Porcupine Ridge amygdala

Come evening the girl struck upward even as the scalloped ground dug its points into her feet and even as the sky opened up to release a downpour. It was cold and cruel and not the warm moisture she and the gallinippers so loved. 

What dribbles down her ankles is rainwater with days worth of blood and sweat. These parts of her percolate through the ground and join the water table underneath where eventually it will come back out again through a seep, vadose water that darkens the rock and sand around it.

She staggers over the talus slopes. Ghosts of her mother, her father, her baby brother, they follow. 

It's a long ways up there, her father says with his black mouth. But Bailey is too busy shivering to answer.