I keep having this story/poem fragment caught in my head where, like, a grandfather or elderly neighbor or someone is shaking their head sadly at a dried up riverbed and how horrible it is because of the way their village had depended on it, and then the narrator (who is a child or a teen) remembering that the origin story for the river is that it was formed by a woman's tears of grief or anger or some other negative emotion.
And then they ponder the situation, and how, if the story is true, then wouldn't it technically be a good thing that the river dried up? Since it means the woman stopped crying and presumably didn't feel sad anymore? And what does that say about their society/way of life that they were dependent on a woman's grief to survive?
And, like, sure--the story itself probably was never true given that tears are salty and they are looking at a former freshwater source, but the point would remain that in the fictionalized account it would seem to be portraying the woman's devastation as a good thing.
I dunno. It's just something that's been on my mind in ways I cannot fully articulate.
