{"id":28514,"date":"2025-09-18T12:28:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T06:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/?p=28514"},"modified":"2025-09-18T12:28:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T06:58:14","slug":"edens-witness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/edens-witness\/","title":{"rendered":"Eden\u2019s Witness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Entry I<\/strong>
Today marks my first assignment here at the Atmospheric Records Bureau, an assessment coded Mission B-27: Debunking the Elemental Myth of Rain and Drought<\/em>. According to the file, this \u201cmyth\u201d is about two elemental souls, Rain and Drought, who reincarnate across time. When they come together, it is brief, but their meeting alters weather systems: blossoms break from deserts, rivers run dry overnight, storms rise from nothing but grief. Our task is to prove it false, or that\u2019s what I was told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It sounds almost poetic. But beneath the beauty lies a question: is this myth a forgotten truth of the planet\u2019s design, or just another tale humans spun to comfort themselves in the face of calamity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was already working at his desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was told his name is Shael, but he never introduced himself. He never even turned to look at me. He sat sunk in the chair with his shoulder blades arched back, like a hawk over an ancient weather chart, one they probably used before anyone thought to digitise them. He wore brown. Every day. Well-pressed, appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His desk was an altar to neatness. Within two hours of getting it, mine was a disaster; plus Post-it notes out of control on my side of the wall, open notebooks, half-empty mugs of tea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t speak. Not to me. Maybe not to anyone.
I, however, had no problem speaking for both of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry IV
<\/strong>There is a rhythm to silence. I have begun to listen to his.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he is in full thought, he presses his right thumb against the pad of his index finger. When he disagrees with a theory, he makes frantic little loops with his pen in the margins of reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to think he\u2019s started to listen to me as well. Sometimes, briefly, when I mutter a joke under my breath, a glimmer of a smile almost breaks his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today I told him that rain wasn\u2019t from evaporation or condensation. I said clouds cried because they missed water so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked at me, \u201cI don\u2019t believe in longing,\u201d he said flatly. \u201cIt weakens the mind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I smiled. \u201cI think it expands it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t reply. But the pen stopped moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry IX<\/strong>
We searched the records together. Floor 3B, shelf 27. Weather data from the 1800s. There is a myth, a documented anomaly: a monsoon in December, in a desert. Meanwhile, a rainforest city went dry. The locals called it a \u201clove wound in the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The myth recurs. Across cultures, across years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shael calls it coincidence. Mission B-27 would have us label it \u201cCoincidental Atmospheric Aberration – Category B.\u201d But the label felt hollow, like pressing a seal onto smoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shael believes love is hormonal distortion, that memory only corrupts clarity. I think he is frightened of love, the flooding, tender kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry XI
<\/strong>I discovered a photograph in one of the files. A boy and girl on a boat. The folder was marked Experiment 52-A,<\/em> with no other information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I showed it to Shael, his face shifted. Then he looked away and muttered something about \u201cmis-filed data\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stayed late that evening and stared at the photo until the automatic lights blinked out. The girl smiled like I do. She had dimples, just like mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry XV<\/strong>
I gifted him a plant today. A jade, small enough to sit on his desk. I called it Eden. I thought he might appreciate its steadiness, the way it stores water patiently in its leaves, asking for almost nothing in return. A plant designed to survive neglect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, he never even looked at it. By the next day, the soil was already dry, the pot gathering dust in the corner as if it had always been there. He didn\u2019t ask why I brought it, didn\u2019t ask its name. He only returned to his research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I said nothing. The irony was sharp. Maybe once he could tend to such things, but grief had stripped the language of nurture from his hands. His eyes look too old to be so young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry XIX
<\/strong>I was right. He once tended a garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found the records in the abandoned greenhouses \u2013 rows of cracked clay pots, soil long turned to dust. He had planted seeds during the famine years, watering them with whatever little he could spare. There was a notebook too, each page carefully dated: Day 12 – still nothing. Day 23 – still waiting<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the rains never came, and nothing grew. In the end, he stopped writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course he doesn\u2019t believe in longing. To him, waiting means watching hope wither.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry XXV<\/strong>
