A boy casts his line.
The bait sails out, a grand arc tracing the sun.
It plops onto mud-pan, rolls and falls into a crack.Below, imps smell the fetid scent of year-old wishes.
Seeking with tiny rat-noses, they locate the bait and one gobbles it up.
A faint tug. The rod tip twitches.A splash of sea slides into the boy’s eyes and he hauls back.
The imp squeals in pain. It sounds like a wind devil, twirling, twirling.
Cranking hard, arching back, the boy reels in his catch.The mirage dances, the imp fights, the boy keeps winding.
Claws scratch to catch a break in the vanished riverbed.
Relentless, the boy can already smell the roasting flesh.Little does he realize, it is his own.
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
Your endings are always so good!
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It’s good to see you exercising the creative muscle lately. Unless of course you’re up to your old “hard-drive harvesting” tricks 😈
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All BRAND-SPANKING-NEW-CONTENT. NEVER-STALE. ALWAYS-HOT-N-CRISPY.
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Ecclesiastes: there is nothing new under the sun.
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While I can see climate change from a satellite I wonder why Oklahoma ran dry in 1957. Or Nebraska in the 30s. Or why the great North American drought after 1450, due to climate activity running 2 to 5 degrees C below normal, not high. Or why the Earth is shifting on its axis or Venice is sinking. Petrochemical emissions are nothing compared to lowered or heightened solar activity. The planet has run wet and dry for eons before we figured out flint weapons and fire. So yeah, nobody’s paying attention, and we’re in a drought. Electric cars and a diet of Kale and bullshit aren’t going to rearrange or temper the activity of our sun. The baby ice age of Medieval times cut food production, dried up the Mississippi Valley and starved the non nomadic indigenous from the American West. You can blame solar activity for then and now more than you can blame stupid humans. However stupid humans do have better comedic value. And who wants to take on the sun?
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The Great Equalizer is that regardless of whether one believes in anthropogenic global warming (which I do, I follow the Keeling Curve… 450ppm CO2 here we come, baby) the fact remains that humanity is toast either way.
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Duke said it better than I can in his post and I quote here ” Not only do humans take their collective eyes off the ball, they are not even in the ball park. They are stuck in traffic, arguing over gun rights and stolen elections, who has had face lifts and who not.” Duke. It could not be said any better than that so I will borrow it
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This story reminds me of some diplomat Harry Truman sent to talk to Mao Tse-tung after World War II to see if a Kuomintang-Communist coalition government could still continue after the Japanese had been defeated.
The diplomat was from Oklahoma.
Mao Tse-tung reflected on how dry the area around his boyhood home was while growing up.
The diplomat replied, “In Oklahoma it was so dry when I was growing up, the only way you could tell if there was fish in the river was if the sand dunes were moving up and down.”
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How the hell could someone remember that? that sounds like historical fact.
But, ripples in the sand, sandworms, or the desiccated husks of ghost carp.
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Yes, I have a memory for historical facts.
I may not remember where I left my glasses but I do remember historical and literary tidbits.
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Is this an original idea? Cause if it is, it is very good. Fishing in the big cracks of a dried out lake for imps. I guess the kid doesn’t understand. Anyway, really great post. You might run with this one. Make it into a full blown story. Great character for one of your longer writings. By the way, Monterrey, Mexico is almost completely out of water. Five million live there. Obrador has asked the beer breweries to cut back on production. Long lines of people carrying five-gallon cans for water distribution. So it is officially on here in Mexico as a major urban area runs out of water. There is a dead historian in Texas named Walter Prescott Webb. He wrote a book on water in the West. He said wherever there is water there are gatherings of people and towns, industry and railroads, ranching and farming. That has been the history of the West and there is nothing any of us can do about it. As the mayor (President) of Leon says, people who don’t believe in climate change are idiots. Not only do humans take their collective eyes off the ball, they are not even in the ball park. They are stuck in traffic, arguing over gun rights and stolen elections, who has had face lifts and who not. Duke
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I think of a simple theme, type a prompt into Dall-E Mini and see if I can write something to support the image. So, original? I guess is it. But is anything really original these days? Thanks for your encouraging words.
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