I found the most brilliant, expensive, beautiful ranch I had ever seen. When I got there, all the animals which included; 24 horses, 8 bison, 31 cows, 3 border collies, and 3 donkeys were all luckily in their pasture, grazing (except the dogs, who were running around). They all were in different paddocks, separated by species. There was a huge magnificent wooden pole fence around the whole estate, and inside the fence, were the pasture fences. There was a gate, which was where I drove in, so the dogs were running around freely, but in the big fence. The pastures were so big, they all had little ponds in them. There was also an intricate watering system that was powered by solar panels. So the animals were just fine, some places in the pastures were pretty muddy, but they seemed all around okay. There were a couple dead cows, but no major disease that I could tell. Acres upon acres of grazing pasture, rolling hills of fields. And a couple miles down the road was a huge crop farm. I had it made. I broke into their beautiful mansion that night and that's where I spent the next while.
I had been there two weeks. I was still figuring everything out, but I knew the just of how to run things. The morning after I got there, I went to explore everything. I made sure all the animals were being fed right and had water. First though, I had to learn what I was doing. I tried to find a town with a library, also I snooped around the house and shed to see what I could find about the animals. So, I finished my research, or at least how much I wanted to learn then. Keep in mind, I was a city kid who didn't know squat about having animals. After that, I went to inspect the animals. I had found a list that had all their tag numbers, names, and veterinary records (a form of gold if you ask me). I needed to make sure they were all healthy and were where they were supposed to be. I'd supposed the border collies were there to help herd all the animals, so I tried to find information on them too, and I did. I found all their records as well. Their names were, Charle, Rollo, and Luna. They had all won herding competitions over the years. Charle was the oldest and you could tell by his gait, it was pretty staggered. He was 15. He had been neutered. But Rollo and Luna were the same age, and neither fixed. I assumed they were mates, they were both 7. The sheet stated that Luna had had puppies but didn't say anything about the father of their litter.
The next day, I did all the chores. I made sure the animals were still fine. I raided the woman's clothes who had lived there, I assumed she was kind of a trophy wife because her clothes were a little, kinky you might say. But the man had nice taste. Some plaid, chore sweaters, work boots. I pondered why he took care of the animals and he didn't just hire someone. Maybe he liked them too much. When I got done freaking out about how the animals were doing, I knew I had to get to planting crops. I went to the other farm down the road that had the fields and checked out their shed to see if I could find some plant seeds. Sure enough. BAGS of corn was laying against the side. Also some wheat. I knew I'd have to learn how to bake bread and things. I still had a good supply of food left though. I had the world's supply of canned goods and packaged foods. And I was all good on water too. The fancy watering trough system came directly from a well, I could drink from it anytime. So, I got up the next morning, ready to plant corn and wheat. I planted two acres of wheat and one acre of corn. It took the entire day, plus two days after that. I wasn't keeping good watch on what day it was anymore. I knew how many days it had been since The Day I Woke Up, but I hadn't counted exactly what the date was. End of June I'd supposed.
I had to manually water my crops whenever it didn't rain. That was the hard work. I had to water them with a bucket. 3 acres of crops watered with a bucket. But it paid off, they were growing, and everything looked pretty healthy. By now I considered myself a full-fledged farmer. I memorized every single name of all the animals too, and I was proud of myself. I now thought to myself that I could do this for as long as I needed to. Until everyone comes back. Now that I think back on this time, I had so much hope that this was temporary. Oh what a fool, Dawn, what a fool you were.
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One morning I woke up startled. My nose was bleeding and I was crying violently. I didn't remember why except I remember a thought of my family all in pitch darkness. And then I had a thought that I hadn't had yet since The Day I Woke Up. I thought to myself, If no one is on Earth, where ARE they? That's when I started crying again because I remembered what the darkness meant in my dream. In my mind, I was thinking that was where they were right now, and I was somehow what they were feeling. Thats why I was crying. I was the shear terror they were feeling. It was like they were in a 3 dimensional black box, but it had no end. It went on forever. Then came the thought, "Why am I the only one left?" Thats when I calmed myself down because I knew it was a dream.
