Water & Earth (for Sigríður Tomasdóttir, Iceland’s First Environmental Activist) by A. J. Bermudez — B A D B R I D E

Everything worth loving can kill you, she thinks. And this just might. The road stretches before her like a ribbon, grey on green, a grim sliver dissecting the living world into undulating puzzle pieces of north and south. Behind her, further with each step, is the thing that she loves, the thing that might kill her. When she closes her eyes, she can see it: faintly gold, violent and delicate, pouring into itself. Elegant. Inexorable. “I can see why you love it here,” the Englishman in the suit had remarked, his mouth hitched in a jagged smile. He had stared at the falls from a distance, as one examines a painting in a gallery, extolling the artist’s finesse while fingering one’s checkbook like a trigger. Tómas had handled the man exquisitely, narrowly averting Sigríður’s impulse to spit on his shoes. Still, she had slipped into nightmares for days, visions of the falls sliced and cloaked by concrete blocks and spires. She had cured her dreams with every sense beyond sight, drawing the

Everything worth loving can kill you, she thinks. And this just might. The road stretches before her like a ribbon, grey on green, a grim sliver dissecting the living world into undulating puzzle pieces of north and south. Behind her, further with each step, is the thing that she loves, the thing that might kill her. When she closes her eyes, she can see it: faintly gold, violent and delicate, pouring into itself. Elegant. Inexorable. “I can see why you love it here,” the Englishman in the suit had remarked, his mouth hitched in a jagged smile. He had stared at the falls from a distance, as on