An air of perfume surrounds me as I walk up to where Berberis aquifolium lies reclining on the grass. She looks at me with heavy-lidded eyes, her bright hair – sun ripened lemons and limes – soft and fluffy around her. She’s wearing a stiff dark green bodice jutting out from her body like the peaks of a crown, and her dark indigo eyes are full and ripe and shine with a waxy light.
Although lying in the shade, she looks flushed and red, and as I walk up closer to her I can see that her face is dry and inflamed and there are scaly red patches streaking her features and climbing down her neck and shoulders.
“No wonder you sit in the shade” I say as I kneel down next to her. “Your body must be so hot and sore”. She shrugs at me.
“Oh yes, I suppose that is why I first lay here. It seems so long ago that I chose this spot that I cannot remember the finer details”. She runs her hands gently over her face, feeling the nodules and serrated skin like a child touching the soft feathers of a dead bird. Suddenly she leans forward clutching the right side of her abdomen in pain.
“Are you alright?” I ask. She closes her eyes for a moment and when she opens them I can see that the whites of her eyes are now a pale yellow.
“It is nothing” she says with some effort yet she continues to hold her stomach, full and bloated before her.
“Just the tremors of the earth lodged inside of me. Like ice it is packed, tightly and solid, yet sometimes it shakes and tries to break loose. I want it out of me so I can feel the blood rushing in my veins again like a torrent. But nothing comes out of me - I am in drought all year long”.
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