I didn't want to survive, I wanted to live. I knew that now. Standing in front of the forgotten buttons, I knew what I wanted and he wasn't here.
Squatting, I scooped up a handful of buttons and pocketed them. It felt nice to flip them between my fingers. I never wanted to leave, but it was time. There was nothing left for me here.
Having promised Lenna that I would grab extra supplies, I made my way somberly to the enormous greenhouse. Even under the shroud of snow, it was a giant imposing on this sleeping land.
I pushed the doors open and walked inside, smelling the aroma of so many leaves and flowers. Even in the time of Frost, flowers bloomed here. They stretched toward the windowpanes, their tiny petals bright, reminiscent of a wild field under the thumb of the loving sun. I stretched my arm out, brushing the petals lightly with the palm of my hand as I walked by. They seemed so appreciated. Taken care of. How was this possible? Lenna's crude self-watering system couldn't have been responsible for such a miracle.
Coming to the end of the building, I stopped, staring out of the large wall of windows. I couldn't see much. Snow lined the panes, stacked until there was little left to peer out of, creating the illusion that I was shrinking. Or sinking. My head hung low as I inspected the herbs at my fingertips. I pinched a spearmint leaf free and rolled it around on my tongue before swallowing it. The flavor burst on my taste buds. Next, I rubbed the silvery-green leaf of a sage plant and leaned down, taking a deep breath. It always smelled pungent and slightly leathery.
I wanted to smell every herb down the row, but a noise on the other end of the building caught my attention. Careful not to react, I kept smelling the sage as I slowly reached into my pockets for my knives. The delicate, rounded handles fit perfectly into my palms, ready for combat.
I held my breath as someone closed the distance between us. The light shuffling of a foot alarmed me. I waited until the assailant was too close for their own good before I extracted the knives.
Whirling to face the stranger, my knives slashed through the air. Solid arms deflected my advances. Startled, the battle cry lodged in my throat as my knives thunked to the dirt floor.
"Don't stab me! Not again," Ren protested, bursting the silence of a forgotten place. He was trying to make a joke, but there was nothing humorous in his expression.
The man who had captured my heart in a snare was standing in front of me and I froze. I had turned off my searing emotions before the first snowfall. While Ren filled the majority of my thoughts and dreams, I had thoroughly shoved my loss and despair to a place darker than night. Darker than the emptiness that had hollowed my insides out like a canoe.
Attentively, he stepped forward, enfolding me in an intense grip. I stood, immobile in a flood of emotions, feeling the warmth of his embrace travel over my body. After a second, I relaxed, turning my head so that I could rest my ear against his chest. Pah buh, pah buh, pah buh, pah buh. My arms slowly wound around his torso, turning into a death grip. I squeezed tighter and tighter.
Staring up into his eyes, I grabbed his face and drew him down, kissing those irreplaceable lips. There was so much to say, but I would never stop kissing him long enough to utter one word. Maybe I was freezing to death in a snowbank somewhere. Maybe I had never reached the village, after all. If this was the last dream at the end of the world, I wanted kissing him to be the last thing I ever remembered.
We kissed until it became impossible to think anything more existed. Reluctantly, I pulled myself away, refusing to take my eyes off of him for fear he would disappear into the nothingness again.
"I have never missed a face or a touch or a laugh the way I've missed yours," I whispered.
"Thank God," Ren confessed, "Or this would have been very awkward."
We laughed in the quiet of the greenhouse, surrounded by nature's immaculate beauty.
"No one's ever come back," I uttered, completely stunned. It was the truth. How many nights had I asked each star to grant me the grace to accept my losses? To reverse my tears, allowing them to fill the holes back up from which they fell. My wishes had forsaken hope long ago, overridden by death's hand.
"Technically, you came back." He squeezed me to his chest again. More serious, he said, "I'm sorry I sent you away."
I spoke into his chest, "I know."
"It had to be done."
"I know," I said more resolutely. "I thought you were dead. You haven't been home."
"Not since you left."
"Why?"
