The Salt Famine

The night the power grid collapsed was the same night Mara’s tongue turned to desert. She blamed the cheap instant noodles she’d been living on, the ones that promised flavor but delivered only a ghost of salt. She’d been alone in her crumbling fourth-floor walk-up for three days, the city outside a cacophony of sirens and shouts that had faded into an ominous hum. Her phone was dead, her candles were stubs, and the only thing she had left was a two-liter bottle of ginger ale that had gone flat.

Mara wasn’t religious. She’d argued with her only remaining friend, Elias, over video calls until the signal died, about whether there was any divine plan or just entropy. She’d confessed to him, with a bitter laugh, that she didn’t believe in guardian angels, not for her. Too many bad choices, too much silence from the void. She was a natural skeptic, a scientist by training, clinging to the measurable, the observable. But as she stumbled into her kitchen that night, her throat raw, her feet aching from pacing the creaking floorboards, she saw something that defied measurement.

Perched on her cluttered counter, balanced impossibly between the rusted toaster and a stack of unread journals, was a figure. Not human, or not entirely. His skin was the color of polished river stone, smooth and cool. His eyes held the deep amber of ancient amber, and his hair was a shock of crimson, cropped short and swept to one side, as if sculpted by a wind only he could feel. But the wings—they were the true impossibility. They were black, but not like a starless night; they were the black of an oil slick, oily and iridescent, shimmering with hints of deep purple and green that seemed to shift as he moved. He was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at, like staring into a solar eclipse.

Mara’s breath caught. She blinked, expecting to see a heat hallucination, but he remained. He smiled, a slow, knowing smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Don’t stop believing, Mara,’ he said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in her chest. ‘I’ve been watching over you.’ Then, as if a switch had been flipped, he was gone. No puff of smoke, no fading, just a between-heartbeat disappearance.

She stood frozen, the half-empty bottle of soda clenched in her fist. The kitchen felt colder. The air smelled of ozone and something else, something metallic, like old pennies. She told herself it was a hallucination, a symptom of dehydration and stress. She chugged the ginger ale, gagging on the lukewarm fizz. But her tongue remained dry, and a terrible, gnawing hunger for salt had taken root in her stomach, a craving so intense it made her lightheaded.

Over the next days, the world outside grew worse. The emergency broadcasts, when they crackled through on her solar-powered radio, spoke of a global event: a ‘salt famine.’ The mineral was disappearing from the oceans, from the earth, from processed foods. People were dying, screaming for a taste of something that no longer existed. Mara, however, found that her craving was sated whenever she thought of the red-haired man. In her dreams, he whispered instructions, his amber eyes glowing with an unearthly light. ‘The salt is not enough,’ he said one night. ‘You need the tears of the fallen.’

She woke with a scream, her pillow soaked with sweat. She went to her window and looked out at the desolate city. The streetlights were dead, but there was a faint light coming from the building across the road, a flicker of candlelight. She saw a silhouette—a frail woman with a child clutched to her chest. They were crying. Mara felt her own mouth water, and a twisted smile spread across her face against her will.

She didn’t remember leaving her apartment, but she found herself at the woman’s door, her hand raised to knock. The door creaked open on its own. Inside, the woman and child huddled in a corner, their eyes wide with fear and hope. ‘Please,’ the woman croaked, ‘do you have any salt?’ Mara’s throat clenched. She saw the tears on the woman’s cheeks, glistening in the candlelight, and she knew what she was there to do. She stepped forward, and the red-haired man’s smile bloomed in her mind. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I have something better.’

The next morning, Mara returned to her apartment. The craving was gone, replaced by a cold, hollow satisfaction. She looked at her reflection in a dusty mirror. There was a faint, dark mark at the base of her throat, like a fingerprint of soot. She touched it, and it was warm. She knew she was no longer the woman who had argued about angels. She had a new purpose, a new guardian, and he was hungry. And far away, in another part of the city, another lonely soul was about to see a beautiful man in their kitchen, and the salt famine would continue.

She smiled, and her smile was not her own.