Dreams

‘The sun was hovering low above the horizon. The air was clear and still. There was no red in the evening sky. The red was concentrated in the desert sand and the rocky banks of the wadi that led to the sea, many miles away to the South East. The wadi was dry of any water. The only sign that water was involved in it’s creation was the drifts of pebbles across a point bar and the dunes that looked half finished in its bed. They had been cut by further currents at the base of the water column, imbricating the flat rocks with the speed and force of the flow, saltating the smaller ones, clouding the water with sandy drifts until it was opaque.

It had been a hot day, no clouds. This was normal here, it had been normal for many days, years, millennia. It had been many thousand years since it had rained here. There was no shade, nothing to cast shadows until the planet cast its own over itself as the sun deserted this barren place at the end of each day. It felt ironic that this desert was in the rain shadow of the vast, craggy, knife edged mountains to the North West. The mountains had been thrown up into the sky by the mighty clash of the crustal plates. The movement was slow but neither plate would yield, the only way was up. These were mighty mountains, deep - rooted in the continental crust. They were tall, tall enough to spear into the circling clouds until they leaked and let water drop from their icy upper reaches. 

The water hit the mountain tops, washing down the fragments released by the expanding ice. The torrents increased in size as they merged and flowed faster down the flanks of the giants utill the gradient eased and the streams formed great outwash fans of rocks, boulders, pebbles and sand. The torrents joined as they slowed, joined with their cousins from other familial mountains. The increased volume of water was able to move huge volumes of material downstream. Some was deposited in the bed, other, smaller grained material was carried within the water column, deposited on the inside of bends then eroded away again, building and destroying dunes. 

The flood reached the wadi formed from the last flood, and the flood before that. It deepened and was channelled by the rocky banks, its speed increased, it roared and growled, fought with itself, humped up in great waves and was a reddish brown with its load of sediments. Nothing stood in its way but there were no floaters, no tree trunks, plants had not yet established, the desert was barren. The flash flood reached the end of the wadi, the flood dispersed, fed into a braided river system moving lazily across a vast plain. The larger boulders were dropped, pebbles were still carried on until they too were dropped as the flow slowed. The cloudy water sluggished and then came to a stop. This time it had not reached the sea but there would be other floods. The remaining water in the playa lakes soaked into the ground and what was left evaporated, leaving white minerals behind. 

All was now quiet, all was calm, peace spread across the plain and the sun went to her rest. No animals stirred. There were no animals, only a few dead, toothless, armoured  fish that had been marooned in the playas by the retreating water. They died, suffocated in the muddy, fine-grained sediments, ready to take their place in the fossil record, to wait for 400 million years until plucked out of the red cliffs by bright eyed students.

'I keep on having this dream, Doctor. Why is it always the same time, why always a flood and then a sunset?’

‘That is certainly a lot of whys,’ said Dr Williams. ‘We will have to check you out physically, check your medications and see if we can find a cause. In the meantime, your hour is up and we can continue next time. Please see your GP for a full physical and bring a list and samples of all your meds next time.’

‘OK Doc,’ I said as I levered myself off the couch which squeaked as my body surfed the worn leather. ‘I’ll make an appointment for a couple of week’s time. See you then. I’d better get back to work now.’ I picked up my helmet and clamped it onto my suit to form an air tight seal before reaching the door that the doctor held open for me.

The doctor let his patient out of the door, closed it firmly, set the clamps and then went over to the window. He twisted the control to allow him to see out. He looked at the red surface of the desert, the ragged mountains in the distance, the dry wadi heading down to the South East, the sun low in the sky. ‘Why had his patient dreamed of water? There had been no rivers on Mars for millions of years.’ He sighed, walked back to his desk to write up the report, before unclamping the air tight door, ready for his next patient.