Lory and Sacha at the End of the World!

[cellar.]

Lory and Sacha at the End of the World!

March 11th 2076, 9:43 P.M. Initializing Shutdown of Galaxy #756

Deleting: 168 hours, 18 minutes, and 7 seconds until completion.

Apathetic deities. Post-apocalyptic earth. An error in the system.

This is the end of the world: With your hosts, Mallory and Sacha ♥







DAY ONE:

Of Milky Way Shutdown

• • • • • • • • • • •


Full days left until the end: Six


Current Location: Killearn, Stirling, UK







​

 

[cellar.]

​

​

It snowed again last night.


Dawn cracks through the pressing darkness, a slow glow beginning to colour the room bright. Morning lifts him from sleep, and the sunlight tilts shyly towards his eyes. Through the frosty air, the first thing he notices is his own breath materializing as a watery smoke-esque vapour that travels like cirrus clouds from his lips. Celestial. Cold. Pretty.

Inhale, exhale...He feels light-headed.


A harsh chill grips the dilapidated shelter, splintering the windows with icy spider webs, rattling the roof with whistling wind.

Outside

is a world of storm and snow and ice;

outside

is unforgiving. However, snuggled up in his sleeping bag, he’s safely tucked away from the biting cold for now. Still drowsy, Sacha yawns widely, rubbing his eyes with the one T-Rex arm he manages to wiggle out from underneath the comfort of his covers.

Another day

was something that could be worth celebrating for...But recently, weeks and months and years were all becoming a massive blur of a distinctive monotony.




Morning had crept in – ruthless and still.


Pulling a blanket around his shoulders, he finally sits up. His head pounds in protest.


For the first time since waking, Sacha becomes conscious of the light that’s making him squint. He raises a hand up towards his face to shield his eyes. A hazy yellow filters into the abandoned building, and it’s the

beautifulest

glimmer of real sunlight he’s seen in the past few days, washing over him through broken windows. Suddenly, it's no longer so cold, and he's no longer so tired, and the world's no longer so wasted.

Goodbye clouds! Goodbye overcast sky! Goodbye gray!

He had been waiting awhile for some semblance of warmth, of spring, of good things to come.


He smiles.

It’s a flicker of typical Sacha-like sanguinity.


It snowed again last night, but the sun is shining today, and something so tiny and meaningless has made all the difference to his morning. It's nearly absurd, but he hasn't had much to feel happy about in the last couple of weeks. The sunshine is his feed. He wears the light like a halo of a golden dream.




(And my my my, the man's hinged on the stuttering, old heart he wears on his sleeve...)


It takes a few more moments of listlessness before Sacha pulls his mind back to reality.

Back down on earth

, he’s running out of supplies and food.

And back down on earth

, he has to pack it up and move camp soon.

 

[Masks of Ayn]

Mallory awakens to the snow prickling tenderly against what little of her face was bare to the earth. Fluttering her eyes open until they were accustomed to the light, she stares up to the vastness of the gray filled sky.


Looking over, twisting in her sleeping bag, she realizes then she fell asleep outside. Risky, dangerous, she quickly shakes off the snow and crawls out to roll it up. The solar powered video device clicked faintly as it was out of battery, attempting to charge but the thick clouds preventing enough rays to seep through.


Yet another day. How long had she been up, off the grid, in the mountains? High up where electricity, except such a portable device, was nonexistent and you had to use a river or well for water. She stays away from cities and towns the best she could, more thieves were there, more reason to worry...


The decent days of childhood were long gone. Even than, they weren't that great, famon, wars, natural disastors and many galactic storms. The world has been distressed, as are her people. A bright beam of gold appears, pouring down to enlighten Mallory's outdoor camp. She stares.


"Maybe it'll be a good day... today. Better day," Oh a better day indeed, she would hope.


Maybe even pray? Some may call it that, afterall. A waning symbol of calm and happy days before the clouds took it away.


Ah but it is their, high in the atmosphere, she saw it after all. A little sign to remember what used to always be present, is all it takes for her empty, sunken eyes to brighten.

 

[cellar.]

​

There isn’t a sign that welcomes him into the town, but Sacha soon finds himself amongst snow-capped buildings – stumbling upon the remnants of a civilization quite accidentally. A blind explorer, he is. The road is winding and sloped beneath his feet; in the distance he can see a long, steep chain of blueish hills. Behind him, there’s only a grand stretch of white and wind-lifted footprints. Half wandering, half intuition, the boy had never been good with directions, and it was something of a miracle that he gotten to the village as soon as he had. No road behind him, no map ahead of him – there is only onwards from here.


Gloves worn the fingertips, his fingers are freezing by now. (And he’ll just tell himself that a little cold never hurt anyone, no bother, no bother.) Nevertheless, Sacha adjusts his backpack, stuffs his hands in his coat pockets, and continues trekking deeper into the half-of-a-ghost town. All the buildings around him are painted bright and soft by the sparkle of sun on snow, and the brick and plaster skeletons lay bare and empty and quiet along the road. It didn't seem like it would be incredibly beneficial to go check out any of those dangerously crumbling structures...But before he can get far at all, his reigning streak of clumsiness kicks in. Uncoordinated feet meet deadly ice. A perfect picture of inelegance flashes into focus. He slips, slides, trips – the soft snow luckily breaking his fall.


He blinks and world goes spinning away in the dark. A second later, he opens his eyes to find himself sprawled flat on his back, head aching. The snow tickles the side of his face, barbed with the bite of winter frost.





‘The sky looks beautiful from down here,’ he thinks. ‘Blue, gray, and yellow.’


There’s no hurry to get up. He watches the clouds drift quietly out of sight.


And then he suddenly feels too old to be doing this. He’s twenty-six now, and in some alternate universe, he’d have more meaningful things to do than lying about in the snow. More than a quarter of a century, and he's never been anything close to magnificent. (Not like the way he envisions himself to be, at least.) In this time and life, he is still a bean-stalk boy – a gangly, baby-faced being of just getting by. He is Sacha the explorer. Sacha the precariously reckless. Sacha the perpetually lost.


There is only onwards from here.