Something has changed. He hovers now, as though the hours stretch differently around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I leave my reports half-finished, he completes them \u2013 his handwriting threaded into mine, seamless. Once, I found a mug of tea waiting on my desk \u2013 sweetened with exactly two spoons of sugar. I never saw him place it there, but the steam felt like his breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This afternoon, he noticed the size of my hands and laughed \u2013 softly, almost shy. We compared palms. His skin was rough, calloused with a history I will never fully know. As our fingers aligned, I felt the sudden dampness of his sweat. His eyes sharpened \u2013 fear, almost-just as I realised the air between us had tilted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He pulled away his hand as though it burned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That night, unseasonal rain fell in the Taklamakan desert. Mission B-27 would have me file it as an Outlier<\/em>. But I said nothing, though I could feel the storm pooling in my chest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry XXIX<\/strong>
What if we are them? Or their remnants?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It rained in the Sahara today and snowed in Chennai. The Board is panicking. Our investigation has been ordered to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Shael and I don\u2019t speak of it. We keep working quietly, our hands brushing across old records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I caught him looking at me too long, his jaw tight as though holding back words. Before he could turn, I reached for his scarred knuckle \u2013 the one he hides beneath his sleeve. His hand trembled under mine, heat rising between our palms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a heartbeat, he let me hold it there, eyes unguarded, almost pleading. Then the moment closed. But the air stayed thick with everything we didn\u2019t say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry XXX
<\/strong>I came in early but he\u2019s no longer here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This morning, his desk was bare. No files. No resignation in the system. Only a signature: Memory Redaction Protocol.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wiped it. Everything. Every moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry XXXI<\/strong>
I sat in the rain for four hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no heartbreak quite like speaking to someone every single day, only to turn around and realise the language you built together has been erased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no devastation like a love that lives only in one memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry XXXII<\/strong>
A new researcher arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was him. Shorter hair, same brown sweater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShael,\u201d he said, extending his hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time he looked me in the eyes. No recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I laughed nervously. He smiled, soft, puzzled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know why, but I feel like I\u2019ve disappointed you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His hand was warm, hesitant. His thumb pressed against his finger \u2013 the same gesture I know by heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I shook my head. \u201cNo. Never.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the clouds cried again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry XL<\/strong>
The air inside the Archive feels heavier, though I can\u2019t tell if it\u2019s the walls or myself carrying centuries this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know how many times it has happened. Maybe we are reincarnations. Maybe we are the echoes. Maybe we are the myth itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mission B-27<\/em> still sits open in my queue, flagged red. They say Rain and Drought were cursed never to meet at the same time. That when one remembered, the other forgot. Maybe it isn\u2019t a curse, but balance. Perhaps he was never mine to hold \u2013 only mine to find, again and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, every rediscovery feels like the first wound reopening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last Entry (Unsent)<\/strong>
The Board has offered me the Redaction Protocol. A mercy, they called it. Clean, efficient. To forget is to keep serving without ache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I told myself I don\u2019t believe in myths anymore. I believe in cycles. I believe in weather that repeats itself, in storms folding into drought, in grief folded into joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But tonight, I signed the form. Tomorrow, I will sit beneath the machine and let them take him away from me. Possibly then, for a while, the sky will clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If he passes me in the Archive again, I hope I will still smile, even without knowing why. For if memory fails me, let my eyes remember what my mind has lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[End of Mission B-27]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image credit: Generated by Taarina Therese Chandiramani using Freepik AI.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I told him that rain wasn\u2019t from evaporation or condensation. I said clouds cried because they missed water so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":507,"featured_media":28515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4812,3401],"tags":[2488,4814,4901,4905,66,4903,4902,121,26,71,1535,4907,4908,48,4906,99,4904],"class_list":{"0":"post-28514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-climate-change-and-sexuality","8":"category-fiction-poetry","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-climate-change-and-sexuality","11":"tag-climate-fiction","12":"tag-cloud-seeding","13":"tag-desire","14":"tag-drought","15":"tag-dystopian-fiction","16":"tag-feminism","17":"tag-gender","18":"tag-love","19":"tag-memory","20":"tag-memory-and-longing","21":"tag-memory-redaction","22":"tag-pleasure","23":"tag-rain-water-harvesting","24":"tag-relationships","25":"tag-waiting-for-rain"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28516,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28514\/revisions\/28516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}