Life on a Desert Island

….. weeks that followed were unremittingly hot and dry. We seemed to have entered …. new phase of ….weather. There were no longer ….grey clouds gliding by to taunt us with ….unreliable promises of ….rain. ….. magnesium flare dazzle of …. sun hovered in …. pricking blue of …. sky like …. vapour of …. burning breath. …. hours of ….cool, after ….dawn and before ….sunset, seemed shorter and shorter. …. dry heat brought ….sounds of its own to …. quiet interior. …brittle branches crumbled off ….trees with …. softest brush of …. shoulder and fell in ….powdery lumps among ….paper-dry grasses. Petrified streamers of ….heat-faded leaves detached themselves from …. moistureless sockets and crackled like ….Christmas wrapping paper as they broke on …. baked ground. ….footsteps through …. rustling tissues of …. dying undergrowth were loud. Daily it became easier to see through to …. blue distance on …. other side of …. island as …. trees sloughed off their bleached foliage. …. colours, russets, ochres, bronze, reminded me of ….autumn, but here ….death came from …. sun and there was no rich, dark winter to come.

G wrestled with … lifeless soil. Deeper and deeper he went, pocking …. surface of …. island with …. waterless wells. ….spindly vegetable shoots that had come through so eagerly fell like pieces of straw, there was nothing to hold their roots in …. earth. Older plants, like ….tomatoes and ….sweetcorn, stayed upright, electing to die on their feet. ….recently planted bed of ….kohlrabi, ….tiny purple leaves just formed, stayed two inches high for ….weeks on ….end and then died as ….body. It was …struggle without ….hope and yet we hoped all …..time.

Castaway by Lucy Irvine (BrE)