#nblwbooks

[bitchfromthecrypt]

I'm not starting a whole new blog for this lol,

I present to you all, the first four chapters of the second draft to my (hopefully) coming soon novel, "As We Know It"

Very loose bad bad awful summary: Powerhouse lawyer Angela nearly dies after a nuclear war, finds town full of previously assumed mythical creatures and makes a little home, meets hot vampire queen Khalida and hot Weredragon Nobel Patience D'Herensuge, and they fall in love a while after they find out they're soulmates. This leads to socialist anarchy.

☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾☾

Trigger warnings: Death, brief mention of suicidal ideation, war, nuclear war. description of Gore

Hope y'all enjoy!

Chapter One

If you asked Angela, she’d tell you, all doors really should be automatic.

It’d make life so much more convenient. You come inside from carrying a load of groceries and you don’t have to worry about futzing around with your keys, standing around for five minutes trying to figure out how to open a door that feels like it hates you.

This door definitely hated her, she mused.

Why wouldn’t it? She hadn’t used it in years, and now, finally, stupidly, she wanted to just open it up and waltz on out of the place she’d been safe and stuck inside of into a world that was probably filled with toxic waste, rats with human ears, and human flies? Did she want to avoid using it ever again that bad?

Maybe.

She reached a hand out to try to unlock, still jolting back like the lock itself had been exposed to radiation for the past three years.

She leaned back against the cold, rusty, steel walls, too tired to care about tetanus, thinking about the past for the millionth time that day.

God, Angela Weathers, top contract attorney at her firm, lover of parties, name brands and biannual vacations to wherever the dart landed on the map, never used to think about the past.

Angela, the last surviving human on earth, just sits in the dark talking to herself about it. On a good day.

“I should have just gone to the main office.” She said, outloud, for the billionth time.

“Daryl put some important documents down here in the bunker, but not often enough to even warrant a check, he had mentioned every other day upgrading the system, switching to using computers and the web.”

That was the other thing she did for fun, standing next to the door and pretending for a minute there was someone else on the other side of it.

‘Why did you?’ She imagined them asking, ‘When you heard the sirens, you could’ve walked out, the door was closing slowly enough.’

Groaning dramatically and banging the back of her head against the wall, wincing a bit, her fresh retie as pretty as it made her feel raising hell on her tenderheaded self.

“I don’t know. Probably the same reason no one else came down. Maybe they panicked, maybe they froze. Maybe their brain just made the smart decision for them.”

She turned firmly to face the door, reaching for the door again, more so to fidget with it than anything.

“You’d think, all of us, a group of thirty-somethings would be able to either follow the nuclear war briefs we’d been getting since we were ten or to make up our minds about whether or not surviving it would have made any goddamn sense.”

‘Well, of course,’ they’d say, ‘this place has everything you could need! Shampoo, jugs of water that tasted off even though they were filled with just water, just enough spironolactone to last you up until sometime between today and next year.’

“Canned peaches, canned chicken, canned ham, shoes that are too big for me, and super ugly,” she whined, kicking the ankle high industrial combat boots she hadn’t even tried to put on yet.

It's not like there was anywhere else she could go.

It didn't matter how much food, or water, she had left or how well the shelter’d been built.

Living there, alone and scared was much worse than anything that could happen to her out there, right?

Right.

She knew that.

So why couldn't she open the door?

She stood up, smacked her cheeks and tried not to think about how many times her coworkers and girlfriends had fixed her makeup for her after she’d done it.

She used the code, conveniently hidden under the eighty-seventh can of beans, she pushed all the right buttons and heard a little ringtone that probably used to sound melodic, at least a little happy, maybe a little annoying after a while.

All that came out was a quiet, rhythmic groan.

She could've opened the door then. She should have, honestly.

Why didn't she?

Is it the fact that she's probably killing herself just by thinking of abandoning the only thing that's been safe, no, certain after all these years?

Her books, as boring as they were, she couldn't take them with her, if she didn't pass out from toxic sludge inhalation she'd need to be able to move, and carrying around fifty seven American classics in the hopes of finding a nice spot in the shade to reread them wouldn’t be the wisest decision.

“No,” she said “I don't think it's any of that.

Or maybe it is. Maybe it's all of it.”

The hatch was open before she could think.

Mindless, like a robot programmed to keep taking one slow step after another until its batteries died, she walked down the short, but seemingly unending hallway, brown leather boots meant for someone five shoe sizes bigger than hers and all.

