Ashes

Chapter 1

A door opened, breaking the previous for so long uninterrupted silence with a loud creak. A light hits the walls of the room, and the dust covered furniture. No one has been here for a long time. As he set foot in the room, the floorboards creaked. He didn't flinch. He was comfortable here. He had been in rooms like this many times. He kept walking, and looked around for anything usable. He went from one piece of furniture to the other, deciding if it was worth looking at, as he only had so much time. The end table? No, it's broken. The closet, perhaps? No, I doubt they'd put anything there. The dresser? Maybe. Worth taking a look. He opened it, and found what he was looking for. "Yes! Just what I needed." He exclaimed, while wiping the dust off his hands. He decided to look through a little more before returning, but he knew he'd come back here. He looked through the small house for anything else to loot. He ended up in the bathroom, and looked at a bottle of toothpaste which has long expired. "Perfect." he says, putting the tube in his almost empty backpack. "My batteries are about to die. It's best to go back." He exited the room, and closed the door behind him. He double checked if his bag was closed, before exiting into the darkness. 

He walked for quite a while, his thick clothes protecting him from the chilling cold. After walking through the cold, black snow that covered the ground, he reached it. Home. He stood at the large gate in front of him, made of a variety of metal objects welded together. He pointed his flashlight into the air, and near immediately, the gate opens. He turned off his flashlight, and walked inside, to the familiar sights of the large building he calls home. The walls made of a cold, grey concrete, filled with tears and cracks, dimly lit by small, foul reeking fires. He didn't care, to him it just smelled like home. A man came up and greeted him. "You're back, Rishi? What did you find?" The man in question was old, balding with grey hair, his wrinkled face barely lit by the fires nearby. "Nothing much, just battery and toothpaste. Not a lot, but very useful. I'll go over to Marco right away." "You do that. With Nieve finding that warehouse a month ago, we barely need food." The old man grinned, his rotten teeth showing. It wasn't an uncommon sight. People's teeth simply don't last, and replacing them? Yeah, right. Rishi headed over to the familiar, open tent in the middle of the large room. He greeted the bearded man inside, who was talking to someone else. "Hey, Marco, I got some good stuff out scavenging. Wanna take a look?" Marco turned around and grinned, his newly found dentures replacing the sight of his rotten teeth, however they didn't stop his rotten breath from getting to Rishi. "Ah, Rishi my friend! What did you bring this time?" Marco rubbed his hands eagerly, and opened Rishi's bag the moment he had put it on the counter. "This is good stuff. Definitely worth a meal." He took out the toothpaste and batteries. The toothpaste could help those with bad teeth keep them just that little longer, making feeding them easier, and the batteries could keep a flashlight charged, allowing people to find more items. Rishi took a can from the counter, and walked over to a nearby fire. "Hey, Lil." He sat down next to the girl, her long brown hair barely illuminated by the weak fire in front of them. He grabbed a pan from next to the fire, and emptied the can in it, before holding it above the fire. "You want some?" He asked. Lil shook her head. "I've already eaten. You go out there more often than I do, so you should really be eating it." "You have a point. One of these days we should go scavenge together." She chuckled. "A brother-sister scavenging trip. Sounds fun." He took the pan off the fire, and grabbed some of the chunks of meat between his fingers, greedily stuffing them in his mouth. "We should head over to Rick in a moment, see if he's got more stories to tell." Lil nodded. "Can you imagine how it must have been before the Winter? Being able to see without fires, without flashlights, feeling something other than a biting cold..." She sighed. "Do you think it will ever get back to normal?" "It's got to, right? From what Rick tells us, all of that dirt and ash in the skies will fall down eventually." He finished what was left of the chunks of meat, and put down the pan. "Man, I'm tired. Let's head over to Rick already and then hit the hay." Lil nodded, and got up, walking to a corner of the compound. 

They went into the dirty tent that had been repaired numerous times, and went inside. Rick was there, talking to a few children. "...Like a flashlight shining from the skies, and the warmth of a fire carried by the wind itself." He looked over to the new faces in his tent with his old, half-closed eyes, before returning to the story. "And then it happened. Boom. Boom. Explosions bigger than the tallest buildings, throwing dirt into the skies. And now, years later, we're stuck with it. But I promise you, one day we'll see the sun again." A child with long, blonde hair raised her hand. "But where did those explosions come from?" She asked. "Humans like us. You see, before the Winter, the world was ruled by greedy people who wanted more and more. And the only way to get it back then was with war. Those explosions were the worst weapon ever seen. However, once the first one fell, the other leaders decided to drop them too. Before you knew it, half the world was covered in craters and you couldn't see your hand if you held it an inch away from your face." Rick continued telling stories for a few hours, before telling everyone to bugger off and have fun somewhere else, as he was tired. Rishi and Lil headed to the large purple tent, across from the gate. Too tired for words, Rishi fell into the old sleeping bag he found long ago, and dozed off.