Nature Rules - 2022 WATTY'S SHORTLIST

Earth

I've been told Earth once had four seasons. That was before my time, before the war. The war burned the Earth alive, leaving it monotonous in both colour and season – orange and a never-ending summer. Before, there was fall, when green leaves on trees turned yellow and red before drifting to the ground. There was winter, when it got cold and snow fell, turning the land white. There was spring, when the snow gave way to new growth and life and things turned green again.

"He who controls the weather, controls the world," my dad says.

I've never known this world to have a climate other than hot. The orange sun hangs in the orange sky and bakes us. The sand is orange too. The mountains are orange. If there were any rivers or lakes left alive, they'd be orange.

I'm 12 and my daily chore is to get the water for my family. Mom and Dad also have two younger children, my sisters, to look after so now that I'm old enough to fetch water – this is what I do. It's tough work but I'm able. It is dangerous work but I go. We have no choice.

We live in the mountains where water is the only thing that moves freely down the peaks. But not for long. The last of the glacier is dying. Melting. Gushing down the rocks and drying up by the time it gets to the valley floor. It's my chore to climb up the stonewalls and fetch the water we need for the week.

I dress in the remnants of one of my mother's old cotton skirts, an ancient button-down blue shirt and brown hiking boots. (Vegetables were traded for the boots last year. They only fit me now.) I grab a grey scarf and wind it around my neck. It'll stop the sweat from tickling my back.

I'm ready to go.

My father ties two buckets to my back, kisses my forehead and sends me on my way. Not without a warning to watch out for Waterstealers. He also warns me to make sure no one asks too many questions.

"Don't talk to strangers," he says as I head out the cave door, the entrance to our family's home.

I'm not the only one making the trek up the mountain. There are all sorts and all ages. Some days, there are climbers younger than me. They're smaller than the buckets they carry. A couple of the little ones will cry the whole way up. I'll tell them stories so they'll stop sniffling.

The walk to the top is hard. Gruelling work. I start when the heat is at its lowest, when the sun is in the eastern half of the sky. When the sun reaches the middle, I take the scarf from my neck and put it over my dark curly hair. Sometimes, the sun's rays poke into my scalp and burn it to the colour of blood – red.

On my journey, I'll often stop and take a break. Only after I've hurried through the corridor, a dark tunnel made of granite and black-and-white banded rock that I have to pass through. I never want to meet what's hiding in the shadows so I go as fast as I can and wait for an open space before I sit on the rocks for a rest, trying to catch my breath. Sometimes the wind whips at my chest and steals my oxygen. I beat it by pulling my scarf around my face. It's a short pause. I'm off again.

The water is at the top of my climb. There it is, sparkling in the sunlight. Babbling merrily as if the planet is still as healthy and vibrant as it had been 20 years ago. The glacier is shrinking and shrinking. It's cold to the touch and you're not allowed to walk on it. It's a rust colour from all the dust that blows around here. I have been told the glacier was all white at one point in time. My mother said the mountains used to be covered in snow. Pure white frozen water. Not anymore.

Today, dozens of people wait in long lines beside the glacier to fill their containers. The water looks clear and clean but it's laced with poisons leeching out of the contaminated ground. There's not a grain of sand that hasn't been touched by chemicals. But we need to eat and drink. So we boil our water in the hopes that we won't get sick.