God, she wouldn’t have been caught dead in these before. God, the reads she would have gotten from Tamara alone. She would have demanded she go change.

‘If you’re gonna die, you have to do it wearing something cute, you can’t just be in an ugly ghost outfit for all eternity, what am I supposed to say when we meet in the afterlife and all my friends see you have those things on?’

Angela laughed a little bit thinking of her, thankfully. Crying gets boring after a year, and she wouldn’t have wanted her to be some sad sack forever.

She wouldn’t have wanted her to be leaving the bunker either, but she can’t make everyone happy.

She’d never really been that concerned with that particular hobby, to be fair.

She knew she was brilliant. Her mom had about twenty of the trans pride flag and harvard summa cum laude graduate bumper stickers on her car, she’d gotten her first and last job at counsel authority on the other side of the country at twenty-five, and she’d crafted about two thousand contracts per year for the greater half of her adult life.

She also got stuck in a baby swing at a playground at age twenty seven, while completely sober.

Now that was definitely it, that was the problem. That was the reason why she couldn’t bring herself to do any more than stand in front of the final barrier keeping her in and all of the fifty foot women and godzillas out. She was just thinking. Something Angela either did too much, or too little of at any given point in time.

The days she was really lucky, the days things always worked out for the best, were the days when she got to choose which one, as rare as they were.

“Today’s as rare as any other. Not much distinction between them anyway.”

Angela made the decision fairly quickly, to do a bit of both.

If she was gonna live, not just survive, but live, and thrive, she’d obviously need to think sometimes.

But if she was going to die, which she was fairly certain she was, she didn't want to realize it until it had already been good and done with.

Her eyes closed, and both hands on the comically normal looking doorknob, she tried and failed to empty her mind.

She wanted to rip every horrible thought straight out of it and toss it into the brand new paper shredder she had for a solid two days back in her office.

She imagined shredding pictures of Godzilla, of barren, gray, wasteland, of horrible chill that comes with stepping out into a nuclear winter that everyone around her had been talking about for years, of the loudest sound she'd ever heard in her life, just before she'd narrowly missed watching her family, her species, and the only world she'd ever known, one she now considered her favorite, die.

But you can’t really shred most of those things, can you?

She opened the door.

Chapter Two

There was not a single person in this small group of royals—which they’d resolved to refer to themselves as before they’d even agreed upon a space for them to meet—who was below a thousand years of age, including Patience, however they at least knew how to operate a simple pocket watch, and they’d woken up practically weeks ago for the first time in hundreds of years.

“Well what if we just let them loose?” Terry, queen of the spring court, a tall and spritely being who hadn’t done so much as read the pamphlet Patience had handwritten for each of them, began her neverending tirade of insisting on complete anarchy, not that she���d know that word. Too hard to spell.

“Terry, we have been over this. We need to enact some sort of system in order to avoid further harm. The lack of unity between nations is what led to this in the first place.” The leader of the Siromo tribe of mermaids, Amaka said, the only person Patience could hear over the crowd of voices, all insisting that the best moment to share their rebuttal was the exact same time as everyone else.

They got out of their chair, one of thirteen golden thrones that rested around their egregiously large golden roundtable, topped with designs carved out of opal and lapis lazuli, and went to drink some water from the lake outside, their notice of leave hanging ignored in the air.

Patience stared at themself in the lake, for many more minutes than it would take to shift and take a sip of water.

Who was he?

Gods, he’d barely remembered his family, he thought his father was kind, the last memory they’d had of him was the day he’d met his mother.

They were hunting, they were about to pull the trigger, killing some kind of bird or deer, probably, who knows, and something rumbled through the air.

If they were to describe it, they couldn't say it was a sound, or a feeling, as woefully simple as the thought was in their mind, it was just big.

The calling heaved through the air with such a strength they feared it would become corporeal and grab them.

They can't say they remember much of the evening after that. They couldn’t forget her, no matter how long they’d tried to.

With her wild red hair, her braids that reached far beyond the floor in her tall and daunting human form being the main reason she preferred to stay a dragon.

She had held him very often when he’d cried. They couldn’t remember why, they just know her cool scales as she nuzzled him the way a cat does a kitten had made many of their nights as a young child feel safe, despite sleeping in the dark woods. ALthough wolves were not as frightening as dragons, there was not much reason to be fearful.

