MANDI OCA'S LAST DREAM

Mandi Oca's last dream was about water and its relative purity. She dreamt about where the river meets the sea, and the brown divide as the silted sludge is subsumed into the clear, salted ocean. She dreamt about the distribution of all that dirt over such an area that it made no odds. She dreamt about pain.

Her dream took her back along the path of the river to the flood plain where the herons casually wade, where the rich and dirty flow stimulates everything, where oxbow lakes weave their way into existence for the geographers to say 'look!'. The dream took her to the glassy mountain spring where the air was so sharp that it cut her skin and planted in the wound a pale, brilliant snowdrop, nourished by the water and her blood.

She dreamt of slipping beneath the crystalline surface of a lake on her back, looking to the blue of the sky and not knowing where, or if, the water ended. She dreamt about the ecstasy of her last breath.

She dreamt of her water revitalising everything. Particularly root vegetables.