Olive sat on the sand, watching the waves roll in, aching to rest her feet for a moment. This was her role, carrying bucket after bucket of seawater up to the little wooden house sitting on the rocks. It was abandoned when they found it. No door, broken windows and holes littered the roof. Malachi would patch it up whenever he found salvageable pieces of wood, so it was decent now. He even managed to add on a room so all three of them could have their own.
As for Marissa, she grew rosemary and sea kale in the backyard. She would be down at the market trying to sell them with the half bag of coconuts she managed to collect on the beach. Olive cracked a smile on salty lips. If someone told her this was how she would be living at twenty-three, she would snort and ask for a hit of whatever they were smoking.
It would be 2040. Olive would be well on her way to being an intellectual property lawyer after sitting the bar and interning at her uncles’ firm that past summer. She definitely wouldn’t be playing little house on the seashore. Head wrapped to keep the sweat out of her eyes and the salty air from drying out her hair as she hefted bucket after bucket into a hole she dug in the ground. No, definitely not. That would be impossible, just a weird dream she wouldn’t give a second thought after she opened her eyes. By the time she popped two waffles into the air fryer, that strange dream would be forgotten. It would melt away into the cobwebbed corners of her mind like an old discarded toy she grew out of years ago.
Yet here she was, sitting on the sand, staring at the diamond blue expanse of water.
Maybe she was still waiting to wake up.
She didn’t hear Marissa coming over the gushing crash of the waves, but she felt her presence anyway, like the sun on her back.
“You get anything?” She asked without turning around, snapping herself out of pointless thoughts.
“Three litres.”
“Desalinated?” Her voice went up in a mixture of hope and surprise.
Marissa scoffed, “You wish! Like we could ever afford that much desal.”
“We can’t afford fresh water either, so what it is you get?”
“Milk.”
“Ohhh.”
When ya ain got horse, ride cow. The heavy rasp of her grandfather’s voice rustled in the trees. Olive nodded in agreement. This was year five of the drought. If the three of them managed to survive this long, it would take nothing less than the entire ocean drying up overnight to beat them down.
“The pit full anyway, we gine get like two desal litres or so by tomorrow afternoon. Almost a full gallon when I add it to the rest. Just try again tomorrow.”
Marissa nodded, throwing her a coconut before she set off back up the path to the house. Olive cracked the smooth green shell on a jagged rock, smiling at the fresh liquid sloshing around inside.
If her mother was watching her now, she would be shaking her head in amusement. Olive? Drinking coconut water and scooping out the jelly as if it was strawberry jam inside a sugar-crusted puff pastry treat? Funny how silly that seemed now. Who in the right mind would pass up a coconut? If they didn’t live near the beach, able to scavenge in the early morning hours before the sun came up, this would just be another addition to the list of things they could hardly afford.
~
Olive crept to the window. She had heard them immediately. The night was uncomfortably warm, sleep wasn’t coming anyway. Voices rushed by her in fervent whispers. Once or twice the occasional straggler stumbled across their modest, little hut, moving on without much fuss. It didn’t take a trained eye to see there was nothing of value here. Somehow she could already tell that wasn’t the case with these. What they were searching for, she didn’t know. They would be sorely disappointed, but she would let them discover that on their own.
The rustle of the plastic sheet over her pit snapped her to attention. They wouldn’t! Making a desal pit wasn’t anything new. It took days of refilling to collect anything substantial, but you did it anyway. The sea would never run dry, everything else did. It was the security blanket keeping them from tethering off the edge like so many others before them.
“Hey! What you think you doing?” She was out the door before her brain even registered the movement. Three pairs of eyes blinked at her in the dark.
“Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“Don’t play dumb.” The clear alpha of the group stepped forward. The other two paused their digging, their shovels evolving from simple tools into hostile weapons.
“Take the stupid water and go long do!”
“I not gine ask again, where is it?”
There was almost a gallon of water stashed away, but they kept that safely inside. These three couldn’t know about it.
“What you talking ‘bout?”
A hand shot out, sucking her breath as it wrapped itself tightly around her throat.
“The stream. Where the stream?”
“W-what st-stream?” The words sputtered out like a broken record. The hand loosened a fraction, and the sticky night breeze scurried down impatient airways.
Heavy thuds of a shovel connecting with something solid made Olive flinch instinctively.
Again, she didn’t hear Marissa coming. It seems none of them did.
“Let her go.”
It didn’t take much convincing. One glance at the two crumpled bodies at her feet, even Olive was a little afraid.
“Now, what stream you talking ‘bout?”
Eyes darted down to his two companions lying motionless in a heap on the dirt.
“Look, I don’t want trouble...We found a pool- a small freshwater pool before you get down to the beach. We figure...it gotta be coming from somewhere. If there’s a stream, it gotta run by here.”
Malachi chose that moment to stumble through the front door, the sleep still etched across his face. It must be nice to sleep like that.
Marissa didn’t miss a beat. Something wet splashed Olive’s cheeks as the third intruder joined his friends on the ground.
“ 'Rissa! What you doing!”
Olive jumped. Malachi’s voiced what her closed throat couldn’t.
“If there is a stream, they’re probably right. It would run through here,” Marissa shrugged.
“We can start digging tomorrow. I could do without the competition.”
DIY Desalination
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