“Liza, I know you’re new to this marriage thing, but trust me when I say it’s better to just let him have his head.”

Liza’s mother washed the dishes with her back to Liza. Liza swung her feet against the cabinets.

“These things take time. You won’t change him all at once. You have to be strong but fluid; like water. Rainwater falls on the mountains and doesn’t seem to do much, but over time that rainwater will shape the entire landscape you see before you.”

Liza’s mother gestured out the window. She still hadn’t turned around.

“Look mom, I really don’t want to talk about this with you.”

“I know Liza, but I have been married for over 25 years now. I know the territory pretty darn well.”

Liza mumbled a “yes’mam” and went outside. She didn’t know where Dan had went. He always drove somewhere, said it helped him cool off.

The glider on the porch had been there since Liza was a little girl. The varnish had faded and cracked; it squeaked when she sat down and began to glide. A cool breeze ruffled the freshly mowed grass and neatly trimmed bushes. Liza loved her parents house.

She sighed and craned her neck against the hard bench. After a moment’s contemplation of the cracks in the plaster, and the fine particles used in cement, Liza brought her head around and looked at the mountains. They were green and blue. A darker shade of purple-gray saturated the valleys carved by the runoff of millions of years.

Liza sat up in the glider. That wasn’t all that went into shaping mountains. In fact, most mountains were formed primarily by tectonic shifts beneath the planet’s surface. Unfathomable amounts of pressure would build up and then release shoving one plate above or below another creating a jagged tear in the planet’s surface.

There were people who spent their entire lives studying the Rockies. Those rocks must have some tale to tell. Records of tectonic disagreements through eons and eras.

The water played a secondary role in shaping the landscape. It fell on the mountains and simply took the path of least resistance. In fact it didn’t shape the landscape at all. The water just made previously existing features more prominent and grotesque until they grew too heavy and awkward, eventually collapsing under their own weight.

Liza got up–sometimes a good earthquake got done what took water a lifetime.