Earth, After ✔️

Day Twenty-Nine

RAINA AWOKE SHORTLY BEFORE dawn for her shift. She dipped her hands into the water and wiped them across her face, letting the coolness on her skin shock herself awake. She took both paddles from Kieran to give the him a rest, and he lay down on top of his bag. He drifted off in moments. 

Raina studied his face, then Rance, and Maeve. Their faces were slack, their mouths relaxed, no creases in their foreheads or stress shadowing their eyes. Despite them all lying right beside her, having them so far away in their own dreams left Raina feeling oddly alone. It was a distinct sensation, being completely and utterly alone on the planet, on a raft in the middle of the sea. The current had pulled them far from land, leaving it a deep blue mountain far away. Being so far out stirred other sensations as well, a helplessness that humbled everything about her. Out here, she was a speck, insignificant, as easily wiped away by a wave as an ant under her foot. The water was power, seething and roiling beneath a calm surface with the threat that it could not and would never be conquered.

Off to her left, a movement caught her eye. Just below, not breaking the surface, something moved. It was long and scaly, at least the length of Raina's body. It slinked up, shimmering in the sun, and then vanished again, into the darkness below.

Raina's eyes widened and her heart began to pound, but it paid them no mind. She looked up to the clouds, pictured herself sailing through them, letting the creaking of the raft fool her into the sounds of her ship. Her pulse slowed. There was no room for panic on the water, not when they already relied on the good fortunes of a calm system nearby. So she swallowed her fear and kept paddling. 

➣  ➣  ➣

By the evening, land was barely a shape on the horizon. They had caught a strong current, tugging them toward the port which now loomed like a massive monster, an imposing display of machinery turned haunting in its utter silence. High above, above the clouds, Raina saw the platform. She knew from flying past how it was falling apart, rusted and crumbling, mined for scraps whenever they had a shortage. 

For the past two weeks, she had not let herself think of home beyond a dream. She had not considered what awaited her, how it would all change if--when--they made it back up. That kind of hope hurt too much. There was too much at stake, too much hanging in the balance of that what if. But seeing it, seeing a sliver, a reminder of it right in front of her...

If they made it back up, everything would change. Not just for them. They would be living proof that the world was recovering. People had survived. That meant they could, too. But it was hardly safe; tracking the land over seasons revealed the extent of its instability. And beyond that, it did not feel like theirs anymore.

"Someday, people could return," Rance said, his thoughts mirroring hers. 

"I don't know if we deserve to," Maeve said.

Rance looked over. "You don't think we could do it?"

"I think no matter how much peace you create, the cruel streak in people will never go away. I think we'd be greedy again. I think this time, we could break it beyond repair."

"The people down here haven't, though." 

"That's because they actually had to live with the consequences." 

Raina looked up again. Against the coming darkness, the platform began to fade, swallowed by a purple sky draped in shadow.

"I would give us a chance," Kieran said. "Two hundred years ago people would have given anything for this. I have hope."

Hope.

The closer they got, the quicker the current grew, whisking them along at a steady pace so that they could reach their target by morning. The sea split off, and they followed the path of the river that emerged, the route that should lead them right to the outpost. Worry drifted in the back of Raina's mind as she considered it; in the conflict of the end, they had been heavily fortified, guarded by coalitions of militaries. That alone made her frown, considering the legacy of the sky. If they were founded in such violence, the descendants of the greedy, the exploitative, the hateful, were they not merely an extension of that? Was there any real starting over?