FIREPROOF

The blazing sun was slowly easing its oppressive grip on the air, but Casey decided it wasn't yet safe enough to leave her burrow to begin her nightly gardening. She pulled the insulated cover back over the burrow's opening and slid back out of the encroaching clutches of heat radiating from the opening into the much cooler depths of her burrow.

She checked the water level in her collector. Satisfied with the level, she filled a plastic bottle with the tepid, but vital, liquid. She drank deeply then refilled the bottle, replacing the bright red lid tightly. A vague memory of crisply chilled bubbly sweet soda from a bottle with the same lid flitted briefly through her mind. She couldn't have been more than four or five years old in the memory, but the tingle of the bubbles and the chill of the bottle momentarily overwhelmed her senses. She sighed heavily, dispelling the last vestiges of the memory.

The water collector was in the far back of her burrow. It collected moisture from the air expelled from herself and the earth around her. She began to twist her dark hair into a loose ball high on her head, loosely securing it with a strip of tied cloth as she walked past her sleeping hammock to her composting toilet and washbowl to inspect her work in the small mirror. She then continued to wrap the light, faded, blue cloth loosely around the rest of her head and face. She pulled her loose shirt with long sleeves from the hooks by her sleeping area over her tank top, along with her loose trousers. The loose, breathable material would protect her skin from the last of the sun's violent grasp once she left her burrow. If the garden didn't still need some sunlight for the best growth, she wouldn't even be out in the weak dregs of the day's sunlight.

Since the last of the grow lights failed last year, she'd had to move her garden from her neighboring garden burrow to a partially above ground greenhouse where she could provide some controlled sunlight without scorching all of her food to ash.

As prepared as she would ever be, she glanced about her small home and grabbed her light gloves from her small shelf table. She pulled an insulating curtain across the main opening between the stairs leading up the surface and her home. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the insulated opening cover up and away and quickly climbed out onto the parched surface. She remembered the soft, green grass that used to cover the ground and briefly

lamented how things could have changed so drastically in her short nineteen years of life.

She pulled the cover back over the opening and pulled a pair of battered sunglasses from her pocket. She could see the windows into her greenhouse glinting dully in the weakening blaze of sunlight. With the shimmering heat waves rising from the baked soil that made up her entire world as far as she could see in between the walls of what used to be her parent's garden. The stone walls still stood, but the house and garden shed were little more than smears of ash.

She remembered her parent's laughing faces as they chased her playfully around the garden. Her mother was a botanist and her father was a landscaper. They were such a mismatched pair, her mother barely stood more than five feet tall with dark skin and thick wavy hair, her quick, bright eyes never missing anything, while her father stood over six foot tall with light brown hair that was so fine it looked more like fluff than hair, a broad smattering of freckles across his perpetually sunburned face with dancing, blue eyes.

When the scorching heatwaves became more and more of the norm, her parent's were the ones who first dug the underground garden and her burrow. When the topside plants were all shriveling from the near constant heat, less and less water, and the increasing number of wildfires, her mother cultivated hardy versions of food plants that they grew in the subterranean garden her father created. They moved the family underground after one fire destroyed their house. As Casey trudged across the short expanse to the entrance to her greenhouse, she looked at the two grave markers by the garden wall.

She had helped her mother dig the larger grave almost ten years ago when her father was out in the harsh, killing sun the entire day trying to find some insulating materials for the burrow and subterranean garden. He wasn't home by the time the sun had finally loosened its grip on the world, and her mother worriedly fussed around the house looking for any trace of his return. By morning, her mother was stolidly gathering supplies to go looking for him. They left just as the heat was beginning to come off of the ground in rippling waves. They found her father's body a few miles from their home, his skin blistered and split from the heat. They gathered him onto their cart and brought him back to the house where they dug his grave together.

Her mother had quiet tears sliding down her cheeks for days afterwards, but she never spoke about her father's loss. They stopped going out during the day after that, doing any topside work by candlelight in the relative cool of night. Her mother became more and more withdrawn, but continued working daily to optimize their garden and the nutrient balance of the soil and water collection system. Casey learned so much from both of her parents as she grew. She had her mother's dark hair and her father's light eyes and his freckles sprinkled across her skin that was a shade somewhere between the creamy mocha of her mother and the paleness of her father.

About three years ago, her mother began having sharp, stabbing pains in her back and dark urine that grew more and more painful. She seemed to curl into herself within just a few short weeks, until one evening she just didn't wake up. Casey dug her mother's grave next to her father's that night. She kept her mother's heart shaped locket as she placed her frail body into the grave. Her mother wore the locket every day for as long as she could remember. One of her earliest memories was of the shining locket twirling above her chubby, reaching fingers as her mother cooed over her with a bright, happy smile shining from her beautiful face.

The locket sat coolly against her skin under her shirt. It had a picture of her parents and herself inside. Turning back towards the greenhouse, she continued on through the oppressive heat. Reaching the greenhouse, she pushed aside the insulated covering and stepped down into the cooler air of the greenhouse. She replaced the insulating cover back over the door and began removing her sunglasses and face covering. The moist, earthy smell of the greenhouse was a comfort. She moved to open one of the reflective windows to allow in the weakened, but essential, sunlight to her small trove of food plants. With the sunlight shining on the plants, she ensured the water collector was still functioning. The water dripped steadily onto the roots of each of her plants.

As the sunlight grew weaker, she bustled about the greenhouse checking the nutrient balance of the soil and harvesting the fruits of her labor. Bright red tomatoes, some yellow squash, and beautiful green beans. She crunched on a few of the green beans while she tidied up, watching the sunlight fade. With the last of the sun's rays fading, she quickly closed the reflective windows and ensured the plants were ready for the evening.

Gathering her bounty, she exited the greenhouse to return to her burrow to begin her day's activities. After securing the insulated cover over the entrance to her burrow, she began preparing her breakfast of sliced tomatoes. She would roast the squash in her rock oven outside the burrow. The rocks retained enough heat from the day to cook the squash in time for dinner. With her food needs tended, she picked up the battered copy of Stern's Introductory Plant Biology her mother left her and climbed into her hammock to continue her studies. Tomorrow would be another day, or night as it were, but today was well on its way. She sighed quietly, picking another green bean from the bowl and crunching on it. Things weren't perfect, but she was content.