Waiting for the Rain

They gather stones inside their bellies, heavy and pungently magical. Fermenting in the bile of the contracting muscles, waiting to be smeared with the sacrificial half digested grass. They wait for the rain on three bare hills in a hollowed out valley that coughs great billowing clouds of dust across the burning sun. They wait for the rain with the heaviness of their skin upon their backs and the great darkness of the mouth below their feet, whispering of abandon and the slippery mantle of relief. When the time was right and they knew it was just so, knives with time smoothed bone hilts were gripped in each right hand. There was no salty water between fingers to make the path of any blade falter. No sweat to sting the bright and open eye. Three strokes downward, hard and fast. Metal against meat against stone plunging downward, spilling into the jagged tear in the stomach of the earth.