Woven

The day the world tipped out of balance, no one noticed.

The sky didn’t come crashing down, and it wasn’t accompanied by hurricanes and lightning storms and earthquakes. It happened more subtly, first manifesting itself in small things like an unusual amount of people losing their luggage on flights from Toronto. Things like terrible traffic in Tokyo and skyrocketing unemployment rates in Sao Paulo and a record number of cases of chickenpox, of all things, in New York City. Disaster fell like snowfall — what at first seemed inconsequential soon became threatening. And by the time anyone noticed how much had accumulated, it was far too late. Too late to stop the momentum of the darkness, the descriptor humans used for the terrible force before they knew it by its true name: aedion.

At least, that’s what Alyse’s mother used to tell her. It had happened a generation ago, and she was too young to remember anything other than the terrifying wilderness in which humanity now resided.

Alyse groaned and rolled off of her mat, stretching as she fought to keep her eyes open. She walked to where her brother Emrys squatted and began to brew some tea, her steps lit by a small fire. The tea was a bitter, pungent drink made with aduma, the small weeds that were the only thing that still grew in the waste. Alyse found it to be extremely unpleasant, but at least it would keep her awake long enough to get something done in the constant, oppressive shadows. What she wouldn’t give for a full night’s sleep, without the constant screeching of the sorae. The miserable creatures had only appeared once the world had fully descended into chaos, and were always either screaming or eating something...or someone, she supposed.

She plopped down next to Emrys by the fire and sullenly accepted the measly breakfast he offered her. Though it was just Emrys and Alyse left in their clan, they still had a hard time finding enough food for them both, and knew the bite of a long-empty stomach far too well. Between the sorae and the other animals trying to carve out an existence on their decimated planet, there wasn’t exactly enough to go around.

“It’s your turn to gather aduma, you know.”

“I know,” Alyse said, pinning Emrys with a scowl. She knew it was unfair of her to take out her foul attitude on her brother, but the thought of going out into the waste made her want to crawl back onto her mat and never leave. Instead, she began gulping down the broth Emrys had made from the bones of the rabbit-like creature they had caught.

After choking down as much of the broth as she could stomach, knowing she would be grateful for it later, Alyse began to prepare to brave the overwhelming presence of aedion that awaited her. She had always been more sensitive to it than Emrys or the rest of her clan, so she took extra precautions when scavenging. She dressed herself in the thick skins her mother had left her when she died, making sure only her eyes showed through the black leather. Otherwise she’d be risking an intolerable headache when she returned.

It was unfortunate that she couldn’t cover her eyes, too. They were a strange, distinctive gold, a color her elders had told her used to exist more commonly in wolves than in humans. While they did help her to see better than others in the aedion, they were also a beacon for sorae. Alyse knew Emrys worried about her because of her eyes, so she always tried her best to keep her head down and avoid anything besides the aduma.

As she finished securing the last of her garments, Alyse felt her brother’s eyes checking her work to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. She turned to look at him with a frown.

“If you’re just going to sit here and worry about me you could always volunteer to go instead,” she grumbled. “I don’t know why it always bothers you so much.”

Emrys sighed, and she knew he was exasperated before he even opened his mouth. “I know you can take care of yourself, Lys. But that doesn’t make it any easier to watch you walk out the door.”

His words made her pause, reminding her that she was all he had left. She felt guilty for letting her temper get the best of her twice in one morning — if it could even be called that when there was no sun.

“Well then,” Alyse said after a moment. “I’ll just have to make sure I come back.” Then she spun on her heel and strode into the cool, damp darkness, not wanting to linger. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t look back at their building as she stalked toward the aduma. The run-down apartment they were squatting in wasn’t technically theirs, but it still felt like home — at least for the moment.

The journey to the patch of aduma they frequented was relatively short compared to some of the treks she’d made in previous seasons. But it was still long enough for Alyse to have far too much time to think. Her tendency to daydream had been one of her father’s pet peeves - he’d often catch her staring off into the distance, imagining a life where aeide, the opposite side of the coin to aedion, had restored balance to the world. She knew now that such a life was only a fantasy.

Shaking off the memories of her childhood, Alyse returned her focus to her surroundings. She was almost to the aduma patch when she spotted something that made her come reeling to a stop, almost tripping over her own feet. It was something gold — the same color as her unusual eyes. She’d never seen anything made of gold. Most of it had been stolen or traded for supplies in the early days of the world’s descent into aedion. And yet, here it was.

Alyse spun around, checking for sorae behind her, then prodded at the object peeking out of the dirt with the walking stick she used for navigating the dark. Finally, she bent down and began to dig.

Using her stick as a shovel, Alyse carved away the dirt and debris until she realized the object was some sort of chain. She looped it around her stick and lifted it up, angling the gnarled branch so that the object came close to her face. It was a locket, she realized. A gold, heart-shaped locket.

There was no question — the locket had definitely come from the world before. A world that still held aeide. She marveled at it, and began to wonder if maybe her father had been wrong. If beauty like this could still exist in a world dominated by such evil, maybe there would come a day when morning, true morning would come again, and the world would remember that no darkness is eternal. And for some reason, knowing that something from that far away time had survived and found its way to her through the darkness caused something to rekindle and glow within her.

Hope.

The day the world began to rebalance itself, no one noticed.

The sun didn’t suddenly begin to shine, and it wasn’t accompanied by summer breezes and flowers and music. It happened more subtly, first manifesting itself in small things — like the hope sparked by a thin gold chain in the hands of one girl.