They called it The Edge. In reality it was a dam, the greatest feat of engineering ever achieved. The power of the great glacier harnessed, tamed, to do man’s bidding. To him it was more.
The wars of the twenty-third century had left scars upon the fertile equator and stripped the temperate plains to desert. With water rationed and food scarce, desperation had created The Edge to warm and distribute the ice of the polar climates. Longing for what was lost had diverted a mere fraction of arctic power to pockets of living memory.
Like this mountain stream, tumbling rocks over and over in its tiny rapids, only to filter through the moss into infinitesimal falls. Like many, he came often to walk the swinging bridge, artificially propped above waters that could have been waded, hung at the edge of empty air like so much possibility. Unlike many, he came to grieve.
He knew what others would not acknowledge. The Edge, the last great hope, was doomed. A century, maybe, could be wrung from the glacier, but no more. If the scars were not healed, and soon, The Edge of the future would be its end. And with the insulation of memory become recreation, there would be no healing.
Babh waited under the black branches of the dead oak. She preened her dark feathers in satisfaction at the fear she sensed from the forest denizens. In the shadows of the night, all that could be seen of her were her eyes, glowing flame red.
The Word Worker 