Buried Deep

Every morning the desert toad would wait for the sun to rise. He would bask in the gentle warmth along side his one and only friend. The skull had been there all of Toad’s life; it was tanned from years spent in the sun, and the tips of its two long horns were burned to almost black. It was chipped in the front but otherwise intact. Two large and empty eye sockets watched the sunrise every day as Toad, who was cold-blooded, warmed himself. Toad and the skull faced east that morning, waiting for the day to begin. The sunrise was special to Toad. It was not only an important time to sun, but the only time. All around them, walls of rock rose high above them forming a barrier of plateaus on the north, south, and west sides blocking all the other horizons. Toad’s home was shaped like a bowl and it had indeed been a great body of water once. Toad didn’t need to know that to survive, but he did anyway just like he knew that it was just him and the skull, and no other toads, in this desert. They looked out, waiting for the first rays of sunlight, but there were’t any. The sun did not rise on that day. It had not for several weeks; instead, clouds strung themselves on the horizon like a great big snake (toad had seen plenty of those in his desert). The clouds where as dark as the tips of the skull’s horns, and if they listened carefully, they could hear a distant rumbling. Every morning was like this: Toad would wake up, he and the skull would wait for the sun to raise and instead, see the sun as a yellow glow, muted by the clouds. By the time the sun reached its zenith and they could appreciate it, the desert would be too hot and Toad would already be buried in the sand waiting for the cooler times of dawn and dusk. 

Toad was neither upset nor glad about this, he didn’t need to be upset or glad to survive. Instead, he went in search of food all while staying within seeing distance of the skull. Toad had a love for the skull although he would never call it that (love is also not needed to survive according to Toad’s philosophy). Nonetheless, he came to appreciate the skull’s presence. It reminded him of what happened to every desert creature in the end, and it gave him comfort to know that the same thing happens to everybody. Everyone, Toad knew, lived, died, and became fossilized. Another thing Toad seemed to know was that there were lots of fossils in his desert. Plants and animals that had swam in this desert millions of years ago were now buried deep under the ground has hardened bones. Whenever he looked at the skull he was reminded how one day the two of them would become fossils. 

As the day crept on so did the clouds and the skull noticed how they were moving west with the sun. Toad hadn’t seemed to notice yet as he was too busy hunting. Toad did not hunt like a normal toad would. He was too slow and could never hop far enough. He also lost stamina quickly, and the skull noticed with its big eye sockets how Toad seemed fatter than the average toad. The skull did not talk, so it couldn’t tell Toad what he was doing wrong. If the skull talked it would also tell Toad how he came to be the only toad in this desert. Three years ago a family of toads had lived next to the skull. That year when the eggs were laid, the desert went through a drought. The skull had seen it all before. Plants began to die, animals went next, and when food became scare the family of toads was quickly eaten by a pair of snakes, who were eventually eaten by a hawk. Many of the eggs laid dried into sand, but one of them hatched. Toad shoved his way through the sand brown and warty with just a hint of a tail left from his tadpole years. The skull remembers how Toad’s beady eyes desperately looked for anyone else, realizing that he was all alone Toad set his sights on the skull, “Croak!” And so their friendship had begun. 

Toad was sitting next to the skull when the first rain drop fell. After a less-than-successful hunt, Toad had hopped over to the skull where they awaited the storm. Storms were rare in the desert, but toad had seen them before so there was no need to get worried. Drops of rain fell on him, the skull, and the dry ground around them. Soon every thing was drenched, but the rain fell harder hitting the ground with a pounding sound equal to the thundering above. The sky was almost black, and the world around Toad turned grey, growing darker as the sun began to set. Toad inched toward the skull as the clouds blocked out the sunlight. The storm was turning the afternoon sky into midnight blackness. It’s wasn’t that Toad needed to see to survive, he didn’t, but having the skull near him was reassuring should something go wrong. Lightning flickered in the sky like a snake’s tongue followed by booms of thunder that echoed off the plateau walls. Toad sat for hours like this in the thunderstorm and not once did the rain let up. The ground shifted beneath his webbed feet trying to suck him down, and Toad had to keep moving to avoid getting sucked down. The desert ground was not used to being this drenched and often cracked in the summer months like it did now. With all this water, the sand was turning into mud and the ground beneath him was going to mush. Toad hoped on top of the skull to avoid the shifting sands, and after another hour of rain and thunder, fell asleep. 

Toad woke up to a face-full of cold rain water. The skull was rocking violently and Toad struggled to keep balance. Rain continued to beat down on them. Each rain drop cold and hitting them so fast it stung Toad’s back and eyes. The whole world became blurred in rain and constant motion. BOOM! The sound of thunder scared him so much he jumped, landing into the water. Toad had not swam since his tadpole days and flailed in the floodwaters. In the midst of his panicked floundering, Toad banged his head on the skull which had continued to float without him. Regaining his hold on the skull he managed to climb back on top as a series of lighting strikes flickered and were followed by a chorus of thunderclaps. Toad remained rigid with fear on top of the skull as it continued to rise with the flood. They climbed closer and closer to the plateau’s edge until finally the skull hitched on the ledge. The storm had filled Toad’s desert to the rim, and he stood in shock as the skull’s curled horns hooked onto the edge of the cliff. With shaky legs Toad hopped off the skull. He was relived to be on firm ground; so many hours on the water had made him dizzy and later sick. However, Toad could only feel sadness as he watched the skull. There was no way he could’ve pulled his friend out of the water. Toad felt like one of his limbs was being torn from his as he watched while the skull listed and drowned like a sinking ship. That skull had been there his whole life, it was the first thing he saw when he emerged from the sands. He loved the skull for its large, empty eye sockets that endlessly stared at everything, and the way the skull never talked or asked Toad why he was the only one of his kind in his desert. He blinked the rain drops (or quite possibly tears?) out of his eyes. Then he turned around and hopped away.

The skull gently swayed as it sunk to the bottom of the desert. Two large and empty eye sockets stared up into the sky. The full moon showered the skull in bright bone-white light. It spent hours staring, knowing that this was the end. The landscape had reverted back to the lake it used to be millions of years ago. The very fossils underneath the skull had once swam in this lake. And now the skull was here where he could swim with them. Everyone comes to the same end, just as Toad had believed. The skull braced itself for what was to come. Centuries of getting buried deeper and beeper into the earth becoming nothing more than hardened bone.