#writephoto: Omphalos

This is for Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompt.

The omphalos of the world slowly fills with water. Rainwater collects in the sacred stone, and though animals and birds drink from it, the sun evaporates it, green growing things siphon it, the level rises inexorably.

If the omphalos overflows, the stories say, it will be as if an ocean of tears pours over the world. We will all drown in a welter of sadness. But who remembers the stories these days? Who, beneath the rainbow-coloured sky knows how to stop the rising of the waters of oblivion? Who recalls the lighting of the fires to celebrate the return of the sun, the leaping flames that dry the sadness of the waters and fill their smooth, unruffled surface with the dance of life and the song of firebirds?

Perhaps, somewhere, the memory lives on. Perhaps it will awake and we will remember.

Meanwhile, the waters rise, the omphalos fills with tears, and the earth sleeps.