It was unwise of her to grow old. The one thing she did that made Patience angry with her after all of the years they’d spent together, her only unforgivable act.

She said she hadn’t wanted to watch him die, they’d been sick for months, only coming out on days when it was warm enough that they didn’t feel they’d break in two if they took a single step. She said that no mother should have to watch her child as such. That she would instead gift him with what she had been gifted eons ago, that only one dragon could exist in a space at any given time.

And she died. She chose to.

Patience had mourned. He slept his days away and the amount of time he spent awake and aware of the world shrunk as each year passed, and by the time they felt anything once again, they had realized that being aware hadn’t improved their days by any measure.

The only reason they were awake now is there were no other options.

These people were not suited for the title they’d deigned themself with, and he wasn’t either. But if he did nothing, then they’d have no reason to be, and that would mean she’d have gone for no reason at all.

Their musings were interrupted by the sound of the door flying open and the feral gaze of the vampire queen settling on him for one long moment before she went barreling into the forest.

They shook a little bit, all seventy thousand pounds of him chilled a bit more than you’d think their cool blood would allow for.

They did not like that woman.

She definitely had a strong heart, for lack of a better word, but anything that required complete focus, sitting still, and following the rules of bureaucracy seemed like methods she would and has used to torture her enemies.

Well, more torture in addition to it, but still.

Patience was a royal now. It was his job. He’d agreed to his position when the time came, and she had as well.

He would never understand why.

The vampiress had never spoken more than a few words to Patience and yet, they found themself consumed by either irritation or at her every action, or lack thereof.

She’d behaved like every other “Royal” had, with no real regard for the reason they were there.

The humans were dead.

As was their trade, and their cameras, and their policies, and more of their animals than any creature left behind would like.

The world, at least as every last semi-immortal being knew it, had changed beyond comprehension, and the entire remaining population had entrusted this too small room full of those of all different species, religions, cultures, and walks of life in general to come up with something resembling a solid plan.

The few months immediately after they'd gone were horrendous.

The fairfolk nearly went extinct from the lack of breathable air, of foliage, and of general smog.

Every last being on earth had to work together to bring this planet back, and despite the fights, trickery, and grief, they'd managed it.

And they'd be damned if they let themselves get to the point of destroying it all over again.

This meeting was more than a casual party, it was the beginning of every decision ever to be made for the rest of the world.

And so, on the seventieth of the initial meetings, in which all the leaders were supposed to be present, when Patience would find they would be missing one crucial vampire queen. And the anxieties would rise, Patience’s blood would slowly but surely begin to curdle at the ever rising idea that someone must go to retrieve her before the week should end, before they all go back to their kingdoms having wasted days, which while not exactly a huge amount of their lives, were still full of painful small talk and brash comments, only to maintain the same stalemate they've been in since their worlds got turned upside down.

They weren’t aware of it, hearing her quiet but not inaudible footsteps ring through the forests, but they would be the one to see to it that she would return shortly.

Chapter Three

The thing you'll have to remember about Khalida, is that she's not selfish, not in the true sense of the word.

To be selfish, you’d have to be aware of the fact that you are a person. That you exist. That the people around you have lives and feelings and that this fact should matter to you.

Most days, Khalida was not a person. She was a force. A force that used to need to eat.

She still could. She thinks about it sometimes. As much as she could think.

Khalida was no longer one to think.

She had been, for a bit of time. When she was a child she thought constantly, even more so as an adult..

Then the first century passed, and she hadn't aged a day, and all that time and money and all those vastly different lives, well, they added up.

And after the nine hundredth body, after the millionth piece of gold, it's kind of hard to recognize that those around you, or even you, yourself, matter.

So when khalida was in the meeting, imagining how the leader of the good neighbor’s summer court would taste and what noise she’d make when she felt her teeth in her carotid—not the most ideal place, but beggars couldn’t be choosers some days, and it’d be a great deal of work to find a better spot, and she smelled it, she was confused.

The scent, somewhere off in the woods, it was sweat, dirt, and most importantly, human.

And the faintest hint of Guerlain Shalimar.

Did she think before she ran after it?

Yes. More than she should’ve.

Chapter Four

When she saw those kids—kids? She still wasn't sure, they were way too small to be kids—standing at the very top of a tree and giggling to themselves about a joke she immediately knew she'd never get, Angela thought for a second that maybe things would be ok.

