They say you only come to peace with yourself when you know yourself better than those around you. Derick knew nothing about this. He thought he had found peace but this was an illusion as he was about to find out with an unexpected occurrence that he actually knew nothing about himself.

He had three simple rules by which he lived. The first was to never eat blue food. There was nothing in nature that was edible that was blue. People often asked about blueberries, but everyone knows those are actually purple. He understood it was one of the stranger rules to live by, but it had served him well thus far in the 50+ years of his life.

The water rush down the wash and into the slot canyon below. Two hikers had started the day to sunny weather without a cloud in the sky, but they hadn’t thought to check the weather north of the canyon. Huge thunderstorms had brought a deluge o rain and produced flash floods heading their way. The two hikers had no idea what was coming.

“She folded her handkerchief neatly.”