Danny Cummins

Of Bones and Organs Past

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley,” Marissa says. We sit knee-to-knee in a small, freshly-dug trench, wide enough to spread our arms out. The walls of the trench––packed with dry, gritty dirt and pockmarked with the hollows of fallen rocks––reach high enough to escape the night’s bitter wind, but not enough to escape its raking howl. I lean in closer.