Rose-Red Morning

On her final morning, Polly watched the sun haul itself over the rim of the canyon. Its light slid down the face of the great temple inch by inch, and the rose-red stone kindled until the whole facade seemed lit from within.

Crowning the temple stands a giant stone jar. For generations people insisted a treasure was sealed inside it, and some even fired at it hoping to crack it open. Polly, however, had worked out the truth. The treasure was never in the jar. The treasure is the stone itself.

The little pink rosefinch returned once more and sang to her from the top of a carved column, its voice threading down through the morning air. Polly laid her wing against the warm rose-red wall, very gently, by way of goodbye.

Then she rose up and out of the canyon into the open sky. Below her the great crack shrank back into a thin dark line across the desert. A twenty minute walk. Seven extraordinary days. Polly carried the colour of that rose-red stone with her all the way home.