World In Turmoil

28: When Old Is Found New.

Ren Yalenteno.
She missed her brother.

She had been asleep for so long. It felt to her like an eternity of nothing.

Her eyes had been sealed against the torrents of salty tears unleashed upon herself for hours now. Nothing could stop the soft sobbing.

Her father had left his jacket as her pillow. His musky odour comforting her slightly. Her mother had put a slow piece of classical instrumental into the radio player as a means of distraction.

Where those two were now however, was unknown. And it frightened her.
They had stepped outside to 'talk'. The slow, muffled, crunches of crusty ash underfoot getting farther and farther away from where she lay in the back seat of the Kaverac.

Her fists were balls. Her legs showing every little tendon and muscle.

"Relax." She began to say to herself.

An idea that proved more of a suggestion than an order as her whole body bundled in on itself. Too much, too fast. Either block it out, or scream. Small tears still found their way out of her eyes. Somehow there were still tears to shed.

Pain began to pin prickle its way across her muscles. Forcing her to loosen herself. The red of her clenched hands telling her story. Shaking, she started to slowly rise from her backseat bed, arms shaking from tension. In a small push she forced herself up. Setting her back against the synthetic seat.

"Breath..."

Her chest rose, and fell at a rhythm all its own. Gentle puffs of breath escaping her slack mouth. The blackened darkness of the world beyond the car, slowly lifted. A slight orange glow coming from the the drivers array of controls in the front seat, a smell like no other wafted into her nose.

A window was open.

She swung her head left, towards the opening, and took a drag of the air...
It was... musty?

A strange note for the Southern-Wilderness.
Unless, the blackened ash ruins of the vast forest presented themselves once morning rose.

Though... ash couldn't smell musty.

The darkness outside, gave no hope of answer.

Except a small line of lights on the distant horizon...

Was that even the horizon?
The sky...

Even...

This wasn't right.

Suddenly, a great explosion rocked the very crust of the world around around her.
The distant line of lights jumped around in mad panic.
The very car shuddered so fiercely, as to throw her against the door which swung open, flinging her out into the ghostly world.

She hit the ground hard.
Still shocked by the incomprehensible explosion.

Her back felt the rough, uniform earth.
No.

Stone?

Her head, shielded by hair, could not distinguish the surface it hit.
Her fingers, numb and blistering from her fall tried desperately to ascertain the material that eluded her.

Running the tips of her fingers along it, she felt the hard rugged finish of unrefined kelcekreet.
Like her basement.

Her basement...   ...?

Too good to be true?!?

She thrust herself to one side, and tried desperately to rise. Her legs quaking at the fear that engulfed her surroundings.