Xeriscape

The year is 79AD... The engineer's feet step carefully... upon the dark dirt... onyx hues like the sky. This sky is pricked by the wake of death. He exclaims, such illumination! Our path, the land that provides sustenance! Water! Life! Buried, to be dug up! To gush...or trickle... nourish the soil, US! Be re-routed, sculpted to sprout a new "river" through a "channel". Ours. Not "theirs". We are ROMAN! We might build...maybe CREATE! (Greeks invented) But as we seek innovation, we possess. We kill. He looks up. Until now, he questioned the early hours, the NIGHT... the loyalty of his comrades. And TWO SLAVES. He became dubious, skeptical...fearful. ALAS! The sun emerges as a gleam around the rims- a ring of white gold. They climb.Their leather boots- too many Lires- slip, dry earth crumbles, too dry for their quest. Too unsure...too CRUCIAL. Yet, the CROSS, ahead! Proud. Alone. A surveyed earth. Zoetic streams underground. He digs, and digs, and digs, arm crooked over a hole so grave- deep, he thinks of an afterlife cloaked in a void of GOOD. Diabolus, perhaps? Large creatures, they do not want to hurt, as they hold...you...but they must. They are help- less in this role; they lack this GOODNESS; GOD- less, yet ruled. Subjects, AS WE ARE. The Child?