Nadia and Kari were arguing again… as always.
Usually, the verbal combats were unserious, and often started more out of habit than real feeling. Today was no different.
This time, the disposition in the tent was quite a happy one as the girls talked about the most interesting subject in the village and, for the first time in months, came to an agreement upon the matter: Cas had turned into a square.
Kari threw up a tight bundle of dried stalks over to Nadia, who threw them in the Sakkarina – a small, sparkling slime-thing made in the image of their benefactor. Nadia, noting the similarity, stabbed the stalks into the waist-high Sakkari. The figurine of their boss warbled and foamed into an opaque mass, dispensing a block of food before crawling aside to the next bowl in the line.
“Yeah, she makes us work all day and spends all her nights flying away to the spire. I know she’s hardly an interesting person to talk to, but her clones are even less entertaining than that!” Nadia caught another bundle, stretching her voice to make sure the private conversation intruded into Cas’s personal space.
Kari, noticing the tell-tale flicker of annoyance in Cas’s crystal, let out a mischievous smirk as she riffed on the subject.
“You know, Nadia, you’re not wrong. I think the great sage might’ve lost her touch.”
Nadia batted back, “maybe she just doesn’t care about us anymore. She has her own children now,” batting a clone with a playful flick of a plant stalk..
“Oh, but she can’t make any more of them, can she?” Kari said. “I guess we’re safe as long as she still needs people to do all her work for her.”
At this, the girls – seeing the last of the korren stalks had been consumed, along with all the day’s topics of interest – frolicked away into a field of giggles that was soon muffled by the tent door.
Cas was on the other side of the tent, doing her best to pretend she couldn’t hear the children and failing.
Looking back from her work, Cas oversaw the massive arch of the tent, and the large pile of haphazardly placed Korren fibers that had been bundled underneath it.
Kari and Nadia had been meant to organize the product before leaving, but once again let their good feelings lead them away before finishing the task.
Cas decided not to reprimand them. It was rare to see them both happy at once, and she’d worked too hard to maintain the good atmosphere to interrupt it now.
Still, Cas couldn’t help but feel a bit peeved. Their complaints were made with a joking tongue, but there was a force to them that told Cas the feelings expressed were genuine.
In truth, they were right to complain. Cas had been avoiding them lately. Well, not avoiding, per se, but – ever since she’d turned sixteen, she found it hard to relate with them in the same way. Looking back, it was surprising to her that she’d ever agreed that ‘friendship’ was the right way to relate to a twelve year old in her care.
And it was so many other things that changed as well. For one, she never allowed Kari and Nadia to leave their compound anymore. The change in viewpoint when she aged up had come packaged with a greater appreciation for consequences. Up to now, she’d allowed Kari to see too much… the village and all its associated crap would only stress her. The next Unari was due to be released within the month, and Cas was careful to not to have a repeat of Kari’s breakdown during Nadia’s arrival.
Several months had passed since Nadia’s arrival, however, and things had thankfully settled into a manageable equilibrium.
Kari was happier, now, and by all appearances she got along with Nadia. Perhaps Kari even believed her new and warmer feelings for the new girl were genuine, but Cas knew differently. The happy atmosphere had been one she had to scramble to maintain. She’d had to act a bit mean to get the girls to sympathize with each other more than they did with her, and she was quick to interject herself into any conversation between the two that started with an ugly look.
In truth, despite her most desperate efforts, the girls hadn’t become quick friends or even slow acquaintances. She wouldn’t go as far as to say that they hated each other, but often they got into arguments, and sometimes those arguments turned ugly. There were many hurtful things that could be said to an orphan, and the girls – often buffering under the turmoil of their new lives, were quick to find cutting words that left Cas’s blood running cold.
And, with her new sense of objectivity, Cas was able to see that almost all those troubles were Kari’s fault.
Cas monitored the girl closely as a result, and she’d become familiar with her habits. Kari had been more of a pariah than the usual Unari. Never having been invited to knitting circles or the other coming of age ceremonies the girls of the village had made into games, Kari was unused to interacting with others, and – having spent that free time wandering around without purpose – she was even less inured to the rigors of a regular work schedule, as Cas had deemed best for her stability.
Among the Unari, Nadia was perhaps at the extreme opposite end of this spectrum, being the most gregarious loner the community had ever seen. Mainly due to the influence of her mother, Nadia had been a somewhat well accepted community member – as much as an Unari could be – before her ostracization.
