One Step Forward...
MAY 26
Like everyone else (or at least I assume like everyone else), I have recurring dreams.
You know the kind - standing in a crowded hallway in your high school ten years past graduation, knowing you had to be in class but also knowing you didn’t have any idea where it was or what course it covered.
That was one of mine, but not the one that matters.
The other one I had on a regular basis involved being in tight spaces. Things like really narrow hallways in houses, or having to go through a window opening - for some reason - that was only a few inches wider than I was. I have no idea what that’s about - if I knew, I might be able to make a decent living as a psychologist. All I know is I’m no claustrophobe, so it wasn’t out of some kind of fear.
Anyway, it seems like some things didn’t change when I became the pony me. I had that dream last night, sort of. Instead of a house or a subterranean bunker complex or the basement of an unfamiliar hotel, like usual, I found myself surrounded by puffy white stuff.
I was walking on it, and could push it aside to an extent, though there was a definite form to it if I probed deep enough - like a super-soft cushioned corridor, eventually I couldn’t shove it aside. But a corridor was still a corridor, and so I walked on. (Little did I notice that my dream self was walking on four hooves now, just like the real me.)
As per usual in my dreams, the corridor eventually opened up - no dead ends to trap me - and to my surprise, this time, I found myself in a cloud city. I don’t mean a tarmac-and-steel city in the clouds, I mean a cloud city. Every visible surface was white cotton-ball-like vapor.
And there were ponies. Hundreds of them. Walking and flying around, to-ing and fro-ing, going about their daily business, so it would seem. Every color of the rainbow was represented, but one thing stuck out as plain as the sun shining down on this visage.
Every single pony there was a pegasus.
I felt a bump against my side and turned to look at what had nudged me.
Bump.
Bump.
Bump.
A giggle.
Bump.
“Stop it,” I moaned.
Bump. Another giggle.
“Not until you see how I’m doing this,” Jill said with a mirthful tone.
I forced an eye open and turned my head to look over my shoulder. Just beyond my ribcage, a wooden spoon was hovering in midair, surrounded by a yellowish glow. It haltingly inched towards my side and the spoon part dug in, right in the soft part of my barrel below my ribs.
Bump.
“Hee hee,” Jill giggled again, squirming with delight from her side of the encampment. Her horn was also emanating that yellow glow.
“How…” I began, but I knew how. I’d seen it first-hoof - I mean, first-hand - last night. Like it was a completely normal thing to do, some kind of field erupted from her unicorn horn and a similar glow enveloped my hind leg as I’d gone over the edge of the roof. A few seconds passed, and my leg, everything else attached to my leg (thankfully!), and the antenna and coax cable held in my teeth were all hauled back up onto the roof.
Neither of us had any idea how it happened. Jill insisted she was just filled with a need to save me from falling, and the next thing she knew, she was depositing me back on the tar-and-gravel. I didn’t seem to sport any ill effects - other than being a little freaked out about it. We slapped the antenna up where I’d said we were going to put it, and came back inside, closing the hatch, and I went straight to lie down, apparently going to sleep soon after.
“Have you been up all night?” I asked her as she mercifully stopped harassing me with the utensil.
“Noooo,” she said as if denying an accusation. “...Not all night.”
“What time is it?”
“A little after seven-thirty. Why are you so obsessed over time? You ask every morning.”
“Force of habit,” I said. Things were still overloading me - the changes we’d been through, and now the dreams I was having, plus my co-survivor’s apparent ability to telekinetically grab anything she wanted and propel it through the air. Having something regular like the clock probably kept me sane, or at least clinging to the ragged edge.
“I need to explore this more,” she said giddily, rising to her hooves and ‘picking up’ the spoon again. “I bet I can make breakfast without lifting a hoof.”
“Wash that before you use it,” I called to her, sniffing at myself. “Eugh. I smell like wet dog.” We didn’t have those kind of cleaning facilities set up yet - bathrooms in malls don’t often have showers. I idly wondered if the sprayer in the produce aisle - do they still have those, even? - would still have pressure.
I mentally chewed on my dream while Jill built our meal. It seemed strange, but then again, all dreams did, to me. Maybe it was just my mind trying to catch up with my new body - replacing all the humans with pegasuses.
Pegasuses? Pegasi? I’d have to see if I could look that up and figure out which was right. The problem was, finding an encyclopedia or dictionary was going to be difficult, and the usual Web references weren’t going to be available much longer, if they were even still available now. Stupidly, I hadn't bothered to check.
I trotted over to the TVs and saw only two were still active - both were tuned to superstations, network broadcasters that probably had extra generator or power reserves to stay going even after the world had ended. It made sense that one or two would have extra emergency supplies courtesy of the government, to allow for public information channels to exist when everything else bit the dust.
Maybe. I had no idea, really - I was talking out my furry grey ass, so to speak.
