That evening as Tanner sat out on his verandah a wind blew in from the vlei. Tanner drank it in. He could taste and smell the earth that for fifty years now had nurtured and defied him. The hot air spoke with stories of grass on fire, of a burning sky and of the giant moon that rose to drench the heat of the day. And memories encircled him. Good memories. He remembered Carina, running up the track barefoot. She had been digging up new worlds of her own and satisfied was now returning her skin and hair thick with the red earth. He could still smell her hair baked bare in that unforgiving sun.
A shaft of this light could reveal the unseen substance of the air. What seemed empty and still was a heavy motioning sea. Living here, the dust had become a part of them all. They breathed it, ate it and the children grew strong with this earth deep in their blood and bones.
A distant bark in the village, Tanner looked up. The darkness now was absolute and told a story of its own. Constellations hung connected in an immeasurable dome, the depths of infinity marked out by miniscule forgotten suns. Tanner was struck by his own insignificance.
For a while, there was something here that had felt real, worth fighting for. But like Campbell’s place down in the valley all in time would be returned to dust. The ants will eat away at the fabric of what once stood here and with no one to sweep away the daily film from the floors all would soon crumble and be taken back into the earth from which it rose.
And of us. We were once a people. An identity. Now all who had once stood close and strong were scattered and displaced, like Saharan sands on a distant wind.