The Electric Valley pt. 1

There was a girl whose home was in what geographers refer to as an electric valley. She had lived there for all of her days and always supposed that she would live there forever. The thought of being anywhere else had not ever been thought of, not by her and not by anyone else she knew either. She spent a good many afternoons at the window sill looking outside and watching the storm clouds roll into the valley.

The electric valley was a difficult place to make a life, and most stayed there because they did not know anywhere else to live. The electricity was an aberration from the electricity that you and I are used to — yours stays in the wires and travels through power lines above the streets your city planners sketched. The electricity of the valley was a cruel current; it traveled through the water particles in the clouds and the humidity that saturated the air.

There was little that anyone could do to avoid the inevitable shocks; even staying indoors offered no solace and no protection. It was a sad way to live and quite a painful one, too. Adults barely left their homes because at least they did not have to see the lightening if the were outside. Children eventually grew up and did the same.

It was an average afternoon of expected lightening — the same patterns wrote their stories across the sky, and the same clouds hovered over the valley. The older people of the valley said that every year the clouds grew darker, and some told stories about when the valley used to fill every day with a substance referred to as sunlight. They talked about how there were flowers, strange objects that seemed to silently sing and even dance and breathe if you looked closely enough. It had been a very long time since anyone had seen a flower, said the words sprout or bloom, let alone hold one in your hand or count the petals.

There was only one grandmother left who had once seen a rosebud. She told stories and even drew pictures of it. She said it smelled like a place called heaven.

The little girl had never heard the word heaven before meeting that grandmother, but she always wondered if that was what was above the clouds. She started to draw pictures of roses in her notebook and think about them often. The story the old grandmother told her always perplexed her because part of her seemed to believe that there must still be sunlight out there somewhere and roses growing in the world, too.

The briars grew thick in her thoughts until one average afternoon when she could not bare to remain inside for another second. She had to find sunlight. She had to find rose.

She gathered what accoutrements she assumed would be appropriate for what you would call a journey, but she had never heard of anyone leaving the valley before. She did not know that word either.

She opened the gray door and stood before the electric valley looming as the storm clouds rolled in like they did every other day before the last.