“What’re you doing over here?”
Jill walked up beside me with our morning salad bowl balanced on her back, same as the day before.
“Thought I might sit down and watch Shrek - maybe even recite it word-for-word,” I responded, tossing a hoof at the DVD-equipped display.
Jill chuckled, getting the reference. “Aw, we’re not that bad off,” she said, depositing the bowl on the ground and lying down beside me.
“We haven’t seen or heard anyone else,” I countered. I dipped my head to the bowl and nibbled on a helping. “How come you didn’t levitate this out from the kitchen?”
“I’m not very smooth with it yet,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to spill any food. It’s going to be in short supply eventually.”
I wanted to talk more about her ability, but her statement about our supplies shunted my thoughts to that track. “That’s right,” I said, grimacing a little. “I guess we’re going to have to figure something out.”
“At the very least, we’ll have to get further out of the city so we can find some grass to graze.”
I looked up at her with a wide-eyed expression, trying to determine if she was for real.
She held up her front hooves in the 'I give' pose. “Kidding! Kidding. Relax.”
I smirked after her grin set me at ease. “Don’t joke about that.”
“Sorry. But you need a joke now and then. You’re always like a dark storm cloud.” She took a bite of the salad. “Anyway, I know you have your heart set on talking like a donkey and a Scottish ogre all morning, but weren’t you going to set up the radio?”
“Oh. Right,” I nodded, looking towards the back of the store. Of course, the project was abandoned midway through, when last night’s events transpired. “Yeah, I should get on that. Putting an end on that cable is going to be tough… I’m not sure I can work a crimper with hooves.”
“Tell you what. Do what you can by yourself, and I’m going to spend some time playing with my horn. When you get to the bits you need help with, call for me, and either my hooves or my horn are yours for the rest. Okay?”
“Deal,” I smiled.
And so, after breakfast, we went our separate ways. I went into the back part of the store and picked up the cable hanging from the roof hatch, using one of those rolling metal staircases to run the line along the ceiling, fixing it to the roof beams with duct tape. Why? I have no idea. It would have been just as easy to let it hang loose and run to the radio from there, but it would have been a trip hazard, and I guess I have a little OCD after all.
Once or twice - okay, several times - I heard a hellacious clatter from somewhere else in the store. At one point it sounded like someone threw a full set of pots and pans down a staircase. Immediately after came a distant cry of “I’m okay! I’m okay! Everything’s all right! Just keep doing what you’re doing!”
It was almost noon by the time I ran out of cable. Leaving enough length to dangle down from the ceiling to the cart we’d put the radio on, it ended up being about forty feet from our ‘bedrooms’. I guess this’ll have to do.
I ran a series of extension cords and power bars from the nearest receptacle to the radio cart, for power - the fire marshal would have had a heart attack from the daisy-chained cabling (mmm, daisies - wait, what am I thinking??!) - and confirmed it had power, but I still had to put a connector on the antenna cable so it could be hooked into the radio.
I went back into our ‘living room’ and called out, “Jill?”
“Tom?” came the reply.
“Where are you?”
“Dairy! Come see this.”
I trotted over there and blinked, stopping at the end of the aisle. I froze in place, not wanting to disturb what was going on lest I upset the whole spectacle.
Floating in midair were two plastic cups, each with varying quantities of milk in them. Also in the air was a partially-full milk jug with its lid off. The three objects whirled around one another, the glasses and jug pouring into each other with practiced, though not perfect, ease.
Jill had her eyes fixed on the objects in her magic field. I don’t think she would have noticed a freight train obliterating the aisle beside her. However, she must have heard me approach. “Lookit this! Three things at once!”
I just stared and shook my head.
We each had a celebratory glass of milk to mark Jill mastering - or, I probably should say, slowly learning to control - this new ability. She was still unsteady with it, kind of like a kid riding a bike without training wheels for the first time, but we agreed she should keep practicing with it, only on non-critical tasks (ironic considering how she discovered she had it).
So we ended up back at the radio. Jill held the cable and connector steady while I stripped the cable down to bare wires, then put it inside the connector and used the crimping tool with both hooves, pushing as hard as I could.
“Give it a gentle tug?” I suggested after I finished.
The connector didn’t come off the cable, so I declared it done and we hooked it up to the radio. Turning on the radio once more, I tried to tune various known channels, but nobody was transmitting, as far as I could tell. One or two repeaters made their ‘acknowledge’ response after I keyed the mic, but otherwise, the bands were silent.
“Let me try,” Jill suggested, and I took my hoof away from the tuning dial as it began to glow slightly, then move seemingly of its own accord. The frequencies on the display flicked from number to number as the radio was tuned without human - er, pony - touch.
