors of the duo’s nearby ghosts, waiting with shocking interventions at the ready in the event of additional social stagnation, no one knows.

But as of today the structure is abandoned, hidden from sight every morning by a blinding sunrise and a protective shell of purple morning glories.