Nadia had been a regular pillar of the community. As her mother had taught her, she smiled at everyone in a way that made them feel blameless, and everyone smiled back whenever they saw her. Nadia had had a sad life, but it had been a far happier existence than the one Kari had been saddled with, and that weighed Kari down with jealousy. Cas could see the dark emotion bursting at the girl’s seams, and that sometimes, when the day grew too long or they were made to work in a climate that was too hot, the seams weren’t strong enough to hold.
“Just shut up!” a harsh spirit took over Kari’s voice, and Nadia’s response fought back tears as she exclaimed:
“What is wrong with you you friendless freak!”
“Your mom can’t even visit you!”
“At least my mom had the guts to talk to me in the first place!”
“I said shut up!” now Kari’s voice was tearful, and Cas had already burst past the tent at this point, screeching to a halt just after the mood had done the same.
“What’s wrong?” Cas asked with her newly adopted ‘auntie’ voice, careful to let her concern overmask her annoyance.
‘What could it be now?’ Her thoughts were using her old ‘Cas’ sardonicism, however, and were not similarly restricted.
“She started it!” Nadia pointed up at Kari from where she’d been pushed into the dirt.
Kari threw her hands down with an indignant gesture. “She wouldn’t stop talking when I told her-”
And so the excuses ran on, and Cas hardly listened to them, paying more attention to their facial expressions and general demeanor – two avenues of communication the girl’s hadn’t learned to lie through. She also tried to focus on her thoughts, having to work hard to keep them unsaid.
“She shouldn’t get to tell me what to do!” Nadia pointedly retorted.
‘How could this happen? Things were going so well!’ Cas Lamented.
“Why are you being such a baby!”
‘She didn’t make Kari work too hard today. They were even laughing just seconds ago!’
“Stupid!” Kari yelled.
‘What happened to that good mood? She’d done everything right.’
“Orphan!” Nadia bit back.
‘Why did they always have to do this?”
“Unari!” both cursed in a drawn out harmony.
“Shaddduuuuup!” Cas blew her top, and each girl stopped, marking their surprised halts with characterful poses.
Nadia, on her feet by now, stood to attention, eyes flickering about in slight panic at the new situation. Kari’s demeanor was still more surprised, but her eyes held a more challenging look.
Cas herself partook in their surprise. This was the first time she’d raised her voice at the girls. Granted, she’d never made any commitments to speaking sweetly, but the unexpected outburst went generally against the ‘patient and understanding’ tone she’d accepted as the hallmark of good parenting, and the reason for her disturbance disturbed her all the more because: since when was she their mother!
Disorienting weight of sudden responsibility aside, the mood had gone and thoroughly soured in the wake of their mutual outburst, and Kari and Nadia both stood mummified in bandages of anticipation, looking to Cas for guidance.
Still reeling from her newfound sense of parental responsibility, Cas halfheartedly conducted a forced resolution to the whole affair. She suspected that the initial fight had indeed been Kari’s fault, as was often the case, but she forced a mutual apology from the girls, fearing that Kari wouldn’t be able to handle any more perceived slights. Kari hardly seemed impressed with the consolation, and Nadia was all the more incensed, able only to manage a muffled ‘’s not fair’ with a hoarse voice as she walked away to her tent.
Cas resolved to apologize to Nadia later, when a more sane conversation could be had about this.
Apologizing was an empty gesture, Cas Understood. And, planning to apologize was even less substantial a form of redress.
Still, it assuaged Cas’s guilt somewhat to add the future apology to her itinerary.
In the back of her mind, Cas understood that putting anything on her to-do list was tantamount to admitting she’d never do it.
It wasn’t without some dim hope of eventual getting-to-itism, however, that Cas opened her status sheet to the notes section, and placed in her itinerary, in the one hundred and twenty sixth place: ‘apologize to Nadia for being unfair’.
Her guilt flared up again with the realization that this was the first item on her list to in any way consider Nadia.
She barely had time to process such guilt before the next distraction, however.
“Sage Cas! We humbly request entrance!”
Panicking, Cas realized the time and at her list.
Number 6: the highlighted number read, “turnover food to Village ambassador.”
“Kari, Nadia!” Cas called, and the girl’s obeyed the implicit command without argument. They never had a good time meeting with villagers nowadays, so they hid away and Cas went to greet the ambassador.