“I’m going to try some different settings,” I said, reaching up to flick some of the myriad of switches on the radio face. Without getting too involved in the explanation, some signals could be perfectly readable in a specific mode or configuration, but completely lost with the default settings used. I wanted to make sure we didn’t miss somebody just because their radio happened to be set to some oddball modulation when they sent their distress call.
Nothing came through, and Jill looked dejected, but I said, “This doesn’t mean anything bad just yet. We’ve only had the radio on for a few minutes. Who knows how many people might have tried calling before we had it hooked up? Let’s put out a message and see if we get an answer.”
“Okay,” she nodded. The microphone glowed yellow briefly, floating over to me.
“Um, thanks,” I said, cradling it in my hooves. I had her tune to a specific frequency, then took a breath and keyed up the mic.
“If you can hear this, if you can hear my voice,” I began, “we are survivors. You are not alone. Please break in on this transmission and call in. If you can’t transmit, come to-” I paused, then looked to Jill and went on. “-the Liverpool Road strip mall in Pickering, Ontario. We will wait for you there an hour every day, from eleven-thirty to noon-thirty. We know you have questions. We may not have answers, but we can learn about our situation together. Please… let us know you’re out there.”
As I let go of the mic, Jill waited a few seconds until it was obvious nobody was answering. “Why did you give the address of the mall across the street?” she queried.
“Paranoia, I guess?” I shrugged. “It’s not smart to say ‘hey, we have food and water, it’s right here’. At least that’s what I learned from all the post-apocalypse stories I’ve read. Maybe that’s all horsesh… er… junk. But maybe it’s just good safe thinking.”
Both of us fell silent, waiting again to see if anyone would answer. When the radio remained dormant for another long minute, Jill said, “Maybe this was a bust.”
“Don’t give in just yet,” I said. I fiddled with the controls a little bit. “Let me figure out a way to repeat this … oh, that might work…”
“What might work?”
“Aaah, it’s complicated,” I said dismissively.
“Hey!” I got a swat on the back of my head for that. “Remember I was a lab tech before all this went down. I think I can understand a radio.”
“Ow,” I shot back, rubbing my neck under my mane. “All right then. This radio lets you send out station identification every so often. You can set it to Morse code with your callsign, or you can record a message - what’s meant to be recorded is your callsign and optionally some cheesy welcome greeting or something. But…” I tapped a couple more keys and buttons. “Now our little mayday call is our message, and-” four more taps and then a push of the Enter key “-now it is set to send out that ID every 15 minutes on this channel until we tell it to stop.”
“Not bad,” Jill said, seeming to be impressed. “How far will it reach?”
I sat back on my haunches and sighed. “That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question. If the antenna works properly, a couple dozen miles. It’s not a professional grade high-gain model, so it’s not going to win any contests. I’d be pleased if it got into the GTA proper and across the lake.”
“Into New York State?” she asked. “Wow.”
“People don’t realize how close we are to the US,” I nodded. “I hear state patrol and other stuff like that all the time.”
“Did we tune it just now?” she asked, pointing to the dial with a hoof. Meaning, do we know if anyone still existed in that part of the US?
“We did,” I nodded grimly. “Well, part of it. We’ll need to get a different radio to try the other part. For now, let’s just let this thing work.”
“Does that mean I can go back to juggling?” she grinned.
“Actually,” I said. “I was wondering if you’d use what your ‘butt picture’ says you’re good at for me for a bit.”
Jill blushed - it was nice to get her on the defensive once in a while. “What do you mean?”
“I think it’s a good idea if we write down what’s been going on. Just in case…” I grimaced, not wanting to think of the idea. “In case we need our story told, of what happened here, and we’re not here to tell it.”
“God, who’s being morbid?” Jill retorted.
“Hear me out. At the very least, keeping track of what’s happened and what we’ve been doing will let us maintain a sense of what day it is, when those finally give up.” I had a hoof pointed at our phones, charging in our common area. “I’d really like to believe that we will eventually find someone else. Keeping notes on our experiences will maybe help them along when we come across them.”
“Okay,” she nodded. “Actually, I’d been thinking of keeping a journal myself, for some of the same reasons you mentioned.”
I nodded back. “Okay then.”
“Well, I’ll get started on that,” Jill said, standing back up and turning away. “I’ll go find paper and a pen in the office supplies area.”
“I’ll be over here,” I said, gesturing to our common area. Partially to keep the radio in earshot and partly to plan the next move I wanted - but was reluctant - to make.
We’d sat there for several more hours, Jill scratching out our story on a ruled notepad with a pen - manipulating it with her magic - and me fiddling with the radio, tuning the secondary receiver up and down (a lot of these radios have two receivers, so you can transmit and receive on one, like we’d set ours up to do, and monitor another frequency).
Finally, after as much messing about idly as I could stand, my mind said I had all the willpower I was going to be able to muster, and I stood up. “I’m going out in the truck,” I announced.
