The Red Raven - A Short Story Of Fiction

(Image from: pixabay.com)

A long time ago there was a beautiful oasis in the desert. A crystal blue lake surrounded by tall red hills, sand dunes that kept that tiny piece of paradise secretly hidden. Trees were growing around the lake, birds were coming to rest under their shade, feed on their fruit and drink water from the lake.

And a girl...

A girl in a red dress would sit there by the water and wait every day. Every single day. She waited for a message to come. A sign from him, that the war was finally over and he was coming to get her back. Back to their village, so they could set their home. For now she knew he was fighting against the invaders. Those audacious usurpants that came to claim the land of her ancestors. And he left to defend his country and she hid to wait for him.

The days went by and turned to weeks, to months... a year. On that day she was sitting under a tree with her back leaning against its trunk. She heard a weird sound and lift her head up. It was a croak that kept coming closer until it suddenly stopped, but no crow showed up. And there she saw it, it was a white dove with a red ribbon flying behind it.

At last! The war was over, it must have been the message she was waiting for a year! He was coming to take her back! They would finally be together again!

The bird sat on her shoulder and she untied the red ribbon from its leg, there was a piece of paper wrapped around it. She carefully unfolded it trying not to tear it apart as her hands were shaking anxiously. Her stomach was twisting, her palms were sweating. She managed to unfold it and started to read the first lines...

- Nooooooooooo!! A scream made the earth tremble like a shock wave from a massive explosion.

The birds that were formerly sitting on the trees, immediately flew away scared. The one bird that stayed was the white dove, only it was not so white any more. It had turned into a black raven and was looking at her with its big, shiny, black eyes.

Tears started to come down her eyes. Tears so many that formed a stream ending to the lake next to her. She kept crying for days until the lake flooded. And when she had no more tears to shed, the black raven touched her cheek as if it wanted to kiss her... and she became a raven too. A beautiful red raven. And the two birds flew away. Together.

And the water in the lake evaporated. And the salt from her tears was left behind covering the ground. And the trees withered. And a lonely tree cemetery was formed in the middle of the desert, surrounded by tall dunes.

A big thank you to Lord Byron, er... sorry, @onceuponatime for his yesterday's music selection (I had your link playing while writing this).

If you want to know whether this idyllic scenery exists, follow me to the next part:

The story was inspired by the desert of Namimbia and its famous DeadVlei, a pan full of salt decorated with dead camel thorn trees (Acacia Erioloba). Yesterday @trumpman said "Who said that death can't be pretty?" and this picture could not agree more.

Image from: maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com

Within Namib-Naukluft Park in Namimbia you will find DeadVlei near Sossusvlei. They are both salt and clay pans, with clay laying deeper beneath the salt. DeadVlei (which translates into dead marsh) was created when the river Tsauchab flooded. The area allowed for camel thorn trees to grow. But over time, climatic change caused the surrounding dunes to grow and cut off the water supply from the river. Those dunes are now among the tallest in the world. The trees, which can be as old as 900 years, were condemned to die. The extreme lack of humidity did not let the trees decompose and as a result we are left with a magnificent "tree cemetery", an ideal destination for photographers and nature lovers [and I just remembered the lake that mummified everything from Bizarre Natural Phenomena Vol.7 - A Touch Of Stone (The Lake That Turns Animals Into Mummies)]

I found an amazing photo gallery you might want to check out here: unusualplaces.org

And another one here: matadornetwork.com

And here: travelplusstyle.com

Apologies for all the links, but this place is extraordinarily beautiful (and some of you might find weird the fact that there are people who travel all the way in the extreme heat just to take photos of some dead trees; I know, some people are crazy, but how dull and unimaginative would our world be without them?)

References

sossusvlei.org
namibiatourism.com.na
atlasobscura.com

Thank you very much for being here and reading this, I really appreciate your support all this time! I hope my posts keep up with your standards and you can find some value in them. I would love to see your comments below.

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Until my next post,
Steem on and keep smiling, people!