He thought for a few minutes and shrugged. "Because I wanted to feel like you were still here. If I had seen it empty, I couldn't have lived with that feeling."
I was scared to ask, but I made myself. "Is everyone dead?"
"Most," he sighed. "Some from the sickness. Some from the lack of treatment for their illnesses. It was like the start of the New Beginning all over again, only we couldn't hide from it. Time caught up with us." There were no walls high enough now to protect him from the truth. The inevitable. His tight jaw and suddenly stiff shoulders exposed the heartache he would never speak of aloud.
I hugged him tighter, sorry that he had to fall like we all fell.
"How did you stay alive?"
"Dr. Lowel found a small quantity of vaccines with the equipment they rescued from the hospital before it burned to the ground. Everyone else had been exposed, so we used them. Then we locked ourselves away for two weeks, giving the vaccine time to work as the sickness cycled through the village." He looked weary, confessing, "I thought it would never end. The ferocity of their screams. The outbursts of laughter mixed with violence. I sheltered in Lenna's home, just across the gardens. It housed enough supplies and remained uncontaminated."
"I see I'm thankful to the men with guns for a second time. If they hadn't abandoned their supplies, I would be digging your grave right now."
"Don't thank them. They're the reason everyone died. It was the most shameful thing I've ever done, hiding rather than helping. Most of them were dead by the time… It will haunt me." He looked away, unable to filter the pain from his expression.
"Yes." I could say nothing different to express my sympathy for his guilt. I knew it because it lived inside me, as well. "Carry it with their names on your heart and a piece of them will live on."
Wishing to push the memories away, he ventured to ask, "How are the clans?"
I recounted our undertaking to visit the eastern clans, preparing them for the coming growing season. I spoke of the girls and how they would be remembered in clan lore as saviors of a sort. They had, without a doubt, earned a permanent dinner seat in each clan we visited. I told him how I'd determined that Lenna's energy must spout from Gaia's hand because of her refusal to stop short on anything.
"Hope has returned to the clans," I concluded proudly.
Ren was happy, though I could see his heart was still weighted.
"What's wrong? Is Graham-"
"Graham's fine. He was given a vaccine. Let's go somewhere warm."
The cold had settled in my core during the long journey's walk. Now, it sluggishly refused to leave my bones, ignoring the stifled rays of sunlight.
Agreeing with Ren, we left the greenhouse with a pack full of Lenna's supplies. As he began to turn right down a path, I tugged at his hand. "Your house is this way," I reminded him, pointing in the opposite direction. "It will be your house whether I'm here or gone."
Hesitantly, he allowed me to pull him towards home.
When we walked in, I tossed the bag on the floor, righted the chair, and cleaned the buttons up while Ren started a fire. It wouldn't take long to heat the modest space. We worked diligently.
After the fire was steady, Ren stood, staring into the flames. "What if I'm the one who's gone one day?" he asked quietly.
"What do you mean?"
"Will you do what I couldn't? Will you come here to visit our memories?"
I rushed to him. My hands cupped his jaw, my fingernails playing lightly across his skin as I closed my fists
. Shaking my head, I chided, "Don't talk like that. Why would you say that?"
There was a new depth of sadness when I looked into those crystalline eyes. He knew the price the world demanded now. He had witnessed so many of his own people parish, there weren't enough lies to stand on to keep his head above the bodies.
"I'm so sorry." I poured kisses on his neck. "I wish I could make everything better for you."
He grinned. "You are." He kissed me, lingering as his bottom lip glided against mine. "You're the only woman I know who can tame the entire world. Remember that, even when I'm not here."
I began to pull away, angry. "You don't get to say that. I spent this whole time thinking you were dead. You don't get to kiss me and then say something that rips me open."
Ren curled his hand around my wrist, scared of the distance I was seeking.
"Let go!" I demanded.
He dropped my arm. "Don't go."
"Where?" I practically screamed. "Where would I go? My heart has been trapped in this village like a cage ever since you tore it from my chest."
Closing the distance between us, he tried to catch me but I side-stepped his efforts.
