As climate change crisped the last forests, simooms spread across the desiccated remains of a once-beautiful Pacific Coast.

Of course many city-dwellers migrated to the metropolises further inland;

Yet some remained, including farmers—families who refused to abandon land tended by their grandfathers' hands—so instead they sought ways to salvage dying soil.

Sometimes, Eris thought the land didn't want their help; the best they could do is let it take care of itself, on its time.

Other times, she had fitful dreams that this happened on Mars.

Where firestorms swept through, devouring dry brush, quakes then crackled earth, exhaling toxins held under crusts—decades of pesticides and C8-laden irrigation systems, twinkling poison in bars of smog-filtered sunlight—so Eris and Aden felt like they stood at the edge of the Anthropocene.

"We could grow gossypol," Eris said.

Aden balked. "Cotton?"

"It's been popular for sterilization..."

"But the land," Aden replied. "There's no way it'll sustain cotton."

"Nightshade, then?"

"Beans," he told her. "I'm thinking beans."

Eris nodded. It'll only take a mediocre magic bean to breach the low-hanging smog, into the heavens beyond man's reach. To escape.

♦️

First Draft: September 18
Word Count: 200 (minus A/N)
Author's Note: Written for Sept 18 double drabble prompt:
https://my.w.tt/rceZyEJwuQ