The Drovers' Spring

The failing seep that feeds Dustmere Hollow, ringed by the only real green for miles — ashen loper water here at dawn, and the spring runs lower each season.

A limestone seep in a hollow below the barrow road that has fed the Dustmere cots for three generations. The ring of green around it — sedge, rush, and the pale stunted willow that the ashen loper browse — is visible from the road as the only colour in the ochre country. The spring is down to a trickle at midsummer now. Elder Maret says it ran knee-deep in her childhood. The water still tastes clean but she keeps saying it tastes less clean than it did, and if you ask what she means she looks east toward the mesa where the vault door is.