Under The Glacier

There weren’t always dragons in the valley.

In fact there didn’t used to be a valley at all. This massive crack in the earth used to be a lush seemingly unending river with trees and rich mossy banks that give life and sustenance to hundreds of species, including us humans. Actually before it was a river it used to be a glacier, miles and miles long and miles wide that, if I remember from school, wraps around the entire planet like a belt. It was the last remaining holdout of some ice age that covered the whole earth, if you believe what they teach in school. Personally it seems a little far fetched, the whole planet covered in ice? Or maybe it was half of the plant? I can’t remember, but the point is that things weren’t always the way they are now, because things now are even more different. The water is all gone. The industrial revolution hit and seemingly overnight the world changed. Trains replaced horses, cars replaced trains, and then airplanes were replaced with rockets and before we knew it, we couldn’t find anything green anymore. That’s slightly exaggerated, we still have trees and greenhouses on rooftops, but they’re sad samples of what I’ve seen in pictures. Supposedly there used to be fields and forests miles deep that covered mountain tops and flats, grasses that held the earth together with roots over hills and marshes. But the weather started changing, it kept getting hotter and hotter and before we knew it, the river was dry. Well that’s not entirely accurate either. The water levels dropped lower and lower until it became just a fog, this dense fog that filled the chasm left behind by the glacier turned river. We used these giant industrial vacuum things so we could condense the fog back into water. And it worked, for months it was a miracle of another resource to pillage. Until the dragons showed up.

Like every newly tapped resource, once it appeared the fog continually replenished the same big corporations that that wrecked the ozone moved in and set up industrial equipment to suck up the fog round the clock and sold the condensed water back to the residents in those same damn plastic bottles that filled the river. They strong armed whoever owned the river/valley side land into selling and lined the east bank with condensers. For the imposing presence these facilities commanded you’d think it took years to set up. Months, six months to change the once river town into a factory town where everyone worked for the same company. There were plans to begin building a bridge across the valley in order to build more facilities on the western bank when literally overnight everyone within a ten mile radius fled. At first they thought it was a fire or explosion, but it was a dragon. Then a dozen dragons came up through the valley and ravaged the condensers and surrounding towns. That was a year ago and things have only gotten worse.

“I’m telling you, they’re after me!” a fervent whisper carries just high enough over the busy din of the cantina.

My ears are officially burning. You never know what spicy gossip you’ll come across as a busboy, I mean there’s no non binary term for a girl busboy, whatever. Usually it’s good for a little cheap entertainment, if I’m lucky I can be invisible enough for someone to incriminate themselves with an extramarital affair and I can make a little extra pocket change. It’s a generally frowned upon practice, “blackmail” to the stiffs with high noses. But I mean, are they gonna pay my rent and feed my mouth? If you have money to blow on alcohol, then a little “blackmail” isn’t gonna hurt their bottom line.

“J, calm down. You just need a break, you’ve been working too much over time.” the worried man’s companion responds. “It’s just paranoia from too little sleep, I’m sure it’s fine.”

“Meek I’m telling you, every since I told the manager about the reverse gravity barrier in the valley someone has been following me home and watching me.”

“J keep your voice down.”

“The water was the only thing keeping our world separate from the dragons and now that it’s gone…”

“J!” Meek interrupts with a low impatience “You’re tired and stressed, I get it. But if you keep talking like this in public, people will start to talk.”

Well this is going no where. A couple of lab geeks talking about the dragons, again. It’s not like I don’t care, I mean of course I care. The whole world has been rocked since the dragons exploded out of the glacier-turned-river-turned-fog-crack-turned-portal-to-dragon-hell. And it’s not like anyone saw this coming exactly, but the corporations have been out of control since before my little existence became a reality. The damn valley used to be filled with ice for gods sakes. One would think ravaging the planet for profit was a bad idea once the only forests became books with pictures of trees in them. You know? But greed seems to be even more bottomless than the valley.

“Now that the water is gone there’s just open air separating the two planes” the guy named J continues on in a panic “and if I’m right then we have drained their side of the river and the fog is all that’s left from the atmosphere and condensation from the temperature differentials.”

Water coming from where? I hate scientist jibber jabber.

The other guy, Meek? Sighs. “That literally makes no sense, J. Other side? Other side of what? It’s a damn hole in the ground, there’s just more dirt and a bottom. That’s how holes in the ground work.”

Ugh I don’t know what these guys are on about, but Meek is a real prick. And, yep, shit taste in beer too. IPAs don’t actually equate masculinity, it’s all a waste of water anyways.

“No that’s what I’m trying to tell you!” J urges “Think of it like a sandwich. The earth it the middle layer and our world and the dragon worlds are the bread. The earth is the center of the gravitational pull,”

Come on with the sciency jargon!

“So that means that both sides are pulled to the center. And the valley is the central water source for both worlds. Well now that the water is gone there’s nothing stopping the dragons from flying down into their side of the valley and up out of our side.”

Wait, what?