Ten Years Later

The sun over Jaisalmer was not the violet, bruised orb of the apocalypse. It was a fierce, honest gold, baking the Thar Desert until the horizon shimmered like water. The Red Rain was a ghost story now, a dark chapter in history books that children studied in rebuilt schools in New Delhi and Mumbai. The world had moved on, scrubbing the vines from the skyscrapers and the spores from the lungs of the survivors.