Rainless Season

The pattern of seasons in the region of the women's villages is predictable: four months of cool dry weather in the winter, six months of warm wet weather in the summer. The two months in between vary year to year, extending sometimes the rainy season and sometimes the dry season. But the region is about to experience a drought the severity of which has not been known since before the villages were founded.

Manifestation

In normal years, the villages' Spirit-talkers can predict the start of the rainy season a few days in advance by sensing the increased humidity coming in from the east. In this drought year, there will come no air mass with enough moisture in it to feel. As a result, the women plant their arboreal farms several months late, after the forest begins feeling the effects of the lack of rain. Around half of all grafts fail, and many host trees die due to the added strain on their systems. Meat is also in short supply because the local wildlife is also having a hard time finding food, and the falling water level in the river reduces the villages' fish catch.

Social Impact

Malnutrition causes a cascade of health problems. Infant mortality increases to one in three. Boys suffer most from starvation, since women reserve their scarce resources for themselves and their first girls. In Moon Wish village, a community already tense with longstanding disagreements, the drought triggers a rebellion against the high-status women. The revolt fails and the survivors are exiled, adding further population loss to the death toll.

Localization

The drought is part of a worldwide shift in climate patterns driven by a confluence of multiple oceanic and atmospheric cycles. The warm, moist air masses that normally bring the rainy season are diverted to a latitude that doesn't usually experience heavy summer rain and thus experiences severe flooding.

Type

Natural

View from the future

The radical women, receiving no support from other villages, saw escape as the only possibility for survival. Along with other sympathetic women and adventurous boys, they traveled downstream to find a safe place to establish a new village.
As if in blessing, the first of the new season's rains began on the day they set out.