//------------------------------//
// plains 
// Story: No. Not there. She's not on the moon. 
// by waste 
//------------------------------//

Two damaged females. One holds the other. The rain would relent then die. Outside is the smell of freshly fallen rain. Dampness and crispness would hold the air. Hayden plunders through the supplies. He would find boxes and take them. The sun squanders its light.

“You okay?”
“No”
“You’re better though”
“Yes. I’m better. I don’t know why, but I’m better. Thank you Elle.”

He would reach them with the box in his hands. Hayden smiles slowly at Luna. The broken pony stares at the box he holds. He would place it in her hooves and hug her as well. Two of them holding the pony. The three of them would stare at the outside. The outside smothered in water. 

“He had a good sense of humour”
“What?”
“He likes writing and told only me this. Everyone thinks he can’t read and write but he can. He could never kill, but he tried so hard to for a while. He thought that his conscience was something to fight not to listen to. He had no family and no home, and that explains a lot about most creatures like him. That they are free and freedom is terrifying. He could never admit it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I keep him. He’d hate that but I keep him inside of me. The memory of him. I see him sometimes when I think I’m alone. I’d walk out and I imagine him hiding in light or shadows. I know what he loves and what he hates. I know what he is. If I can remember that then he’s still alive. I’ll tell him this one day.”
“Christ”
“Pardon?”
“You miss him a lot. You miss discord”
“Yes. I miss him”
“You’re a bit of a romanticist aren’t you?”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind Luna. Never mind”


Elle would leave Hayden with Luna and tend the fire. A woman hunched over the fire for a few seconds. She takes out a small sack of rice. She would take water from the plastic drums outside. The water would simmer and boil in a pan. The rice cooking. 

Hayden stays with Luna, and she stiffly puts a wing around him. The boy examines Luna’s skin. He lifts his head and would glare at the tear tracks down her face. Luna holds a box filled with rattling and tumbling. His voice stitched on to the quiet. His mother can’t hear him.
“I’ve done what you done Luna”
“Pardon Hayden?”
“I’ve shouted at my ma”
“Really?”
“Yes I shouted at my ma. But it was a bad thing I think. I didn’t feel much better but I did it”
“Yes. I understand that little one”
“Luna you need to know. I don’t think you’re evil. Wait. Why are you laughing?”
“Because you made me happy little one. I think you’re the first to say that in a long while”
“It doesn’t sound like good laughter”
“I know. I’m sorry little one. It’s just I need to laugh or I’ll go crazy”
“Yeah”

Luna feels the edges of the box. Coarse surface and coarse colours of brown. She feels her way around intricacies in flaws and tears. The box battered, worn, just like them in a way. The box rattles and when she opens it there are packets of biscuits inside. Hayden would fidget watching her.

“I miss someone as well Luna”
“Really little one?”
“My pa”
“Oh”
“I see him sometimes in my sleep”
“I see discord as well”
“Does it get better?”
“What gets better little one?”
“Does everything get better? My ma says everything will get better, but I think she’s only saying that. I can’t think like my ma. She thinks of everything at the same time. I don’t know what to think”
“I don’t know Hayden. I don’t know what to say, I’m sorry I don’t know. But It’s good you’re asking these questions Hayden”
“I don’t think it’s good. It hurts. Those questions hurt Luna. It’s why I shouted at my ma.”

A tiny boy staring ferociously at the pony. How could he be that Luna? How could he be that small and feel so much? Hayden was quiet and polite. But underneath was a current of feeling. You can see it in colour framed eyes. A quiet kid that needs to talk more. A lot like his mother maybe.

“I told you not to worry little one”
“Okay. But my pa”
“What about him?”
“He walks up to me in my dreams Luna. He talks to me. I know it doesn’t sound it, but it’s really scary”
“I Know Hayden. I know”
“His mouth wasn’t moving. He was talking but his mouth wasn’t moving”

They would both frown in a silence between them. Hayden’s brow would furrow into ridges and grooves. Too old. Too old for his face. Luna would clumsily take a packet of biscuits in her hooves. Already night has approached the dull watery day. She would fumble and tear. When the package opens she gives him the biscuits. Hayden stops frowning and starts eating the biscuits. Halfway through the packet he rummages inside the box then opens another packet for Luna. They sit awhile taking dry crumbled bites.

“You two eating again?”
“Yes ma, but it’s only small. Just biscuits ma”
“Okay you two. I have rice cooking so save room for it”
“Okay ma”

Smoke drags and bites at their eyes. They all congregate closer to the back of the cave. Three bowls of rice served. The mother would open her hands and a small sprinkling of salt is spread on them. They eat with their hands and hooves. Rice licked of hands and Elle chuckling at the rice sticking to everything. Luna would look at a diluted night, rice stuck to her lips. All in all her stare was wasted for there was nothing outside.

*******************************

“You awake Luna?”
“Yes little one. It’s hard to sleep at night”
“Oh. Okay. Did I just wake you up?”
“No. I just can’t sleep at night very well”
“Why Luna?”
“It’s because I used to be ruler of the night. All the skies and all their stars”
“Oh”

******************************

Dreary and heavy. Elle lifted her hands to the sunlight and it fell through. Streams of paled gold through her fingers. She would take shallow breaths of halted ashen air. She would prise Hayden off her. Her hands wonder to her hair then ties it back. Her hair is short, the kind of style he liked and ran his hand through. Food is running out Elle. Food is always running out. 

She takes instant noodles and three teabags. She would stoke the fire with what’s left of the log. Barely a fire made in the corpse of the wood. Water would boil again, steam and smoke rising with the sun. Sunlight would slide on flats of dew and mist in the forest. She takes boiling water to be poured. Teabags brewed in the cup and the sour smell of noodles and all their spice and flavour. The smell of it whispered out and echoing in the stench of fallen rain. Hayden wakes up.

“Morning ma”
“Come over here”

She would wrap an arm around him and kiss the crown of his head. Hayden would murmur and grumble. Luna in a crumple of herself, asleep in an unzipped sleeping bag. When sunlight reaches her she wakes up coughing. The three of them spend the morning slowly eating and slowly drinking. Afterwards Elle would rise to kick the fire out. The shotgun in one hand and the compass in the other. They move from the cave with all they can carry. Moving south.

For days they do this. Sleeping eating then rising. They move like exiles, their collective eyes moving over the land they are banished to. Vanished world’s become harder to remember. Yet Luna still dreams of him. She hoped he would go away but he didn’t. Discord visits her sleep and when he does there is colour and life. She doesn’t trust these dreams. She can’t trust something good. Too good to last and too good to stay with her. If these dreams lasted any longer she wanted to sleep and join them. But she would wake shaking and most times Elle would wake with her.

They would trudge across the forest as the mist died. Overall the days seemed brighter and warmer. They left the forest after the fifth day into a stretch of plains and scatterings of trees among them. A river abounded it all, sawing through the landscape. Water left there to eat through the soft earth and rock. The sun bare. When Elle eyed this land she was reminded of America and its own great plains. Of what America is now and what it should’ve been.