A/N: A fic written for the 25-word prompt table over at spn25 on Livejournal. This first part is a response to the prompt "Earth".
THIS FAMILIAR PARABLE – PART I: A BUSH OF BURDOCK
"As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but black earth – not one green blade of grass, and there on the edge of the dusty grey road there grew a bush of burdock. There were three off-shoots. One was broken and its white soiled flower hung; the other also broken, was bespattered with black dirt, its stem bent and soiled; the third shoot stuck out to the side, also black from dust, but still alive and red in the centre. It reminded me of Hadji-Murad. It makes me want to write. It asserts life to the end, and alone in the midst of the whole field, somehow or other has asserted it."
--The Journal of Leo Tolstoi, 1895 – 1899, translated by Rose Strunsky
A frayed duffel bag hits the cracked dirt.
Empty earth sprawls before it in a broad palette of burnt siennas and raw umbers and the tired dusty green of weeds. A scar of scattered gravel traces up its spine. This field was lush with corn once, Jubilee and Earlivee and Pearl White, and before that the mosaic maize of the Native Americans that had first turned this soil. Now it's fallow. It's cornflower and daisies and milk thistle. Even the gravel road is slowly dissolving into packed dirt and yellowing wild plants.
Following the duffel bag are two knapsacks, one with its zipper held closed with a bent paperclip.
The ground is dry, crackling beneath restless feet. It rolls like the shift of shrugged shoulders, spilling over a hill into a stand of skinny trees. A river flowed through those trees, once, before it followed a new course; after that there was irrigation, a looming metal gleam of pipes and arches in the middle of the field that spread wide circles of life to tired and parched soil. Now they stand as rusted and cracked effigies of a more complex farming system than the silent pray for rain. The fingers of vines curl around the pipes' bent and broken arms.
Bugs stir and the sun burns and the forest far down the road throws a dark swath of shade across the dead fields. Someone counts into the loud silence.
"1… 2… 3."
The footfalls start before "three" has even brushed the tops of weathered dandelions; lungs spread wide to taste dusty air and legs spread far to lunge across the empty field. Dust puffs up in protest as it's torn loose by the grip of sneakers, the loud slap of their rubber soles against the ground echoing back in confusing reverberation.
They fly across the scattered gravel line, a racetrack paved solely for them. Their feet pound the earth as they gauge each other with eyes squinted against the sun. Even at twelve and sixteen, there's an appreciable difference in length of leg between the two, enough to make up for the age disparity.
They don't exchange words or taunts, too engrossed in the potential of their own singing muscles and gasped breath.
When a slow acid burn starts to build beneath his ribs, the twelve-year-old abruptly drops over the breast of the hill and turns. One foot slides in the gravel as he shoves off again, his palms pressing into the sharp gray-blue rocks before he's bursting over the incline and heading back the way they had come. He sprints on with his older brother cursing his name behind him.
Their pace turns all the more frantic, the exuberance of runner's high bursting across their features, and the weeds shuffle in disquiet as they fly past once again.
By the time their footfalls' echoes catch up with them, heavy breath and wide grins have driven them to the ground, one sitting atop the duffel while the other leans against the backpacks. "You're a cheating whore," states the older conversationally, raking his fingers through sweat-damp hair.
The younger hands him a bottle of water and grins.
A breeze starts off in the trees, dry branches bowing before its passing. It sweeps across the field with the blissful transience that all breezes have. They bask in the temporary relief, turning their sweaty faces towards the cold.
A city is burning a hundred miles ahead of them. The breeze carries the acrid smoke with it, but only enough to be mistaken for the slightly bitter smell of grass baking in the hot fields.
They cap the water and get back to their feet, stretching wiry limbs high to the empty sky. They brush the dirt from their ragged jeans and exchange excessive sighs and groans as they shoulder their loads once again. They move on, and the death-stained breeze moves on with them.
FINIS PART I