This changed after she realized their size.

And their pointy ears.

And their limbs that bent at such odd angles, and the thousands of colors on them that no human should be able to see, let alone have in their clothes.

And that one of them jumped straight down the length of the tree only to catch themself a millisecond before hitting the ground and using their deceptively strong dragonfly-like wings to soar right back up to the top.

She considered going back into the bunker, just for a second, but a phrase popped into her head that rang so familiar to her, “Ah, poor Miss Taylor, she would be very glad to stay!” from Jane Austen's Emma. and the urge to turn back dissipated. Because as lovely as the story was, and as strange as those not children were, she should not remember that line.

Either she was hallucinating and her brain was really capitalizing off of that human fly thing or she was psychic. Both would mean something new, and at this point, she’d take it.

She stared up at them, enthralled, unable to move. Realizing with each passing moment that she was allowed to stare how their skin glowed, how their eyes were too wide, how some of them even had flat, horizontal pupils, like goats or something.

In hindsight, she probably should have noticed they were staring back at her much earlier than she did.

But when the whispers and giggles stopped, and eyes that were crinkled with smile lines turned cold and hard upon seeing her, it didn’t take long for her to become as hopeless as someone in her situation. ought to be.

The first one to jump down was neon pink, Angela couldn’t have recalled many other details about her, because it hurt to look at her for too long. She landed directly in front of Angela before she could blink and asking a million questions before she could open her mouth to say “hi! I'm Angela, I apologize for staring at you like some massive freakazoid, I only did it because you don't look normal in any sense of the word.”

“Who are you? I've never seen you before. What brings you here? Are you human? You are, aren't you, oh I used to love humans, sorry about what happened, anyways, how are you holding up? How did you hold up? Where are the rest of you? What do you have in your bag? Why are you wearing those horrific shoes?”

Angela nearly felt embarrassed for staring into the minuscule creature's bright yellow eyes for a full minute as she kept going, not processing a word she said, she got the feeling this was just how fast people—were they people?—talked now.

“I'm sorry, can you repeat...all of that?”

Maybe if she just closed her eyes for a second, if she shook her head and clicked her heels three times, she'd open them and all the creatures would be people, recognizably human people who are seconds away from directing her to a fallout shelter away from whatever poisonous fumes were floating in the air and making her hallucinate.

She tried.

They didn’t.

They only giggled at her.

Instead of responding, her brain decided to not only short circuit, but make her silently weep, in front of a new bunch of strangers, the first five minutes of her reintroduction to the world and she’s already crying in front of complete strangers.

“Aww, pretty one, why are you crying?”

They all swarmed her, the little people, some trying to wipe her tears away, flying back and shaking like a dog upon realizing their leaf skirts were drenched.

“Can you cry less messy?”

Mumbling more to herself than to the small beings she guessed were fairies, she dabbed at her tears to avoid making her imaginary mascara run, “I’m alright, I'm fine, I'm sorry, I'm fine.”

The faeries gave each other a look, one seemed to be asking something of the others, if the body language of this version of the world was the same, Angela guessed tiny neon pink lady vehemently disapproved.

Her lip reading was shot, not that it had ever been great, but despite not being able to make out what they were saying, she knew that look very well. ‘That’s the look you get from friends and family members before you do something very funny, and very stupid,’ she thought.

She used to find it funny.

“Well, if you're really sorry, you can come with us.”

One of them, a small orange one, covered in little green droplets, it looked like a leaf on the first day of fall that actually feels like the season’s changed. He flew directly in front of her face, making her go cross eyed to focus on him. It rested its hand directly onto her nose.

“What?” Angela asked, sounding and feeling so much weaker than she’d like to seem at this moment.

“Yeah! You could come with us! It's so much better where we're from, the food, the music! Oh the clothes, imagine how good you'd look decked in this frock!”

A different one, less human looking with the many different shaped spots covering its dark brown body. They gestured to their…dress? Skin? Whatever it was, it wanted Angela to picture herself in it.

Unsettled as she was, she did.

It felt like a movie. She saw herself, sitting at a table, full of every possible food you could think of, from a good plate of ribs and some pecan pie to cream filled donuts, and more food that she could not attempt to identify than food she could, but they made her mouth water all the same.

Shifting quickly, like a dream that had completely shifted in plot, suddenly she was waltzing on a pink glass dance floor, while she somehow still felt soft grass under her, wrapped in the arms of a different person with every beat change, never without a glass of some wine she also couldn't quite identify in her hand.

