The water started slowly, and then it was everywhere.

Up until then, the ground had been logged and soggy at points, but the water had run into little rivers. It wound through rushes. Everywhere else, it had been dry enough. Walkable. The sun had baked some roads to cracks. This was different. I looked up. The clouds looked like falling dust that had been paused. Then I looked down. The same clouds, reflected. Ahead, the fields were like glass, doubling the sky.

There was no way round the water, so I started to walk slowly through it. Harder patches of ground, then sudden sinkholes, impossible to predict. I wasn’t wearing the right shoes. Kole’s boots had been nearly to the knees, with a drawstring at the top to keep them tight. We’d pushed him out of the window in them without thinking. However big they’d be, I wished I had them now. The path seemed to slope downwards. Within a few steps, the water fell into my shoes in a rush. Through the holes for laces, over and under the tongue.

It felt like each step I took would push the ground deeper. Sink the whole thing. Like I was treading on some kind of water lily that wouldn’t take my weight.

The clouds lowered, and they didn’t feel cool, they felt hot. Smoke. This dirtiness to them. My skin was peeling again. It came off on my fingers whenever I touched my face. I put a piece on my tongue, to see if it tasted of anything.

I could only see a few metres ahead of me. I tried to imagine seeing myself from above instead. Like a dot. Like that would help.

I struck a bit of harder ground. Then, suddenly, a breeze. The clouds fell back.

And there it was. A river. Silver as eels, throwing back light from the other side.

And behind it, at last, the wall.