Ambassador was perhaps overly grandiose a title for what was going on, but Cas found no better words to describe the situation as she headed towards the edge of her enclave.
Her ‘house’ had expanded quite a bit in the preceding month. A circus of tents now rose like mountains around her lonely hut. Most of the tents were still empty, but by the day the village's stores of dried Korren roots, Nandab seeds, Katri figs — essentially their equivalents of sunflower shells and orange peels — filed into her tents and her care.
Cas had to take special care to time things so that deliverers would only show up when Kari and Nadia were out in the desert on some manufactured task or another. On days like this, when she failed to plan appropriately, things grew sullen.
It wouldn’t be right to say that the ambassador scared the girls. Rather, Cas had worked hard to create an island of serenity in the confines of her encampment, and the constant intrusions reminded the girls of the outside world, which neither of them had any happy memories of.
“Kari…” Cas peeked an eye stalk past the tent flaps the girl had hidden behind.
“Yeah,” the girl answered, her former rebelliousness overpowered now by a defeated tone.
“Are you doing ok?”
The girl turned away with a huff. “Leave me alone.”
Cas quickly retreated.
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Cas’s itinerary had grown to five hundred before the week had blown over.
Strangely enough, however, the more items there were on the list, the less Cas found herself able to care about it.
By now, the grand mass of issues had tumbled over into absurdity, as the issues to the problems quickly became issues unto themselves.
The village had agreed to make her more permanent storage houses, but were dragging their feet about the issue, hence the need for the rapid erection of new tents. But erecting new tents would require workers which – considering harvest season was upon then was proving difficult.
She’d also have to renegotiate delivery times with the village. Item one hundred and twenty eight on her rapidly growing list.
That would also be a good time to discuss how losses were to be distributed between their respective food rights: Item one twenty nine.
She’d also have to rework Kari and Nadia’s work schedules: that would be one thirty.
“Cas!”
Kari’s panicked voice pulled at Cas, and her heart sank when she arrived at the food storage tent to find the reed baskets had been chewed through, mice droppings
and half-eaten bars of food where her supplies were meant to be.
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Strangely enough, growing older wasn’t all it had cracked up to be.
Along with her mental maturity had come a greater appreciation for consequences. Just a few months ago, Cas had been able to bear the responsibility for five hundred lives with blasé imperturbability, but now she was in fits because a couple of rats had eaten a week's worth of food.
What if the mouse population grew?
What if more came?
What if she couldn’t store enough food and had to ask the village for more of theirs! Oh, they wouldn’t like that, not at all.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
In short… being 16 was stressful.
Cas was pacing feverishly in her tiny hut, hands clenched behind her as Kari and Nadia sat on a wall, watching her like a tennis match.
Of course, Cas was still intellectually an adult despite being mentally a teenager. She wasn’t sure quite how that worked, but it gave her half of the perspective she needed to understand that she was blowing things out of proportion. After all, despite the setbacks, at least Cas had a plan. All she had to do was follow the set steps, and this would all fade away like a bad dream.
The village was dragging its feet about constructing mud houses for her to store her rations, and frankly the village had become very hostile to receiving her presence, much less listening to her requests.
And then there was Kari.
Kari, Kari, Kari.
The girl was naturally stressed by Nadia’s arrival, and the next Unari was due to arrive in two weeks.
Two weeks could be a very short time when it kept you away from uncomfortable topics.
Nadia had been a saint, putting up with Kari’s hot flashes, but Cas couldn't guarantee the next Unari would be so patient. In fact, Cas hasn’t even been able to get a hold of him with how everyone was avoiding her in the village. What if he was more ‘dennis the mennis’ than ‘poor little orphan boy’? That wouldn’t be convenient.
Either way, this was not the best time to be making drastic changes to their living arrangements.
Maybe Kari would get used to new roommates though?
Cas hoped with feverish determination.
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Strangely enough, despite the organization involved in constructing the new storage basins, the constant bitching from the elders about taking away their workforce, the warming weather and general hostility from the village, Cas had managed to gather mental bandwidth enough to make Kari and Nadia’s acclimatization to the new Unari a priority.
“It’s done!”
Nadia had a talent for seeming jovial, and Cas almost belived her smile was because of reasons more honorable than simply having finished the work.
