Through what felt like years of struggle the woman walking along the dirt road stayed strong, never buckling. The unforgiving desert sun loomed overhead as the arid environment sucked the moisture from any living thing around. A child of five or six months was slung across the woman’s chest and a little girl, a toddler, was holding her hand up high to reach her mothers. The nearest settlement the woman knew of was roughly eight miles away now. She had only her children and the sorry amount of essentials that resided in her bag. After endless miles the small caravan had fallen into a rhythm, a melodic drift. The mother was being driven by her baby's heartbeat against her own as well as her daughter's stubborn grip, so tenacious and strong for her age. 

      The group had originally been four strong, traveling west for the promise of work and a better life. Sadly, that dream was cut short by a pair of desperados and a single six shooter. The mother and father pleaded for a deal to be worked out, but they were ordered out of their automobile. The father saw an opportunity to grab their adversaries weapon and took it. What he did not see was the other gun that had been tucked in the second perpetrator's waist belt. A single shot took a father from his daughters and a lover from her love. The mother stood motionless while her children cried at the deafening shot, unable to comprehend the loss of their patriarch. 

     After drifting in the haze of memories for an incalculable amount of time, the mother was drawn out by a break in her pattern. She felt her daughter's hand begin to slip from her own and as she looked down, the fatigue was apparent on her face. All day she had pleaded with her daughter to keep going, but it was clear she had had enough. The fractured family moved until they found a shady spot under a grouping of trees not yet robbed of vegetation by the changing seasons. The mother opened her bag to pick through the scraps of supplies she still held on to or scavenge. She pulled out a canteen partially filled and a few strips of salted beef wrapped in a cloth along with other miscellaneous items that held little to no use to them. The infant was just waking from its slumber requiring sustenance. While the mother breastfed her baby she helped her daughter take very careful sips from the canteen before taking some water for herself. The mother then snacked on bits of meat with her oldest making sure they conserved the food they had with them. She decided that they would rest there for a few hours and then continue moving early before the sun began to break over the horizon. 

      As the mother drifted off into sleep she dreamed of water. She didn’t just dream of a cold drink but mighty bodies of water. Streams flowing into rivers, rivers into lakes, and lakes into an ocean. She dreamed of green. Healthy hydrated greenery that stretched as far as the eye could see. She dreamed of her daughters, the baby sleeping in a beautiful white bassinet and the toddler splashing in a crystal blue pond. She dreamed of her husband. The love of her life that had always been a beacon of hope even when everything they had was gone, and now he was too. With his arms opened they embraced like all their earthly worries were figments of the past, but something was wrong. The feeling of his absence still lingered and began to grow. This dark feeling she felt in her stomach began to grow until it completely enveloped the subconscious.

      The mother shot awake with that dark dread never wavering. She looked around sensing something was wrong, but she could see a thing. The twilight sky with a slight change in hue indicating the break of dawn was clear and her toddler laid by her side fast asleep. Just as the mother began to relax herself she felt it, or rather didn’t feel it. Her baby's steady beating heart was gone. She pressed her palm against the infant's face and it was ice. The ice then creeped up the mothers arm until her whole body was numb. She felt like she wanted to cry but no tears would come out. She felt like she could throw up but her stomach was empty. She felt a sting of emotion that was more visceral than what she had felt when her husband was taken from, much more personal. A piece of her soul that she had been so focused on keeping safe was ripped from her and there was no way for her to get it back. Hot tears finally streamed down her face, first one at a time and then in buckets. She cried. She cried so hard and so long that it physically hurt. She kept crying until her body had exhausted all the moisture it was able to.

      In the morning, the mother dug a deep hole under the tree where they slept. What was originally a temporary pit stop had become a permanent resting place. Even though the mother finally stopped crying, she wasn’t the same. She would eventually stop grieving the death, but she couldn’t accept what happened. The mother was robbed of yet another life. The family had now fractured into two. One half was moving on to the next sign of civilization and the other was resting by the water.