The sun was not kind in the steppe.
It pressed down like a hand, flattening the world with heat and silence. Grass bent lifeless under its glare. Even the wind seemed parched, carrying dust instead of coolness.
Ilsa, Janis, and Peteris had been walking since dawn, following a dry streambed that twisted like a scar across the plain. Their canteens were empty. Their lips cracked. Words came rarely, because words cost spit they no longer had.
By noon, Ilsa stumbled, catching herself on a rock. “We need water,” she croaked, though the others knew it already.
Janis pointed ahead, his eyes narrowed. “There.”
At first Ilsa thought it a mirage: a shallow pool where the streambed dipped, glinting faintly in the sunlight. They hurried toward it, knees weak with hope.
But when they reached the water, their hope soured. The pool was brown, thick with algae, buzzing with flies. Dead insects floated on the surface. The smell was bitter, almost rotten.
Ilsa dropped to her knees anyway, scooping a handful toward her mouth.
“Stop!” Peteris barked, his voice sudden and sharp. He shoved her hand away, spilling the water back into the mud.
She glared at him, furious, desperate. “I’ll die of thirst if I don’t drink!”
“You’ll die faster if you do,” he snapped. He crouched by the pool, staring at the scum. “This isn’t water—it’s sickness. Drink it raw, and you’ll spend what strength you have left bent over in the dirt, emptying yourself until you’re nothing.”
Janis groaned. “Then what? We can’t walk another day dry.”
Peteris ran his hand through the dust, thinking. Then he looked up, his eyes steady despite his own cracked lips.
“We clean it,” he said simply. “Or we don’t drink at all.”
The river’s lesson from weeks ago echoed in Ilsa’s mind: respect, not greed. She stared at the foul pool, then at her trembling hands.
“Then show us,” she whispered. “Show us how.”
Peteris knelt by the pool, moving slowly, as if the heat had turned his bones to stone. He dipped his hand and let the foul water run through his fingers.
“It’s not hopeless,” he said. “But we’ll need to work.”
Janis gave a hoarse laugh. “Work? I can barely stand.”
Peteris ignored him. He scanned the streambed, then gathered materials: smooth stones, handfuls of sand, armfuls of reeds. From his pack he pulled the only thing that might save them—a ragged canvas sack, once used for carrying flour.
Ilsa watched him arrange the materials with clumsy patience. “What are you doing?”
“Making the river small,” Peteris said. “Layer by layer.”
He cut the sack into a rough funnel and filled it: first pebbles, then sand, then a bed of charcoal from their last fire, black and brittle. On top he laid reeds, broken into fibers. He tied it all with a strip of cloth, fashioning a crude filter.
Janis squatted beside him, eyebrows raised. “That thing looks more like a leaky bag than a miracle.”
“Wait,” Peteris said. He dipped the sack into the pool, filled it, and let the liquid trickle slowly out the bottom into a pot. At first it was still cloudy, but less foul. He filled it again, poured again. Each pass made the water clearer, until at last it ran almost transparent.
Ilsa reached for the pot, but Peteris caught her wrist. “Not yet.”
“Why not?” she snapped, her voice breaking with thirst.
“Because it’s only cleaner, not safe.” He tapped the pot. “There are things inside you cannot see—things smaller than the eye, but stronger than any beast. If you swallow them, you’ll curse me for not stopping you.”
Janis rubbed his temples. “So what then? More tricks? More waiting?”
Peteris nodded toward the sun-bleached plain. “We boil it. Fire is the last judge. Fire tells you if water lives or dies.”
Ilsa felt tears prick her eyes. The thought of waiting any longer felt unbearable. But deep down, she knew Peteris was right.
They gathered dry grass, snapped dead reeds, struck sparks from Peteris’s flint until a flame was born. The pot sat above it on stones, the filtered water trembling as it heated.
The smell changed first—the bitter tang fading, replaced by nothing. Then bubbles rose, then rolled into a hard boil.
Peteris’s cracked lips curved in a faint smile. “Now… now it’s drinkable.”
Ilsa reached again, hands trembling.
This time, he let her take it.
Ilsa lifted the pot with both hands, though it was hot enough to sting. Steam curled against her face, smelling of ash and metal. She blew on the surface until ripples shimmered, then touched it to her lips.
The taste was strange—flat, heavy, almost bitter—but it was water. Real water. She swallowed once, then again, and the fire in her throat eased at last. Tears welled in her eyes as relief coursed through her body.
She passed the pot to Janis without a word. He drank greedily, choking a little but grinning as if drunk. “God, I thought I’d never taste this again.”
Peteris waited until they were done before he took his own careful sip. He closed his eyes, then nodded. “It will keep us moving. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Ilsa frowned. “What do you mean?”
He set the pot down in the dust. “Clean water isn’t comfort. It isn’t sweetness. It’s only life. And life doesn’t always taste good.”
