Oasis Is Home

Seeing you standing there with open arms was like seeing a tropical oasis in the middle of a desert wasteland. After running away from my previous home and wandering for months, it was a god send to see anything other than the blandness of this desert. I was wary, however. Oasis’s tended to be only mirages; what looked like paradise to the eyes of someone thirsting for a place to call home could easily be disappointed when their thirst was quenched and they saw the Oasis was nothing but a puddle and some dying foliage.

Peeking into the Oasis, I found that I wasn’t the only one calling this place home. They were welcoming when it came to a stranger in their shelter and they offered me nothing but kindness and friendship. They let me learn how to live again in a group rather than as a misanthrope and allowed me to use their resources until I was up on my feet again, healthy and no longer feeling the burn of thirst and hunger in my belly. After that, I worked hard to keep my stay.

I wasn’t the last to come to the Oasis. Not too long after my acceptance, there were others, all coming from different backgrounds. Some were like me, escaping a Changed fate with nothing but the clothes on their back and the drying words on their tongue; others were looking for a place to start and be independent. Either way, we welcomed them all with open arms to our small but growing community. They were wary of the fantasy before them, but I had learned like them that this wasn’t a figment; it was real. A real place to start over and a real place that we could call home.

In only a few years’ time, our Oasis was growing rapidly. We had more and more people joining our ranks, expanding our reach out into the hell fire desert. We had more influence, but with that came more problems and more responsibility. We had to take in more, which meant we had to build more, which meant we had to expand. Pushing farther into the desert was something we were all a little scared of. We had made home, what would happen if one mistake lost it?

We built, and built, and built. It was a never ending job for the workers who had taken on the task. They labored day and night for only little change, most things so deep in the dark that the community didn’t seem to notice. They only continued to grow and expand, demanding so much more from the workers while they did so little for themselves.

I noticed then that we were slowly starting to ebb away. Like the harsh winds erode a rock, the lack of faith in our Oasis was wearing it down and we were losing a battle to stay afloat in a Sea of Sand. It was like my previous home all over again. After the Change, nothing had been the same. I walked the same town with strangers wearing familiar faces and felt only defeat.

Change was doing the same thing to my Oasis! Friends were fighting, new comers treated rules like trash, and my tropical get away felt more and more like that puddle and foliage. Maybe the thirst from years before had affected my vision and made that mirage look so much better than it was. I would have rather died thirsty than come to that realization.

I left then. Not forever, but for long enough. I couldn’t take the shattered dream my Oasis had become. There were so many memories of growth and happiness that stake claim in its borders, so potent that I wasn’t sure if they could ever be washed away or built over. No matter how many people walked over them, they will still triumph in my mind. With that confession reached, I made my trek through the desert once again to go back to my Oasis.

Two weeks I was gone. It seemed like so much longer, and maybe it was in some ways, but not long enough for the transmutation that happened before my eyes. If it wasn’t for the fact that this was the only civilization for miles, I would not have recognized my own home.

Everything was so slick and perfect, almost like the utopia many communities like ours dreamed of, but that was an expectation few could ever fill. The buildings were tall and strong; that just made it hurt that much more if or when they fell. Only time could tell the success of our City. And I could only call it a City now. My Oasis was gone. No matter how strong the memories, my Oasis was gone.

Bewilderment took my mind as I tried to live. Things were different and nothing like they used to be. I felt like a new born baby trying to walk while everyone passed me by, not offering a single finger to help.

And I started to hate my City. If not for what it had done to my Oasis then for what it had done to the people. The Oasis members were fumbling and looking for a place to adapt while the new comers had been born to live it. They excelled where we could not even comprehend to live and it made a hate in my heart.

I was at my lowest once again and I wept. I wept for something beautiful that had been lost, something so small that I felt like I could call it mine and no one would dispute that. This City wasn’t mine; it only shared the same space as something I once owned and loved.

I headed to the border and looked out into the desert. I’d almost died out there, and if I tried to make the journey I had years ago, I was sure to drown in the sand. I had barely made it the last time and came out on top; I doubted I could make the second trip. With more reverence for my life rather than my feelings of belonging, I turned back to the city.

Then something miraculous happened. I turned back, and I saw it. I saw my Oasis. Not in its first form, because that truly was long gone now, but I saw pieces of it still floating around. In the big buildings, I saw the same small place where all of our community was hard at work pushing out piece after piece of work; in the buildings, I saw the welcoming embrace that had taken me in in my time of need.

And most of all, I still saw that piece of Oasis in the people, in the ones who had been here for so long that they were the Oasis. Whether or not our City kept its simple form, in every single person’s eyes I saw the small and desolate Oasis hidden in the Sea of Sand.

That’s when I realized the name didn’t matter. Oasis or City, it didn’t matter. Because whatever the name, you were still Home. Mibba was still home.