The flag was still hanging limp with rain,, while the trees surrounding and beyond had the freedom of swaying with each passing breeze, swaying with droplets falling from each pine  needle..so alive.  Clair watched from inside, her chilled hands caressing each other for warmth.  It wasn’t really cold, not winter cold, not icy blue cold, but one of those damp mornings when putting a few logs onto the fire would crackle everything back to life.  This was their home before the desert winds blew the life out of everything green.  When there were still a few elecric cars.  Before the bay became a body of water not full of life but full of the silence of a dead lake.  That this rich land could become a desert was not predictable.  There was much change and it was constant, no time to become accustomed to something as it may not be there tomorrow.  Sometimes the only constant were memories, and those moments of quiet, when she would but Elton’s hair in the afternoon.  Not when the seasons changed as was the impulse in their history, but after sundown or before sunrise outdoors when the cowl was withdrawn so they could see the sky as the night crept over them.  Things had changed so in this world, putting a log onto the fire was an extravagance, something for a special occasion or a deep freeze.  This was an ordinary day, a once a week Tuesday morning.

One of their neighbours just left perhaps heading south before winter, but no this is a spring rain.  It had become more and more difficult to distinguish one season from another.  Weather patterns shifting so swiftly all over the globe.  You may find yourself out in shirt sleeves during mid February or shovelling snow in June.  Going out on a warm summer morning meant taking along a small shrink pack, consisting of gloves, folding boots, a scarf, took and a jacket, all designed from a special material that compresses into the shrink pack, no larger than an old-fashioned cell phone  Sort of like those sea mermaids in old comic books that kids would send away for ..just add water and they expand.

She remembered there was a calendar on the wall, held up by a red push-pin. It was such an ordinary thing, the calendar with pen marks for appointments, birthdays, holidays, things crossed out and changed.  Folding over each month and seeing a new picture, maybe a bear or a photo of the grand canyon. We don’t have calendars anymore.  They eventually vanished as it was too much waste, who needs that when you can have all your stuff neatly tucked into your device.  The one that you insert into the clip on your wrist.

The children were grown now, Sam living out in the desert where they had grown up. He was committed to continuing their work with the cactus transformations.  So many people had left once it had become so intolerable to live under these conditions of extreme dry winds and sand storms.  They were still discovering  new ways to transform energy by multiplying.

Kal their daughter was off in a more remote part of the planet working with children left behind during the mass exodus of the early part of the century.  These children were learning how to bring natural agriculture into a form that could also generate physical endurance for humanity.