The Last Whisper of Rain (Chapter 1)

It's 2142 years old. Earth's formerly colourful tapestry has become a canvas of skeletal buildings and ochre dust. The unrelenting sun is a sharp reminder of the foolishness of the past. Humanity struggles to survive in the vast Oasis City inside a massive biodome in a last-ditch effort to restore the destroyed environment.

Amara was a young woman navigating the busy market with eyes the colour of storm clouds. Her ragged cloak did little to protect her from the harsh artificial sunlight that came through the clear roof of the dome. She haggled with a weathered water vendor, his face scarred with the severity of life in the desert, over a dented canteen.

The new unit of account was water, which was valued in drops and thimbles. Each drop served as a lifesaver and a reminder of the rain that had stopped falling. Amara had heard tales from her grandmother about a period of time known as "The Wet," during which water fell from the sky without restriction.

A tremor shook the market abruptly. There was a collective gasp. A maintenance alert went off, slashing across the crowded room with its sharp red strobe light.

A man yelled, "The rain collectors!" "They're failing again!"

Fear shot through the throng. The fragile equilibrium of Oasis City would collapse if the rain collectors on the surface of the dome hadn't been collecting valuable condensation.

But Amara sensed something other than terror flickering in her chest. A glimmer of rebellion, a reminder of a truth long since lost. Memories of a world before the Great Drying and buried wisdom lost to time echoed in her thoughts from her grandmother's stories.

Amidst the chaos, Amara saw Kai, a youthful engineer with a defiant sparkle in his eyes, slowly vanishing. She trailed behind him, propelled forward by a feeling of fate.

As they arrived at a quiet area, the sound of equipment was pervasive in the air. "There's a whisper," Kai whispered, "about a secret archive that's buried under the city. It's believed to be the key to getting rain again."

Amara felt her breath catch. Is that possible to be true? She felt a glimmer of hope spark, a revolt against the parched inevitable. She realised at that same moment that she needed to locate this archive for everyone who had forgotten the sound of rain, not only Oasis City.