For a while, they sat in silence, passing the pot between them until the last drop was gone. Their bodies felt steadier, their minds clearer, though the exhaustion of thirst lingered like a bruise.
When the pot was empty, Janis sighed. “We should fill it again before we move.”
Ilsa looked at the pool, its scummy surface alive with flies. The thought of dipping her hands into it again turned her stomach. “Do we have to?”
Peteris gave her a long look. “You don’t drink with your eyes. You drink with your will. And will keeps you alive longer than taste ever will.”
He handed her the torn sack. “You filter this time. Learn it. If you can’t clean your own water, you can’t survive more than three days out here.”
Ilsa’s fingers shook as she dipped the sack back into the foul pool, watching the slow trickle turn clear again. The smell clung to her skin, but when she poured the water into the pot she felt something else—a strange kind of pride.
The river had tried to trick them, to tempt them with poison. But they had beaten it, bent it to their need.
For the first time since the heat began, Ilsa felt stronger than the land around her.
The second fire smoked heavier, the reeds damp from the pool. Still, the flames licked high enough to bring the pot to a rolling boil. They stood over it like priests at a ritual, watching the bubbles rise and die.
Janis paced in circles. “One pot won’t be enough. By tomorrow we’ll be dry again.”
Peteris nodded. “So we store it.” He pointed at Ilsa’s pack. “The jars.”
She hesitated, then unwrapped two glass jars padded in cloth—once filled with pickled beans, now empty. They were meant for keepsakes, but nothing mattered more now than water.
Together they poured the boiled water carefully, filling each jar until it gleamed clear. The glass shone in the sun like captured light.
Janis lifted one, turning it in his hands. “Feels like treasure.”
“Because it is,” Peteris said. “You guard it like gold. Never drink it all at once. Never waste it. One careless hour can undo three days of work.”
Ilsa screwed the lids on tight, wrapping the jars back in cloth. As she tucked them away, a strange calm settled over her. The pool behind them was still foul, still buzzing with flies—but in her pack was life, sealed and safe.
Peteris scattered the fire with his boot, covering the embers in dust. “The river gave us this, but don’t trust it twice. We move until we find spring water, or running streams. Standing pools are death if you linger.”
The three shouldered their packs and began to walk again, the weight of the jars strangely comforting against Ilsa’s back. Every step felt steadier now, as if water had returned not only to their throats but to their legs.
By afternoon, when the heat rose hardest, they rested in the shadow of a lone oak. Janis pulled one jar free, holding it up. The water inside caught the sunlight, glimmering like a jewel.
“Imagine telling someone back home,” he said with a faint smile, “that the most precious thing we carried wasn’t gold or silver. Just this.”
Ilsa leaned against the trunk, eyes half-closed. “Not just this,” she corrected softly. “It’s the difference between story and grave.”
Peteris gave a low grunt of agreement. “And the land doesn’t care which you become.”
The jars clinked faintly as Ilsa set them back in her pack. That sound, more than anything, gave her courage to rise when the time came to walk again.
By the fifth evening, they found a spring.
It seeped from a crack in a limestone bluff, clear and cold, running down into a mossy hollow where the grass grew thick. The sound of it was soft, constant—a voice different from the foul pool that had nearly betrayed them.
Ilsa dropped to her knees first, cupping her hands and drinking until her belly ached. The water was sweet, metallic from the stone, and so clean she felt she could taste the earth itself. Tears ran down her cheeks as she drank, not from thirst but from relief.
Janis plunged his face into the flow, laughing between gulps. His cracked lips bled, but he didn’t care. He looked younger in that moment, like a boy again.
Peteris filled the jars slowly, watching the stream. His movements were deliberate, reverent. When Ilsa looked up, he was still kneeling, one hand resting on the rock as if in prayer.
“You treat it like a shrine,” Janis said, wiping his mouth.
Peteris glanced at him, then at the jars. “Because it is. Clean water is the oldest temple. Forget that, and you’ll be punished faster than any god can manage.”
They camped by the spring that night, stomachs still hollow but spirits steadier. Ilsa held one jar in her lap, turning it in the firelight. The glass gleamed, and inside the water seemed alive—clear, ready, forgiving.
She thought of the foul pool, the flies, the stink that had nearly broken her. She thought of Peteris’s torn hands as he built the filter, of the bitter boiled taste that had felt like salvation.
It struck her then: water was not a gift. It was a bargain. You gave work, patience, fire, and respect. In return, it gave life.
Janis stretched out by the fire, sighing with something close to peace. “We’ll live now.”
“Yes,” Peteris murmured. “But remember how close you came to dying, with a pool of water at your feet. That is the price of forgetting.”
Ilsa closed her eyes, cradling the jar against her chest. The spring sang softly in the dark, a song of patience, of endurance, of survival.
And she knew she would never again look at water without hearing its warning:
Life hides in clarity. Death hides in haste.