The ultimate catch of the midsummer day was not a fish of any sort - it was a child. The youngin wriggled at the end of the line, dumbfounding the fisherman who had caught them. Still, of good instinct, he wrestled the hook from the stunned child's mouth and wrapped them in a warm towel. Scanning the still, murky brown-blue waters of the lake for possible parents, his voice - a sound like antique brass - echoed across its surface.
"Hello?" Only light ripples on the surface of the lake answered, but the air between the fisherman and the child grew heavy with tension. He turned back and gave his most consoling smile. "Do you remember where you saw your parents last?"
A tiny finger pointed down, past the wooden bottom of the fishing boat, and the fisherman's jaw went slack. For a moment, the two stared at each other, sitting in that unnaturally still water, and the fisherman was now acutely aware of how alone he felt on that lake.
"Let's... let's get you a hot meal." He started the engine, heading back to the shore. "And some clothes," he added, "how does that sound?" The child said nothing; merely stared at the unmoving water with shell-shocked intensity.
After failing through several avenues to try and locate the parents, the fisherman offered to take the child in as a ward. He had no family; yet something about the glitter of the child's eyes when they smiled and the way their laugh ripped throughout the room softened the old geezer's heart. He determined the child's name would be Destin, meaning, "by the still waters."
Young Destin grew in love and community, into the kindest of children that you ever did meet - or so said the gossips at Sunday service. Those gossips had since moved on from whispers of where Destin could have possibly come from. Neither they nor the fisherman wanted to think too hard about the subject, as it was sin to associate such a sweet babe with such thoughts.
It was a Thursday morning when the lake dried up. There hadn't been a drought; in fact rainfall had been plentiful. The fisherman had gone down after dropping Destin off at school to find nothing but the bone-dry bed, home to rotting vegetation and fish left out in the sun. He couldn't stay long to investigate - only a few minutes after entering the area, his tongue had gone dry in his mouth and the skin on his hands and arms shriveled, like all the moisture in his body was being sucked out into the air.
It was Destin's school teacher, a woman named Saundra, that came to an unusual conclusion some time around February - they ought to give them back to where they came.
"Give them back," the fisherman guffawed, "what, to the lake?" Saundra did not respond. The fisherman pretended not to notice the brownish-blue water leaking from her eyes and ears. He did not give Destin to Saundra when she asked again, and she drowned in her bathtub at home soon after.
This town where Destin played and learned soon watched empires of silicon and circuitry rise. Human innovation - the newest word for conquest - chugged along. The waters of town grew darker with run-off, as the trees grew sparser, and the weather got worse. But there were jobs to be created, and the developers promised that these roads, chain restaurants, strip malls, would all give back to the community.
*Give back, give back, give back.*
It echoed across the dirt of the construction sites, resonating in the stamping boots of the workers brought there to build and build and build. Soon, it wasn't uncommon for whispers at the local tavern to talk of the recent delays in whatever project had cropped up this time, and the number of injuries from inexplicable flooding. It had seemed there was a subterranean river running under the town, and it was assumed this is where the lake's water had gone. Yet - any attempt to map this mysterious aquifer only resulted in implausible scribbles on paper, and it became just another rumor that was Not to Be Discussed.
In spring, Destin and the fisherman came across a sinkhole that had formed in the nearby cemetery, old as the oldest families in town. Bones, stone, wood, and embalming fluid lay upturned in the earth below. It broke both their hearts to see the twisted old oak tree that had sat there since the town's founding lay on its side, exposing its deep-run roots to the sky. It would take decades to repair what had been lost, and even then it would never be quite the same.
The fisherman pulled Destin along, breaking the hold this scene had on both of them, and pretended not to notice that the child's eyes had gone a murky brown, pretended not to hear the drip, drip, drip of water that followed them all the way home.
The sinkhole that had consumed the cemetery only grew in appetite as the months went on. Its gaping maw widened and widened, pulling in houses and grocery stores and chain restaurants and roads. The news reports said that they had stumbled onto the subterranean river system, and it was only doing what was in its nature. Help had been requested as many times as there were minutes in a day, but it never came.
On a midsummer day, the fisherman took Destin aside and explained that the two were going to go away. The sinkhole was on track to swallow their hometown, and they would be trapped if they didn't leave soon. His ward put up no protest, but late that night he found them alone in the kitchen with the faucet running. The water was a murky, brown-blue, and Destin stood, silent and still, staring at its flow.
It was in a rush that morning, suitcases hastily packed, that the fisherman opened the door to his home and found the sinkhole at its threshold. Destin peeked between his legs to see what was going on, but he quickly shut the door and, taking the child by their wrist, began to pull them towards a window to escape. He told Destin to ignore the smell of damp that enveloped them, ignore the cattails and ivy that grew from the floorboards. The frightened child began to cry, saying they were sorry, they didn't mean to. His heart ached for his ward, as the foundations of the house creaked and buckled.
Understanding the inevitable, he stopped, and opened his arms. Destin buried their face into his thread-bare fishing coat as he held them tight, smelling the faint whiffs of the lake that had brought the two together..
"It's not your fault," the fisherman said softly between the child's sobs.
The ground beneath their feet swelled and fell with this trembling form's heaving chest, as the sinkhole began to swallow the front room, begging for its child back. No, he declared.
*No?*
No. Was he not the one who had raised this child, who had cleaned up when they had been sick, and taught them to read, who gave them love? It was not his fault that men with chainsaws and drills had come here, dumping their waste and stripping everything that the earth held dear. The least it could do was not have him suffer the same fate.
*What difference is there between you and these men, that you take what is not yours?*
As the judgment was made, tears pricked the fisherman's old, crinkled eyes.
It was time for him to give Destin back.
Shielding his child in an embrace, the fisherman closed his eyes as the ground lurched, falling out from under their feet, swallowed by the smell of the lake on a hot summer's day.
In a moment, soil had reclaimed them both.