The Prophecy of Water | ✔️ 🎖 [2018 Wattys Shortlister]

CHAPTER 16-The Glass Dome

Why does no one listen? I see things; I know them!

It worked for me thus far.

LoG, 54

"It's best not to dwell too much in front of The Glass Dome. Kamil lives nearby and ... he could notice us," Drian warned the two Wellers.

"How do you suggest we go in?" the She-Weller mocked him. "There's no opening. No window, no doors on that ball. It's too high."

"I held the funeral service in The Glass Dome hundreds of times," Drian shut her up. "Don't you think I know how to get inside?"

Liton stopped their quarrelling. "Shut up, both of you. You, woman, hold your tongue. You, Drian, open this contraption. We are wasting time." 

Drian left them behind and approached the sphere. He fell to his knees.

"Such humility," whispered Dera to Liton.

Drian could hear every word but decided not to interfere. He focused on his prayer instead.

"It's his religion," Liton hissed back.

"What kind of religion is that? It's stupid. It makes you spend half your life kneeling blindly, praying to an invisible being," Dera snorted.

"Not much different from ours," Liton replied. "We spend our entire life crawling through the earth, praying to the invisible water veins. We tremble with joy when they finally appear to us. Have respect for him, Dera. The House of Credo is all he knows. His father Nalon raised him like that, in the spirit of The Mind and The Fount. They represent the entire world for him."

"The Monoliths are killers. They wipe away everything that's different. That's why my son died. Because he didn't want to respect the same religion as they do," Dera continued in a teary voice.

"Your son died because he spoke against them. Not because he didn't respect the same religion. I respect neither The Men of Cloth nor The Mind. And I'm still alive. Because I'm not stupid." Liton was now livid, and Dera fell silent.

The ground beneath them shook lightly. Liton covered his eyes with his free hand, staring into the glass ball. It slowly descended downward as if led by some strange force. When it touched the bottom, Drian straightened up and waved them to come in. The two Wellers did just that.

Drian approached one side of the transparent sphere and began to massage it.

He was like a first-time-dad admiring the belly of his wife, trying to feel a tiny body that was being formed in her stomach.

When his fingertip found the protuberance in the shape of a hand, Drian placed all five of his fingers in it. Something rumbled in the interior of The Glass Dome. In the place where Drian's palm rested just before, a circular aperture appeared. A glass spiral staircase emerged before their eyes. Drian climbed the stairs and vanished into the interior of the globe.

Dera took the step back, but Liton pushed her forward. Then both, entered the sphere after Drian, still holding the young man's dead body. When they stepped inside, the temporary opening disappeared, merging with the surface of the orb.

Dera growled and ran on all fours toward the place where the door stood just a while ago. She scratched at it first. Then she slammed against it like a desperate detainee. "He imprisoned us! He brought us here to capture us! I don't see him! Where is he? Where did he go, Liton? He must have gone through another opening to call that disgusting Kamil!" she whimpered.

"Calm down, Dera. Come here," Liton ordered while laying the body of the woman's son on a smooth, airy surface.

The thickened, wrinkled features of his face regarded him from the glass.