She pictured sleeping in a bed full of these other beings, the same size as them now, inside of a hollow in a tree, the dull glow of the moon bathing over them as she curled into a ball and closed her eyes, drifting away.

The first minute since she left in which she felt safe, as fractured and dangerous as it was, disappeared before her eyes as the image faded and in its wake was the sight of all of the little things peeling off into the air far away from her.

The rejection didn’t have long to set in.

There are many things Angela could say would be her biggest nightmare.

Things like, being alone in a bunker for a year with the knowledge that everyone she'd ever met, everyone she'd ever loved, everyone who she might have become great friends, lovers, family with; was dead.

Things like beginning to forget the faces she's known her entire life.

Things like waking up in the middle of the night convinced that life no longer held any meaning.

The weird forest full of things she couldn't understand didn't scare her that much, in comparison.

This thing did.

She didn't know how to talk to those…bugs? Small people? Flower people? But there was no realm where she could possibly comprehend whatever It was.

By the time she’d started running, which was shortly after she’d turned around to see it, she’d realized two things.

One, that it was nothing. Like, truly nothing. An empty space where something should be, the dead winter that makes a noise that should ring in your ears suffocate under snow.

Two, it wanted to kill her.

This was new.

Those things, the people that abandoned her to face this thing that she couldn’t look in the eye, because it had no face, even though her entire body shuddered every few seconds because the hairs on the back of her neck raised like it was a person staring at her.

The sudden onslaught of darkness didn’t register to angela as she ran, narrowly avoiding tripping over her feet, her breath made no sound, the clunking of her too big shoes thudded against the tall grass, but anyone in the forest would not know that from the still, tranquil quiet that followed the predator and prey.

The transition from when Angela remembered what it was like to be a human being and the moment her mind decided for her that she was nothing but a thing that needed to run or die was brief and the closer it got. The more she felt the biting, isolated cold of a vacuum in space against her back as it reached out to tear her apart atom from atom, the more her brain slipped away and the further she sprinted.

It was pitch dark, the sun had set, there was no room left for her or the trees’ or the thing that was rushing her’s shadows’ to morph on the ground, but the whole place was glowing, the wind had its own heartbeat, a part of her would day recognize.

It swirled around her, almost mockingly. Maybe one day it would remind her of the nights her older sisters would stay up with her, telling her scary stories about the dumbest things, and the terror which evolved into exasperation the older she got, instead of being a sensation to hold on to in the gap between her reality and her ever encroaching complete absence.

She ran, hearing the screech of some animal and darting after it, following any noise or thing of substance.

She ran around a bend in the trees and locked eyes with a huge bear with three huge rabbits in her jaws, and a dozen more resting in a bloody pile in the hollow of a tree, drool cascading down her mouth following sharp white teeth that Angela would guess hoped could cut the thing chasing her, even if it meant it would kill her next.

‘Much bigger than in the movies,’ she managed to think for a second as she barreled towards it.

If she was able to see or reason fully in that moment, who knows if she would have seen the bear’s eyes widen a bit in terror before it grabbed her by her shoulder and tossed her on it’s back in a smooth and quick maneuver that probably gave Angela whiplash, but she could not have felt it then, all she felt was dense and coarse fur that she buried herself into in an attempt to not fall off and be left to whatever was hopefully now leagues behind her.

Minutes or hours later, when she stopped relying solely on blind instinct and the fear and panic started to firmly set in, she realized they’d slowed down at about the exact same time she’d started to sob into the furry back of what she was slowly beginning to remember belonged to a bear.

But it walked, silently grunting and growling a bit as angela tried her hardest to calm down for long enough to get off of said bear and make some kind of escape plan and not enough to start thinking about how close she is to dying and how much she missed her parents.

‘At least they won’t have to hear about me dying via horrific bear attack.’ She thought.

It took Angela a good five minutes to notice that not only was the bear not protesting by any means, but that it was carrying a weird weaved bag that closed completely at the top.

It took one minute for her to decide to talk to it.

“Hello?”

She, of course, got no response in return. So she, of course, tried again.

“Listen, I don't know if you're…I don't really know what…do you know, do you know if there's a town nearby?”

Angela abruptly fell to the floor even though the bear slowly tilted its body to the side in an attempt to gently knock her off.

