There was a small community off the coast of Avalanche, a scattering of Chads bound by hope who placed blind faith into a new leader shimmering with language of destiny and deliverance, a promised land just beyond the horizon if only we trusted, if only we waited, if only we worked. The promises came fast and bright...yet quietly and almost imperceptibly at first, the shoreline hardened around us. What we were told were foundations became shackles, what we believed were bridges became walls. We were bound to the land not by chains we could see but by obligations dressed up as opportunity, by labor framed as loyalty, by patience demanded as proof of belief.
Day after day we worked under the sun of rhetoric, building monuments to a future that kept receding, watching the language of freedom thin out and erode like sand slipping through our fingers, while the leader’s promises aged into echoes. We looked out toward the water we once believed would carry us forward, only to realize our feet were sunk deep in a soil that was never meant to be home, and the cost of leaving had been engineered to feel impossible.
Still, the tide kept moving, indifferent to our devotion, whispering that belief alone cannot substitute for truth, and that promised lands are dangerous when they require you to forget how to walk away.
To be continued…