Annoyed, he crossed his arms, his nostrils flaring. "I'm sorry."
I scoffed, "You don't look sorry."
"Because I'm obviously lying."
I wanted to scream at him again, but the fading glint in Ren's eye told me he was ready to surrender.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want you to live forever." My voice cracked, but I wouldn't allow myself to shed a tear.
"I want you to kiss me. Only one of us gets our wish."
He held his arms out wide, waiting. There was a divine expression on his face. It broke my resolve. I ended our standoff, sinking into his chest. "Why are your arms way out there? I'm right here."
"So I can help carry all that baggage."
"I don't understand what that means."
Running his hands through my hair, Ren's gaze was filled with patience and love. "It means your heart doesn't have to carry all of that pain by itself anymore."
Ren's wish came true. Our lips met and I was overcome by a spinning sensation. How many times could I kiss him and feel something honest and different that made all the edges and rises and curves of my body tingle? I wanted to find out. I wanted time to protect us from his inevitable incompatibility with this hostile world. He was destined to fall. The New Beginning was no place for Ren. We both knew that, only he accepted it.
Daring to break our trance, Ren kissed my cheekbone, then my hair, then my ear. I closed my eyes, listening to his voice play against my earlobe.
"I'll be here for you until I can't be. When that day comes, I'll leave my heart with the only woman who can keep it safe. That, I can promise."
I nodded, squeezing my eyes shut. My body shook as silent, ugly tears streamed down my cheeks, soaking into the collar of my coat. The misery of losing him once battered my senses. The fear of losing him forever spasmed my muscles into what I could only imagine being a merciless sight.
"You don't have to cry that much. I'm not dead yet," he joked.
Partially laughing and choking, I was able to pause the borderline hysterical moment. I wiped at my tears.
Ren's smile was ferocious. He kissed a tear streaming down my cheek. "I love you." He kissed me gently again. "Don't cry." Another fluttering kiss. "I've got good news."
"What news?" I asked between slow, soothing breaths.
"The good Dr. Lowel and I have been busy preparing a lab to make vaccines."
He was practically vibrating, he was so excited.
"You're going to make vaccines here?"
"No, up North. Stop crying and I'll take you there tomorrow."
Letting it sink in, I was no match for Ren's weight as he tackled me onto the bed.
"No more sickness," I muttered.
"No more sickness," he repeated.
Leaning on one elbow, I stared at this amazing man in front of me. Mirroring my actions, he watched me, waiting.
I smiled. Really smiled freely for the first time since I could remember. "We're going to save our worlds together, for as long as we can."
He reached out and I fell into his warm embrace.
"Damn right. Maybe it'll be one whole world again, one day."
Neither of us had lived in a perfect world. To be honest, 'perfect' wasn't anything worth having. When love and death and war were upon us, it was our imperfections that offered shelter. It was our humanity. Our humility.
Ren and I would step into the unknown together, where the clanships had plenty and the sickness was soon a forgotten nightmare. For a short while, we would allow ourselves to dream.
Epilogue
When the world begins again, it won't be peaceful. It won't be 'new.' There are some, we now know, who want to see us fail. We will not.
Maybe we don't get a second chance to start over. Those who we've lost won't rise again, so we chain their memories to our ankles and wrench them into the future. Maybe we're no different from the dead, too busy to rest, being thrust forward unforgivingly by the world.
Any one of us might be privileged if what we have is desirable to someone else. Any one of us can turn into the men with guns if we allow fear to rule us. We are monsters and allies, and if we persist we will become gods or animals.
Maybe we should practice being human first. These microscopic moments -the little things- will be our victory. We will not fail.
My world may seem dark, but hope lives anywhere darkness blooms.
About the Author
Blakely Chorpenning lives and loves in the American South with the best family a woman could ask for. When she is not writing genre and literary fiction, Blakely enjoys anything shiny, soft, or fuzzy, and has a knack for breaking electronics…with her mind.
For more, please visit her Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/blakelychorpenning
or her official hub/blog
http://indiscriminatewrites.blogspot.com
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