Sunrise

At night I dream of the Rescuers.

The Rescuers come from the sky. My people say they will take us to new land, new life, away from the ordinary. To me, the Rescuers are like gods.

All I have is stories shrouded in myth, giving my mind too much freedom to fantasize. Our paintings depict only tall, masked figures. What do they look like beneath the masks? A question we all wonder.

Mama saw them, she claims, when she was young. But she was too young to go with them—travel is much too dangerous for the young and the old, they say. Mama may have missed her chance, but I have not... yet. We never know when, or if, they will come.

Each time I dream of them, it is different. The land is barren or it is vast and magnificent. Spaces crowded or desolate. The figures' faces only a prediction. I never know what to expect—except that they exist. Tonight, the atmosphere is calming, even beautiful, and nothing threatens me. I bask in this stillness for a little while, but then I sense that something is missing. I reach up to my neck—the locket. Gone.

I wake. My hand reaches to where the locket lay beside my bed. It is there.

That sense of panic is all too familiar. In my sleeplessness, I get up. Mama always said I could be on the night crew because of my tendency towards irregular sleep patterns. I dress and sneak out the window, effortlessly quiet as I have done many times before.

Outside, everything is blue. It is that time before much of the world is awake, free from the overwhelming inevitability of human activity.

I walk and walk away from the village. I am barefoot—another rule I am breaking. I climb over the shambled remnants of the old city, now serving as my village's barrier. Mama says there was a group of humans who lived here before us and shaped the land to their liking. Now, nature has claimed its rightful place, retaking fallen systems and it giving new life once again. I just hope the old society did not die in vain.

I begin to see the trees thinning and I know I am close. My favorite tree is just up above, the one with branches twisted in odd ways. The tree pays no mind. That is what I love about nature—it need not judgement. It simply is.

Finally, I see it: that vast open space that stretches for kilometers.

The change of scenery is sudden. Now, the only thing that grows here is tall yellow grass, but it is very much full of life.

We are not allowed to go here; my people say it is full of trapped spirits. The spirits confuse you, you get lost, anxious. It is like poison to the brain. What this place was—a dried up lake, maybe—I do not know. But to me, it is sacred. Like an impression left on Earth that says remember.

The planet tells stories, lessons. Sometimes she is loud, sometimes quiet—but she is always there. All you have to do is listen. When I listen, I sense the spirits here are free.

The timing is perfect: gold casts down from the distant mountaintops and soaks the grass in orange hues. The trees around me begin to glow. The wondrous sunrise.

It is times like this I miss my sister the most. We would sneak out here together. Where she is now I do not know. If she is still alive... a thought I push away. She always said the Rescuers were never really rescuers at all. That it was lies. She was suspicious of everything.

But that cannot be the only reason she ran away...? Away from me?

For a long, terrifying moment, I feel hollow. This is what it truly feels like to be alone. Not a soul nearby besides the animals who care not of my existence. Nothing but me and the wild... Yet, hidden among the compounding urgency of fear is the smallest touch of relief: to be alone is to be free. Nothing but me and the wild.

I put my hand over the locket once again, its heart resting above mine. It brings me comfort.

I sit in this moment of rare tranquility—but just like my dream, it is only for a moment. Almost as if fate, the sky explodes with sound.

They have come.