Still, it wasn’t all drudgery. Even Kari managed a proud look round the newly decorated tent. A woven rectangular strip ran along a harsh, tent wall. It was a crude imitation of the belts the men wore for wrestling competition, made with fewer colors and sized for a child.
“I heard he liked wrestling,” Kari admitted, abashedly, trying to dodge the overly proud look Cas was shooting in her direction.
“I told her he liked wrestling,” Nadia leapt in loudly, pushed away from the spotlight by a pouting Kari before giggling.
Cas was in bliss.
The past few weeks she’d worked hard to maintain an atmosphere of peace around the girls, not working them too hard and giving them enough responsibilities to distract from their life..
It had worked, and Cas – despite her snobbish dismissal of ‘artificial’ moods – clung on to the feelings she’d cultivated like they were her final lifeline.
After all, weren’t all emotions just creatures of their enviornment, so what if she had to work hard to maintain their happiness? It was as real as anything else wasn’t it.
Besides…
She looked over the rest of the tent, stocked with food, and toys and decorations gathered up by the rest of them. It looked like a home, and decorating it had made them seem like a family, and once the newest Unari was safe here, maybe they’d feel like one, too.
…
The village was a harder nut to crack than the girls.
Ugly glares tracked her whenever she went into the interior, and whispered curses followed her out.
The name calling wasn’t too bad. The Nemorian language was quite a formal one, and curses rarely got more intense than things like ‘rabble rouser’ or ‘wicked one’ or ‘liar’ or ‘thief’.
Cas was beyond caring about their opinions at this point, however. She controlled the surplus food that they needed, and she had plans to grow the Oasis enough to control their tempers other wise. She didn’t want their opinions, and they couldn’t stop her from taking in all the Unari in the world if they tried.
Still, despite this strong stance, Cas never forgot that, there actually was someone in the village capable enough to stop her – she just never imagined they actually would.
…
“No,” the boy said again, bright eyes darting away from her as if it were a nervous habit.
He was a fresh faced young boy, with round features and a very good grasp of language that was surprising considering his age.
They were out beyond the border of the village, though still close enough that the villagers gathered on the edge could hear Cas’s growing yells.
“What do you mean ‘no’? You’re coming with me and that’s that!”
Cas took his arm, and the boy pulled it away. “I don’t want to go with you,” his hesitating voice pronounced. “It’s wrong, and you’re a demon anyhow! I'm going to the desert.”
"Wait, wait," Cas coaxed gently, speaking to him as one might hold an egg-shell. "I'm not a monster, you know that. I'm only here to help you and everyone else, so why don't you come with me and see what I'm really like. We've never met before and I really want to make you my friend."
Her words were marked by a nervous and intensely friendliness, and this gave them a veneer of inauthenticity that the boy had obviously been able to pick up on. He was smart for his age, to tell by his reply:
"I don't want to take food not meant for me," he answered, turning slightly away and crossing his arms with a stiff finality.
"It’s meant for everyone," Cas assured, burying her anxiety with another spoonful of friendliness.
"Then why are you taking it from people that are unhappy to give it?"
The look of finality in his eyes told Cas it was too late to try convincing with words; the presence of armed men among the farewell crew confirmed that she wouldn’t be able to force the issue with force, either.
“I’m sorry,” the boy sobbed, before she could muster another response.
Soft shifts of sand pattered away from her. She could tell by the sound he was heading deeper into the desert, though the sight of him seemed to have lost all meaning for her.
His figure grew smaller and dimmer in the heat-haze of the desert, and Cas felt anger warping her vision more than nature ever could.
She turned her eye back to the village, the scene distorting as she she took a cow-sized gulp of air into her interior, swelling her body up into a megaphone of hate.
The boy was going. There was nothing she could do about it and she’d been so certain he’d just come along with her and do the right thing. She should have felt loss, but it was more humiliation, to be honest. She hadn’t even learned the boy’s name.
Cas formed a vocal chord, larger than her last one. She could feel a sob hitching it even as she prepared to talk.
Of course she hadn’t bothered to learn the boy’s name. Silly her. She thought she’d have all the time in the world to get to know him.
Cas felt… tormented, and that large gulp of air she squeezed down upon howled out like a megaphone at the villagers in the distance, laced with wrathful texture as she stared them all down and spoke:
“You absolute ingrates! Dogs, cow patties, wastrels. You!” she pointed at all of them in particular, “you and your moronic tradition! You and your murderous, idiotic, useless religion have just killed someone who didn’t need to die!”
