The Earth Breathes

Polly woke to a smell like breakfast eggs, though there was no kitchen for many kilometres. The smell was sulphur, and it rose from a field of bubbling pools and hissing cracks in the ground. Pale blue water simmered in stone bowls, far too hot to touch. Polly walked carefully between them on her thin legs, her blue-teal wings folded tight and her round black-rim glasses already misting in the steam.

In the middle of the field stood a geyser that performs all day. Every few minutes the water swelled into a smooth blue dome, held its breath, and then burst upward in a tall white column with a deep thud. Polly learned the secret quickly. Water sinks down through the rock until it touches stone heated by the fire below, grows hotter than boiling, and finally flashes into steam that throws everything above it into the sky. She timed it, flew up through the warm spray, and came down laughing.

The people here have made friends with all this heat. In most of the towns, the hot water that warms the houses comes straight out of the ground, not from any furnace. Greenhouses heated by the earth grow tomatoes, cucumbers, even bananas, in a country that almost touches the frozen north. Very little is wasted, and the planet does most of the work.

By evening Polly found a quiet stream where hot water from the hills met cold water from the snow, mixing to something perfect and warm. She floated on her back, steam curling around her, and watched the first faint stars appear. The earth hummed gently beneath her, never quite still.