Gallery of the Possible
Drought Edition
My gosh, where is the evening going? I'm working on this story, not on this chapter, which I really should be. And I’m supposed to finish this other webpage, put the dishes in, and do the laundry downstairs. And read. And sleep. Gracious Lady, it’s still only Monday.
All right. Regroup. Cheat.
Drought pictures…the Drought, the Famine, that almost got them all. The green, damp land they were making threw the planet’s atmospheric circulation off for years. Trembling on the edge of climatological disaster…and political disaster followed, and social disaster with it, leading to the Iphigenian we all know and love so well.
So we illustrate in our own fashion. Here’s the first one. I thought it was too woodsy and the clouds too encouraging, but it's not bad.
This was good, too, though the figure was a bit menacing.
It's not bad, but the child is sunk to her shins, and I didn’t like spotlighting starving children. There is too much of that as there is.
It was not quite scenic enough, and the trace of water was possibly too optimistic.
This is what I went with. Yah, I suppose a child. Yah, a little woodsy. But it's so depressing.
I'm sorry, folks. This is the best I can do this evening! But I am working hard for you, I promise!
The rains fail
The fragile young soil was half-planted with spring seeds when they noticed the seasonal rains were not coming. The winds that carried the moisture from the sea had failed, and hot and parching air from the other direction arrived instead, blowing out of the salt wastes in the east. Something had gone wrong, something unpredicted, something dangerous.