Cas was truly beyond herself, unable to care or even remember what considerations had made her put up with these people for so long.
A man rose up with prideful features to yell back at her. It was easily consumed by the monstrous voice Cas called upon.
“You should have been grateful! I offer you food you couldn’t save your children with and what do you do? What do you have to show for it? Starvation and curses? Have you idiots ever wondered why your children have been dying? Have you ever considered it’s all your fault that you needed a Sakkari to save you from the brink of death? Do you not feel ashamed that you’ve done nothing but lavish in your squalor for so many proud generations, or is begging a proud tradition of yours as well?”
Cas meant to twist the knife, and the crowd was in an uproar they couldn’t hear over the volume she mustered, but she didn’t care for that at all. In fact, she hardly felt anything, not even better.
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She wasn’t sure.
Perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed like the boy’s figure – as it shrunk with the distance – seemed suddenly to evaporate in the desert heat, and the crowd dispersed with it.
The desert was cruel to all things. Large creatures suffered under its heat and small ones… well, they just sometimes blew away into non-existence.
It was a fascinating magic trick, how the droplet slimes just vanished when the sands were dug away and the sun could touch them.
Kari and Nadia worked in silence on either side of her, shoveling away the sand as it slid back down to cover the pit they’d just dug.
Cas’s research… was going better than ever, now.
Relations with the village had grown too cold to need overseeing. They dropped off plant matter, and picked up food wherever Cas left it.
Kari and Nadia were on their best behavior. Cas had grown impatient with their fighting.
And Cas…
Cas was a slime. She didn’t need to sleep, eat, or even dream, and with the village and the Unari quiet, she was free to devote all her free-time on matters of real importance.
Because, really, the villagers’ feelings didn’t matter, did they. Really, all diplomacy was a stop-gap measure. The real importance lay in growing the Oasis. She’d been forced to parlay with the village because her plan would take years, but… now that she thought about it, why spend so much effort on useless plans when she could simply speed up her Oasis rejuvenation?
Cas had the past two weeks researching.
Two weeks was a short time if you counted the days.
But, Cas was a sakkari. She never slept, ate, or lost focus, and two weeks – in turn – was a long time if you counted every hour of it.
Cas spent her days in the desert and her nights in the Cavern.
It was on one of her morning flights between the two, when her mind wandered for lack of anything more productive to do, that Cas realized something so simple.
The river of slimes flowed underground from the spire to the Oasis, protected in the cool depths for the majority of their journey.
But, as they came upon the rocky ground where the Oasis lay, the slimes surfaced up from the sands early, exposing themselves to sunlight and crawling over the surface towards the Oasis. That the slimes surfaced early was, in fact, the reason she’d been able to discover them in the first place.
It was a wonder she didn’t realize it before.
In the last hundred meters before they reached the Oasis, the slimes lost eighty percent of their numbers before reaching the Oasis, of course those numbers couldn’t apply to the rest of their miles long journey, if it did, none of the slimes would ever make it a mile away from the spire before they all disappeared.
The answer was too obvious for her have noticed it before.
The slimes were protected by the underground shade, and they stupidly lost that protection when they came up early.
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There were grumblings of intense hatred as the workmen trudged about the border of the Oasis.
For a people so accustomed to the desert, it seemed even the hardiest of villagers hated to work in the sandy part of the desert, much less while carrying about sixteen foot long tent poles.
The solution was simple to explain:
Cas would distribute tents across randomly across the border of the Oasis. Most of the losses happened fifty meters out from the edge of the grass, so that would be where she focused her efforts.
In the last hundred meters before they reached the Oasis, half of the slimes surfaced above ground before reaching their destination. By her estimates, eighty percent died of evaporation before even making it. Putting up some tents over the region could reduce that enough to increase the Oasis by twenty percent, and that was before you got into the wonders of cold magic!
A twenty percent improvement would increase the carrying capacity by 80 people, and that was before she counted her recycling capabilities.
All she had to do was show them some early results, show them that it was possible, then she’d have all the time she needed to figure out how to move the other rivers of slime onto the right path. Then she’d have enough time to figure out how to induce slime creation.
Cas didn’t really feel excitement regarding the situation anymore. She was beyond that, but… it did give her a certain amount of ease to realize that this was just what she needed.