She attempted to process the feel of the ground underneath her while the thud of the bear’s paws rumbled through the air while she dropped the weaved bag on the ground next to a tree and the rabbit’s that it had apparently been carrying the whole time and trotted behind it.

The human fly thing was weird, but Angela was not prepared to hear the twitching and squelching sounds that came from behind that tree, and she definitely wasn’t prepared to see a chubby, brown arm reach out to pick up the bag.

A short black woman, who didn't look much older than twenty, with a chestnut brown Afro that framed her heart shaped face trotted around the corner with the same jolly gait the bear had, picking the rabbits up and shoving them in a separate basket that she'd seemingly pulled out from nowhere.

She was fat and beautiful and she did not look as though she could lift a one hundred and eighty pound five foot seven woman up off the ground and give her a piggyback ride.

“What, how, and who the hell is she?” She should work on that habit of saying things out loud.

“The town isn't far from here at all, I think you can take a guess, I don’t know, a witch could probably tell you, I guess? And I’m Maggie. Good to meet you! The circumstances could definitely be better, but it’s nice to see a new face.”

Angela stared at her, unblinking for an uncomfortably long time.

She’d been attacked, and she still shuddered at the thought of that thing, and saved by a bear who was actually a person. What could she even say?

“Your dress is so cute. Is that Versace?” She cringed the second she asked, but it’s the closest thing to a reaction she could manage.

“No, I don't really know who that is, but I made it myself.”

Angela nodded, wondering for a second if she run.

“Wicked. My mom always tried to teach me to sew, but I just never really got into it.”

The bear—Maggie nodded, “yeah, it’s hard starting out. Let me tell you, I didn't have the slightest interest in it until they invented the machines. I'm so glad we were able to reconstruct them, half my wardrobe wouldn't exist if we hadn't.”

She reached down and offered Angela a hand, holding back a laugh as she yelped a bit when she took her hand and hauled her up.

Angela brushed off her clothes without breaking eye contact with Maggie, hoping bears were one of the animals you were supposed to make eye contact with, “I feel you, if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself, you know?”

The bear woman smiled and nodded, “Ugh, don’t I know it? Oh, goodness, it’s like pitch black out here for you! Are you still headed to town?”

Angela nodded rapidly, “Yes! Yes, thank you, I'd really appreciate that. I'm a little, well, honestly, a lot, turned around right now.”

The woman sighed and gave her the most pitying glance and honestly, she appreciated it more than she should’ve. Being looked at at all felt like such a privilege, even if it’s by a possibly murderous bear woman.

“Yeah. I can only imagine. Can I give you a hug?”

Angela immediately shook her head. “Later. Please, but I can't right now.” If she hugged someone for the first time in years after everything that happened tonight she would cry forever. And she was starting to feel really dehydrated from all of the running and she’d only brought a small flask of water cause she hadn’t thought she’d have long to use it and she really didn’t want to cry in front of this stranger again, even if a hug sounded like it would fix all of her problems.

Maggie nodded, “Of course. Come on, honey. You look like you could use something to eat. And probably a long nap.” She said before leading her down the direction of an obviously frequently used path.

“Thanks. I'd be fine with just some directions even, I just really don't know where I'm heading.”

She tentatively picked up a rabbit with her thumb and pointer, trying to touch as little of the corpse as possible while still helping.

“It's fine, hon,” Maggie said, taking the rabbit from her and shoving it in her basket, “you've had a rough night.”

She trailed along after Maggie through the forest, making small talk for the first time in three years ever so often, letting there be a lull in the conversation long enough for her to be eternally grateful she was still good at it.

“If you don't mind me asking, how did you… get all the way out here?”

Obviously she meant “How did you not die horribly?” But Angela appreciated her at least trying not to paint the elephant in the room neon green.

“Well, I was inside a bunker."

"A what?"

"When everything happened, I was at work. I went down in the basement to look for some pens or paperwork, or something, I can’t even remember what, and then everything happened all at once and the door was closed behind me and—"

Angela squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus on the sounds of the leaves crunching under her feet.

"Go on. If you want to, that is. If it's easier, maybe you can just tell me what a bunker is?"

She squeezed her eyes closed, shaking her head to try and erase the thought from her mind, laughing a bit at herself, "right, yes, that's what you were asking. It's just an underground building created to protect its inhabitants from nuclear warfare. I was living in one. For the past three years. Or nearly, it would have been three next week."

