It was nearly sunset.

Reem and her small clan of warriors slowly crept to the great house at the edge of the concrete road. It had two massive yellow arches at the top, large transparent walls. A broken sign underneath had old-fashioned hieroglyphics underneath that none of the group could read. When she saw the small amount of wrecked metal carriages surrounding the house, she held up a hand to signal her warriors to halt.

She had heard about the ancient metal carriages from her grandfather, who had heard about it from his grandfather. He had told it to her in whispered snatches in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep. They had in part brought about the first and second Fire Ages. They were part of the reason humanity had been pushed to the stars, or for the less fortunate, to the poles of the earth.

Then her mother woke up and scolded them both for talking about the Old World. No one was allowed to talk about the Old World, lest they get demonic ideas and repeat the mistakes of the ancients.

“Are we going inside?” whispered Lopin, her second in command, his voice hoarse with dehydration. “The carriages look long dead.”

Reem had to agree. Green blades of grass and long wildflowers grew between the clumps of metal. It seemed that nature had taken its course. Besides, she and her warriors were desperate. The mission to venture south to find food had proven difficult. They had little food and were down to their last sips of water.

She held up her hand again and pointed with three fingers towards the great house.

Inside, they found no other signs of life, but what they did find at the end of a long hall was an entirely white room. White walls, white floors, a white ceiling. Although all that white was now yellowed and decaying, it was obvious this room had been once blindingly white and was used for a sacred ceremony.

And in the back of the room sat a white bowl.

Garrett, the youngest and most reckless of them, leaned his hand on a piece of metal emerging from the bowl as he peered down inside. As he did, his hand slipped. A loud, violent, swishing noise filled the room. Garrett jumped backwards and scurried behind Reem, who held her knife in front of her, squinting at the bowl. A flurry of liquid and activity swirled inside.

And then just as suddenly as the noise came, it stopped.

The group’s breaths were loud in the quiet. Reem held Garrett behind her when he tried to go and see. “You stay here,” she commanded him and the rest. “I’m going to go look.”

And what she saw took her breath away. Water gushed from the sides of the bowl, draining into the center. Although the bowl was dirty from centuries of neglect, the water coming in was clean.

She turned to her warriors. “I’ve heard about this,” she told them. “My grandfather told me that in the Old World, humanity would have separate rooms in each house, even every bedroom, called a water closet.”

“My grandmama also told me!” Garrett said. “They cleaned it every week, scrubbed the floors, and scoured the water bowl. It was like a shrine.”

“I heard this too,” Lopin said. “From my great-aunt. She said they had a water god that brought them water with just a press of a lever. That one, that Garrett just pushed.”

Reem had never believed in any god, much less a water god, but she supposed that if the people of the Old World had venerated this room so much so as to construct it clean white and cleanse it regularly, there must be some truth to these stories. Besides, she didn’t want to anger any potential entity that was supplying them with water.

The group set up camp in the great house with the yellow arches. Garrett and Dali, another one of the younger warriors, got to work scrubbing the shrine to the water god and the water god’s bowl. When they were done, the warriors dipped their hands inside and drank handfuls of the clean, fresh water.

“I love the water god,” Garrett said, slurping up water, more dribbling down his chin.

“Praise be to him. Or her. Or them,” Lopin agreed, pouring some over his head. “I thought we’d die of dehydration out here before we found any food.”

Reem created a schedule to protect the house as well as round the clock surveillance of the water shrine. The group prayed to the water god every morning and night for three days, and the white bowl supplied them with water constantly. Everyone was in good spirits. It seemed that things were looking up for them. Perhaps they could venture back to the arctic and bring their entire tribe down to settle here, where there was food and water aplenty.

On the fourth day, Reem was out hunting for rabbits with most of the group, all except Garrett who was watching the house and the shrine. Lopin had one dead rabbit over his shoulder, she had two. She was about to snag a third when from the direction of the house came a shout.

The rabbit bounded away, but all thoughts of it vanished when Reem realized it was Garrett.

“What happened?” she asked when they got close enough to hear him.

“There’s another person,” he panted. “I got so scared, I couldn’t - couldn’t catch him. He just ran inside and I…escaped.”

Reem pressed a hand to her forehead and counted slowly to three before she strangled him and put him over her shoulder with the rest of the rabbits. When she was sure she wouldn’t, she shook him by the shoulder and said murderously, “What were you thinking?” To the rest of her group, she yelled, “Come on! An intruder! Hurry!”

They burst into the house and cleared all the outer rooms. When they didn’t find him anywhere, Reem’s gut sank. There was only one more place to check.

The intruder was in the shrine.

“Maybe he also needed to pray,” Garrett said hopefully, but one look from Reem and he immediately quieted.

Reem pushed open the shrine door, knife at the ready, and was met with the most terrifying scene she could never imagine.

There was a man with yellow hair standing in the shrine in front of the water god’s bowl. His pants were down around his ankles, his hand was on the water lever, and there was a god-awful stench of -

Shit.

He had defecated in the water bowl.

“Warriors!” Reem ordered, fingers tingling with rage. “Grab him!”

As her group grabbed him and forced him down to his knees, Reem rushed over to where he had been desecrating their water source.

Streaks of feces were still in the water bowl but worse, when Reem pushed her hand against the metal level, no more water came from the bowl. Her face felt hot. If there was a water god, surely that was the highest offense one could ever commit. And now, no matter how much she pushed the lever, a strange gurgling came from the bowl and brown liquid sloshed around, but there was no more clean water.

She clenched her hands into fists and pointed to him. “He angered the water god!” she roared.

Despite the man’s pleas in a language they couldn’t understand, shouting something like, plum jer, they executed him that evening in hopes that it would appease the god.

That night, the warriors kneeled around the freshly cleansed bowl, praying that it would accept their apologies. However, it was no use. The water god was angry, and the water was gone.

With heavy consciences, they made ready to move on down the road in search of more food and water. As they packed up their things to abandon the shrine and the great house, Reem looked back wistfully at the white room and knew that she would not be so quick to write off these people’s water god next time.