The Dam and the Damned

Havermouth, A few days after the storm

The dam was both more and less dramatic than Lyric had anticipated. She had followed the signs along increasingly weaving roads framed by the tall, dark plantation trees that Zeus Forestry both planted and cut down in a perpetual cycle, until they drove along a narrow two-laned road pinned between an excavated rock face and a gorge.

Ahead, the road narrowed even more where a curved wall spanned the gorge, connecting one side of the road to the other.

Or it had done.

A section had crumbled away under the pressure of the water held back by it, spilling the flood into the gorge, and from there into the river. At some point, the water had equalized behind what remained of the wall, only a drizzle slowly seeping down to the draining waters below.

Perched just below the road, on the side of the gorge, was a building – a monitoring station. A black 4WD was parked in the narrow driveway down to it. Lyric put the Ute into reverse, backing up slowly until