The woman whistled, "Damn. That's a long time without—"

"Yes, I know." Angela cut her off.

Whatever it is she was going to say, good food, a real shower, a hug from a family member, it wouldn't help to hear someone say it out loud to her.

She was quiet for a moment before stopping, making Angela halt too, now aware of the fact that she had been following a complete stranger through the middle of nowhere.

"What's your name, by the way?” Maggie asked.

She wore her most professional smile, the one she used for interviews where condolences weren't required, the one she used to greet potential clients, the one she used at a bar when she wanted a free drink, the same smile she hasn’t had to use in three years.

"Angela Weathers, a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” She refrained from reaching into her pockets for the business cards that she had brought with her despite it all.

The woman smiled, "It’s a pleasure to meet you as well. It seems like you've had a rough go about things so far, Angela. I’m sorry to say you don’t have many options, but I can offer you some."

Angela nodded, immediate relief flooding her at the idea of being able to use actual logic to make an actual decision again.

"Alright, shoot."

"What?"

"I mean, tell me the options."

Maggie nodded, "alright, so, right now we're walking to the village, obviously, we're calling it Noman, but we're all still workshopping titles."

"But it's been three years." she said, looking at her confused.

Maggie rolled her eyes, "I know. Write the elders and ask them about it, supposedly they'll answer, but not sooner than twenty hours after it’s sent.

Or days, or weeks, or months. Or,” she looked at Angela briefly, “years.”

“Wait, the elders?”

Maggie rolled her eyes, “Yes, that’s what we’ve been calling them. They haven’t exactly been doing much to stop, well, what was chasing us just now.”

“Don’t bring whatever that thing is up again. Please.”

Maggie nodded. “There’s not many of them, if that helps.”

She smiled slightly, “it doesn’t much. But maybe soon it will.”

Maggie smiled back at the young woman, “I hope it does.”

Angela nodded, coughing and looking straight ahead, “Anyway, the options?”

“Yes! Right! OK, right now, we're walking towards the village. I run an inn, and nobody can come here and everyone has there own homes, so I do have a spare room. If you wish to stay there for a couple of nights, you're more than welcome."

“You would do that?” Angela stared at Maggie and got a look in response that could only mean that statement had broken her heart. Maggie’s face brought her back to every moment she’d taken one cookie from her grandma instead of three.

Maggie just nodded.

“I'll admit, I don't know what to say, or how to repay you at all.”

Maggie shrugged, “you don't have to say anything. And you definitely do not have to repay me.”

Maybe Angela stiffened when she heard her say it and didn't realize, maybe her smile faulted a bit, or maybe Maggie just smelled the fear of saying and doing nothing for longer than a few seconds on her breath.

“Well,” she drawled, “if you're really looking for something to do, you could help me make the stew for tonight. Can you cook?"

Angela remembered the first time she'd invited her parents and sister over for dinner at her first apartment, and how much money she'd lost on her security deposit after the burnt and overcooked pasta noodles started a fire and left a permanent stain on her ceiling.

She tried and failed to imagine the horror of someone having her handle the knives and body parts of some poor, innocent rabbits.

"In a manner of speaking."

Maggie squinted at her, "if that's not your prime skillset, you can always wait tables or help me and the kids clean rooms."

Angela nodded, trying to hide her shock at the idea that such a young woman/bear had kids.

‘Hey, who am I to judge, it's the eighties,’ she thought, thankfully not saying it out loud.

“Alright, what's option two?"

"The town isn't big, word gets around, you could ask around and see if you can apply for any positions, tomorrow though, maybe even next week, alright? I won't hear any word about you going off in the middle of the night to find work. If you're really stubborn, I'll show you the safer areas to rest in the woods until you're able to afford a house.”

Angela nodded, already knowing sleeping alone in the woods wasn’t an option anymore.

"So, option three?"

"I could give you some new food, maybe some fresh clothes if you have something to trade, and take you back to your bunker."

"Option four?"

"That's it, I'm afraid. Or it's all I can think of, at least."

Angela did not want to go back into that bunker.

She knew it probably would be her best bet, to stay there for a while, get some food, maybe dip into a little of option two and start looking for a job while she stays at home base.

But she really didn't want to.

She wanted to wake up stressed about work again.

She missed the sounds of people running around, and arguing, she needed the city.

Always had.

“Alright, let's try option one.”