A Shape in the Snow

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. As if somehow full of neon lights the sky was still dark, but not dull in the slightest. Streaks of orange yellow and pink blended together fading into a deep purple glow overhead. Stars were hard to spot in these times, but the stories she heard of them from all her mothers kept her searching. Most of the lights in the sky tonight were busy satellites racing along their atmospheric tracks, blissfully unaware of their obsolescence since the final crash. Another reminder of the constant race to wealth that led to so much isolation.

In her lifetime she watched the rich grow richer, until there was nothing left to require their wealth. They had consumed all the planet could provide, and without supply you eventually lose demand. When there's nothing left to extract and sell the money eventually just stops making sense at all. It was quite the downfall to witness, though done primarily from the confines of these four walls for her. He had the chance, or as he would put it the burden, to get out into the world and return with the most current events. This is how she came to know the end of her world.

There wasn't much to see now, a half burnt out billboard far across a gravely expanse. A lot that was once blooming with wildflowers and burrowing rabbits, now nothing more than jagged rocks frosted into their rigid place by the 50 weeks of winter each year. The only defining feature of this little twelve inch diorama in the cement wall was a thin little railroad cutting through the landscape, seeming only to separate their bunker a little further from the rest she imagined had to be out there. These tracks have been empty since long before her time in this world. Though on occasion, when the snowflakes are falling heavy and slow, a gust will cut through and you can watch the flakes blow along the sides of a passing train no longer visible to the human eye.

It's this same scene night after night, that she scurries up to watch each time he walks out into that strange world. The only tangible piece of the world left behind for her to wander with only her gaze. Only this time something was different, something she couldn't quite pinpoint just yet. This time the snow wasn't rushing past the tracks as if blown aside by the passing invisible train. No, tonight the snow fell calmly and surely around a stationary block, as if there was a train car just sitting still. She refocused her eyes more than once trying to find any snow falling onto the tracks instead of impossibly only around it, but had no satisfaction. Then suddenly there was movement outside.

Her focus was broken and she fell back with a startled breath. Once she had recalled it back to her lungs she crawled back to the window and slowly peeked out the little square in the protective wall. Sure enough she settled her gaze upon a light hovering over the tracks. It was a perfect rectangle of glowing golden beams slicing the darkness, causing the snow to sprinkle like fairy dust across the lot. She could not believe her eyes when they told her so confidently that a train door must have just been opened a few hundred feet in front of her with no train seemingly attached.

Her eyes had locked in place, she couldn't pull them away with all her might. She stared and watched and waited for an unknown amount of time. As for what she waited for she's still not sure. Her heart stopped and as she fell out of the trance the golden rays held her in as she focused her gaze on the footsteps in the freshly fallen powder between the tracks and the window. Before she could make any sense of it the hand reached up and started knocking. That reset her pulse faster than she ever thought possible. She scrambled and clumsily found her way under his cot the way they used to teach them young in schools during the quaking drills. The knocking continued.

It was at this point that she started to consider this window must sit at least ten feet off the ground. Who or what could possibly even be reaching that high? She would've been happy to know that would be the last question she would ever have to wonder in that little concrete box they had for so long called a home.