The plan was too simple to fail, and as a result quite easily explained.
Really, though, it wasn’t as if Cas needed to give much of an answer. She had surplus food, now that there was one less Unari to take care of, and no one in the village would say no to a well paid job, especially one that could only have benefits for the Oasis… so, one by one, the tents went up, and Cas breathed a sigh of relief, and even the villager’s grumblings became quiet for a brief moment.
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The tents, once set up, didn’t need Cas’s help to cast any shade, and so she was left with a lot of free time to devote to things she’d once forsaken.
For instance, a talk with an old friend.
It being so early in the morning, Tami was wearing a face without any makeup. Still, she was recognizably beautiful in the moonlight, and still able to muster a look of perfect sympathy as she sent a sorry look in Cas’s direction.
“How’ve you been?” the woman prodded softly.
Cas dejectedly lowered a stalk onto herself. “It seems all my efforts have sunk my reputation as low as it’ll go.”
Tami held an uncomfortable look. “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” she proclaimed. “It seems your reputation has quite a bit of clearance still left to fall.”
“What now?” Cas groaned.
Cas had come on request, and had been expecting more nonsense, but she was surprised when a sharp look took the woman’s eye and she leant forward in her seat.
“I know people aren’t inclined to take me too seriously, but you have to understand that my beauty lends me a lot of ears, and people say things around me that they think I’m too stupid to tell.”
“Yesss?” Cas said, not understanding.
“Wellll, I’ve heard on the grapevine,” she leant forward closely, speaking in a normal speaking voice that – for her chords – might have counted as a whisper, “that someone has been talking about you a lot, lately.”
“Go on…”
“I don’t know who, but It’s a person with access to the elders. I heard it second hand, so it had to be someone like that. And they… well… they’ve been saying that you were the one who caused the drought in the first place. And,… well, with your recent flagrancies… I think some might be inclined to believe them.”
Cas grew heated. “They think I caused the drought somehow? Really? Why, It could just as well have been any of them that set this up!”
Tami replied with a litigating font. “Well, darling, you have to admit... it is rather suspicious that it was a Sakkari that was causing the drought, and you did show up just in time to take a place of honor.” Tami took a casual sip from her cup.
“What!” Cas exploded! “If I’d wanted ‘honor’ why would I be helping the village now!? The shade I’m building around the Oasis is about to give you more water than you’ve ever had! Would someone that would cause a drought go out of their way to do that!?”
Cas was growing flustered to tell by the machine gun rattle of her speech, and Tami was quick to assuage her, gesturing her hands for quiet.
“Heavens, you know I don’t believe those fantasies,” Tami defended herself. “I’m merely warning you about the direction of the slip-face.”
A knock came at the door, and Tami's bright eyes moved easily from the heavy conversation to the matter of entertaining new guests. She went out to greet the visitors rather than inviting them in, engaging them in a cheerful chatter and giving Cas enough reprieve to crawl out the far window.
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The accusations against her were infantile. Opportunistic naysaying about demons and conspiracies were expected, and Cas really didn’t care to address them. Still, it did occasionally pop up in the back of her mind, an impressive feat considering that, for the two weeks after the tents had been set up, Cas was obsessed.
It was strange what one could become obsessed with over the course of a study.
In her previous life, Cas had spent entire months where the reproductive rates of random wasp species was at the forefront of her mind.
It wasn’t a simple matter of importance to her, it was an obsession, something she thought, celebrated and agonized over every waking moment. Here, in the desert, that obsession was with the water level. Except here, it was an obsession that everyone shared with her.
On Earth, everyone had their own private obsessions. As a result, she found few friends that cared about whatever wasp species or environmental effect she was studying.
Here in the village, however, the Oasis was everyone’s life line, and therefore it was a communal obsession.
And that obsession was at a fever pitch, now that Cas had erected the tents and set expectations, and every day, the random, expected fluctuations of the water level were reported at high noon and awaited with bated breath.
It went up some days and down others, dependent on how much sand had been kicked up into the air to give the Oasis reprieve from direct sunlight.
Still… over time the trend was discernible, and after two weeks it grown large enough to become obvious. That was the thing with progressive measurements: It was never clear when the obvious became true.
But, two weeks after the tents had been erected, on the noon day where the water report had come in, the result was finally accepted by everyone as obvious:
The water level had decreased drastically, and it was falling faster than when the drought had first started.