The New World

here.

Light from a fire.

Bradley gave me a fire box. One that will start a fire nearly anywhere, in nearly any condition, with nearly any fuel.

Start it to give a light against the darkness.

And for a while it’s all I can do just to stare at it until I feel myself shivering, and I sit down closer to the fire until I stop.

Which takes a long, long time.

The fire for now is all I can see.

Soon, I’ll need to see what supplies I have left to live off of. Soon, I’ll need to see if any of the communications equipment survived so I can try and contact the convoy.

Soon, I’ll need to take the bodies of my father and my mother and-

But that’s soon, that’s not now-

Now there’s only fire from the fire box.

Now there’s only a tiny light against the darkness.

Whatever’s going to happen next can wait.

I don’t really know what my mother was saying, I don’t know that hope is something you can give to someone else, something that you can take.

But I said I would, I said I did.

And so I sit in front of Bradley’s fire, on the surface of a dark, dark planet, and I have their hope, if not any of mine.

Except the hope that it’ll be enough.

And then I see a lightening in the air, in the sky above and behind me. I turn to watch this planet’s sun rising, and I realise it’s morning, that I’ve made it to morning.

That I’ve had enough hope to make it to morning.

Okay, I think to myself.

Okay.

And I begin to think of what I need to do next.