Water, Water, Everywhere...

The hurricane couldn't have come at a more inopportune time for her. Not that she was lacking in empathy or sympathy for all of the communities suffering from catastrophic flooding but she was trying to get the committee to focus on the lack of water caused by receding glaciers. 

People as a whole, however, are very short sighted. If you show them a flood in front of their eyes, with massive amounts of rushing water, they would not readily accept what you were telling them about the lack of running water in regions where historically that had never been an issue. 

She hadn't intended on becoming a climate change expert. She had never thought she would be studying long term patterns in weather. Had never imagined she would lay awake at night worrying about a fraction of a degree in worldwide temperature change or the receding of a glacier she had never seen before. But when she was 20 years old she and her father had stood on the island and looked out at a water line that was lower than he had ever remembered it being so she started to study. 

And her area was difficult even with people who understood the science. Who believed that humans were responsible for a quickening in climate shifts. Most people who studied the receding glaciers were looking at arctic ice. And that melting led to flooding. To entire islands and coastal communities being swallowed by the ocean. 

Her concern was with the mountain glaciers. The one that fed icy streams. The streams joining into rivers. The rivers forming lakes. The lakes surrounding islands. Isolated pockets of land fully surrounded by running water. 

Her family had been the caretakers of one such island for hundreds and hundreds of years. Generations of her forebears had maintained the land. From the first to set foot on the island through to her. She had faith in her ancestors. She knew they had done what needed to be done. 

But she also knew they had chosen the island because of its location. 

Surrounded by running water. 

What happened when the water dried up? 

Or went still?

She had been in contact with other families who had other pieces of land they maintained. They all had worries. 

Including some worrying about massive flooding. What happened if the community washed away? If entire sections of land were washed out, drug down river, redeposited someplace else. And everything that was in it went too?

What happened to consecrated ground if it mixed with a mudslide from further up the mountain? How much unconsecrated soil would be enough to dilute the mixture? To take it from hallowed ground to just dirt? 

There were a lot of things to worry about. 

Right now her main worry was the glacier. It was receding. The streams might be drying up. The water might stop running. And then her island would no longer be hallowed ground surrounded by running water. It would just be hallowed ground.

If it even was still hallowed after this many centuries. And no priests knew the prayers to say anymore to consecrate it in the way it needed done. They had let that knowledge go by the wayside. Called it superstition. Old folk tales. Nonsense. 

Nobody believed in vampires anymore. 

Except for the families that were tasked with watching over the hallowed ground.

Surrounded by running water. 

She really needed them to listen to her.