======Let My Life Be a Story, and My Death, a Lesson======


The truck boot slams shut after some pushing, but the damn thing breaks down not too long after I and Salithra are just out of the bunker's eyeline. I hoists bags, taking as many as he can carry and then some, not wanting to add physically to Salithra's invisible baggage. He's got his own, too, sure, but survival is what he was made for. It's what he's good at.

And it's what he's going to do.

By the time they reach the Sanctuary, it has been days. Both look the worse for wear, and I //feels// it, his skin raw and peeling, hair matted, dirt caked under his fingernails. For a brief, horrible moment, he sees the low-ceilinged tents, the many, unfed faces, and his stomach sinks with recognition. Another hopeless little camp. Another trap. A spokesperson -- Zephyr, from the radio message? -- comes to greet them, smiling wide, and he tenses up.

But, in a very short time, he's reassured that the Sanctuary is not just any other little camp. The place teems with warmth, teems with life, eager and daring. They welcome newcomers with open arms, and are extremely thankful for the supplies -- overly thankful, even. 

"They don't make bottles like this anymore," an old woman comments, looking at a small container of painkillers from I's pack. He tries to look stoic instead of uncertain of what to say. Whatever she reads in his face, she seems to understand, and the topic never comes up again. I's supplies are much needed and used with gusto. Some of the children seem to enjoy just wearing slings because they're available and look cool. They remind him of... well, of himself, once just a child.

Thoughts of harvesting the Sanctuary's leftovers grow few and far between as time goes on. The place doesn't seem to be dying -- just growing older, with time, as any other living, breathing creature does. I even spots some other familiar faces from the Bastion from time to time. It will never be //home.// Not a place as transient, as fleeting as this. Despite the added comforts, and the number of people, he knows that, eventually, even this lively settlement will struggle to survive.

And yet, something small, raw, and hopeful burgeons in his chest.

Months later, I thumbs through some of the blank diaries he found left over in the bunker. He thinks of his own diary, left in the Time Capsule, for someone else to read.

He opens to a fresh page, and begins to write.

==== In Case We Make It ====

‘To whomever finds this diary, or whomever I pass it on to

As I write this I do not know who you are. Maybe I’ll have met you, maybe I haven’t. Maybe it’ll be when I still live that I give it away, or long, long after I die. Maybe you’ll excavate it out from the ground somewhere. Either way this is not the first diary I write and there’s a chance it won’t be the last. Right now I’ve spent the last few months or so in a place called Sanctuary. One of the only places still left standing after a series of cataclysmic events that has seen everywhere else I’ve been to or heard about reduced to bones and ashes. I see the echoes these days of the past I came from. Sometimes someone from the Bastion will come in and we’ll share a look or two of recognition. We can’t always find the words to say.but it’s good to see them alive. I think there’s more hope in their faces now, although I think that might just be because there’s more in the eyes I’m looking from.

A child was born today. The first I’ve heard of since the world fell. Not mine, but when the community is as united as this place is it’s basically everyone’s. When the kid was born I realized this must’ve been how the people in my bunker felt when I showed up. Hopeful. A sign that maybe we have another generation, or maybe a hundred to go. I felt hope when I came here, too, and saw it hadn’t all gone to hell. For a while I didn’t want that hope. I’d felt it too many times, had it weaponized against me or turn out to be nothing. The hope of my birth did nothing to save the dead back home. But I’m still alive. Something came of it, some legacy that outlasted that place. Maybe in a way their hope was well placed, and I’ve been here long enough to trick myself into thinking my hope coming here might’ve meant something after all. That’s why I’m starting this diary. \\

When you think you’re going to die soon, it’s hard to think about the future. A lot of people don’t do that out here. They’re content to die when they die and don’t have time for trying to live forever. I can’t really say I was like that. I’ve always obsessed over what I’d leave behind. But I thought I’d be leaving it sooner. A day, a week from when I was thinking it. This is the first time I’ve not only been able to see a future where we aren’t all dead but that I might’ve left some mark on it. When I look ten or so years into the future I don’t see myself as some rotten corpse. I might probably just be me but older. Last diary I had took me a year or so to fill out. I’d hesitated on starting a new one because I didn’t think I’d last long enough to fill out another. I hope you’ll be finding a lot more of them in the time to come. Each one you find is a show I made it a little bit further. Each one is another couple years of the future I was a part of, and every word you see here is something in that time I thought was worth making sure was remembered for that promised future. \\

With that in mind if there’s a first thing here I want remembered it’s Salithra. She came here with me and is probably the only one who kept me sane when our old home, the Bastion, started going to hell. Drove me pretty crazy once too but that’s a story for later. You’ll never find someone who cares more about the people around her. She’s done more for this place in her time than I think I ever could, and if this place makes it I think a lot of that will be because of her. 

You’re probably wondering who I am. Maybe I’m still figuring that out. I think it was Strangeness who once told me that the names of her people are a fluid thing. They change and add and subtract things depending on what inspires them at that moment. I’m not really from the same culture, but I’ve basically operated the same. I remember when I removed the tallies of the dead from the population chart and took my mark as a reminder that I had been gifted my role as the sole survivor. That feeling that people had died for me to live was what kept me alive. The ghosts of the past pushed me forward. Now, I’m looking around me at the present and I’m looking to the future and that hope is what’s driving me. So, I think in that old tradition I have become something new. Let my first act in this new chapter be to look forth and give myself a name. 

I am One-Among-Many and these words are mine to give to you. Whether they be the record of the history of how the world came to be something better, or if they’re a cautionary tale of a ruined, antique land, I implore you to let them be a lesson, to let them guide you as those who have come before have for me. I am writing this diary in case we make it, and I hope someone, somewhere, will always be alive to read it.'(("In Case We Make It" by Seph P))

{[]}{{tag>writeupeternity gm_tara complete}}