Silver Umbrellas

Prologue-- A Shut-In Day

Pit pat.

Pit pat.

Pit pat.

"Aww, not today," she grumbled upon pulling back the curtains and peering out into the wet, gray world. "How many water bottles do we have left?"

He groaned while hauling himself up to his feet and toward the trap door in the corner of the room. After opening it and counting out their stock of water, he eased the door back down and slid the deadbolt into place. "Twenty-nine."

"We should be okay for a little while longer..." She pursed her lips and let the curtain fall back as if that was enough to shield them from the dangers out there.

One bottle a day. That was the rule: one a day. Clean water was in high demand, and their resources were drying up; please excuse the pun.

She ran a hand through her loose hair and struggled in vain to unknot it. 'This is why I prefer braids...' The wind couldn't make her scalp sore after tossing her braids around. She didn't have to rake her fingers through her hair over and over, pulling out strand after strand, to wrestle it into a state of semi-obedience.

Unfortunately, her last hair tie had gone missing three weeks ago, when she'd been forced to beat a hasty retreat during a scavenging trip.

His own hair was pretty gnarled and greasy, but he didn't have a hair tie left to call his, either.

"I miss showers..." he admitted with a soft sigh. "And onsens. Did you ever get to go to one before?"

She shook her head and looked over her shoulder at him. "No... They're those bath places, right? At Kiku's house."

"Yeah, that's right. We'd go there sometimes when he had the time away from work." Outside their window, the morning rain grew louder and more forceful, reminding them more and more of their dire predicament.

"It sounds really relaxing," she agreed with a wistful sigh. "It'd be nice to go to one someday."

He felt the urge to say, "Maybe we will," but he knew that idea was too far out there to be possible. Plus, it was that kind of ludicrous positivity that just made their current situation seem a little worse.

Their measly little shack with its barely reinforced roof wasn't much to look at, but that was more or less the idea. It had four solid walls and only one window, which was covered by the aforementioned curtains. It was imperative that the rain be kept out at all times, no matter what.

The only new-looking object in the entire "house" was a large silver umbrella, folded up and leaning by the front door. It was more or less the cleanest thing they owned because it resisted getting dirty, like it was magical.

Well, it definitely was magical.

Today was a lazy day, however; an off day, without any scavenging trips. That meant they would be busy with taking care of their home, making it watertight and safe from prying eyes.

Though she already knew the answer to her next question, she asked it anyway just to break the stoic silence. "Are there any crayons left, Yao?"

"Three left," Yao replied without even looking at the box that sat on the low coffee table across the room. "Red, yellow, and purple."

"Okay... We should save them."

"Yeah."

~

Their daily routine was simple: wake up about an hour after dawn, rise for a meager breakfast and few sips of water, and then decide what needed to be done. What they would do varied every so often, but so far things had been okay.