Jill startled, stopping her writing abruptly. “What? Where?”
“Where I should have gone days ago,” I said, feeling the guilt continue to well up in me, as it had been building steadily over the past 48 or so hours. “I owe that much to her.”
Jill figured it out right away; I was going to check on my sister and her kids. “I’ll come with you.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “It’s not your problem.”
“I wasn’t offering, I was telling.”
I said nothing and just headed for the exit. Behind me, I heard another quartet of hoofsteps on the polished floor, and was grateful, though I couldn’t admit it openly.
The SUV was where I left it. Luckily I hadn’t left the door open, or the battery might have been dead by now. I tried to climb in and wrestle myself into the position required for driving, and after a short struggle, I found myself being nudged gently here and there, giving me a lift up, so to speak.
“Thanks,” I said, as Jill smiled, the glow on her horn fading. She bumped her rump against the door to shut it, then went around the other side and helped herself in and up.
Five minutes later, once we were on the road, Jill broke the silence. “Got any theories on where everypony went?”
“‘Everypony’?” I echoed, raising an eyebrow quizzically.
She shrugged. “You know what I meant. But look at the roads. No cars crashed, no planes down…”
“I had thought about that,” I agreed. “Even at the time of day this seems to have happened, you’d have thought there would be one or two cars to crash into things after their drivers were beamed up to the mothership, or whatever.”
“None of it makes sense,” Jill said, waving her forehooves in front of her. She held out a hoof like she was counting things off on fingers that were no longer there. “Why did it happen, why did some people get taken and not us, why haven’t other ponies contacted us, why are we ponies...”
I chuckled - or was it a giggle now? - and Jill looked over to me. “What’s funny?”
“Oh, not you. I’m with you 100% on every point you made.” I rotated the steering wheel as smoothly as I could, making a turn onto the 407 freeway. “I’m taking the toll road. And I have no intention of paying the bill when it comes.”
“Mmph,” Jill suppressed a giggle. “You rebel.”
“Anyway,” I carried on. “If I let my analytical side out for a bit, the odds are overwhelming that nobody is around to come find us. That’s why nobody has contacted us. There could be nobody in radio range. That’s, let’s be optimistic, a 30 to 50 mile radius at least in which we are the only two people left. I can’t even calculate how many people that means just vanished.” If I wasn’t driving, I’d’ve squeezed my eyes shut and shrunk down in the seat, to try to combat the thoughts this line of talk was forcing into my mind.
“The cars and planes and stuff, I have no idea,” I went on. “To me it’s just another part of the puzzle, along with the other questions you asked like ‘why are we ponies’ or aliens that look like ponies or whatever we are. Like you said, none of it makes sense. But what’s more important right now - what we need to focus on - is keeping ourselves fed, sheltered, and protected, and to maybe beat the odds and find some more survivors.”
Jill agreed with me and eventually moved on to playing with the radio - both the ham rig and the stereo - while we continued to drive. We chatted every now and then about various things, but I think Jill had realized that what lay at the end of our journey was weighing heavily on my mind and decided to avoid taking the conversation down that path any further.
She looked up when I put the shifter into Park, and found us in a gravel driveway, off Highway 48, just past a bridge over a little river. “Is this it?” she asked softly.
I just nodded, looking at the two-story house, all buttoned up like I’d last seen it, the Tuesday before I headed off to the races.
“Want me to go check it out?”
I glanced over at my traveling companion, a look of worry mixed with empathy on her pink muzzle.
“...Would you?” I finally said tinily.
Jill patted my hoof with one of her own. “I’ll be right back,” she said, then let herself out of the truck.
I watched from behind the steering wheel as she slowly walked up the path - or actually, on the grass beside the path - to the front door. It opened with a brief yellow glow, and in she went.
My mind raced with all the possibilities that were already options from what I’d seen from afar. The door was unlocked so she’s probably not there or else she’d have the place secured against survivors and scavengers, or maybe she saw us arrive and let Jill in, but why would she let Jill in she doesn’t even know her, of course she doesn’t know her a pink unicorn just walked in, and used magic to open the door no less, oh please don’t let there be bodies-
I pretty much overloaded at that point, just squeezed my eyes shut and curled in on myself, like I’d threatened to earlier. I said a while back that I’m not religious, but I was willing to pray to whatever deity was listening, even if it was some alien creature that had done all this to us, to have mercy on my family and me, and just either make them safe or ensure they didn’t suffer…
I have no idea how long I sat there curled up in the truck. There was a tap on the driver’s window, to which I nearly jumped out of my new skin. Turning, I saw Jill there, her horn touching the window. She backed up, face expressionless, and let me open the door.
“There’s nothing inside,” she said quietly.
I unbuckled the seat belt and tumbled out of the seat onto the ground - was this going to be my trademark, falling out of the truck every time I use it? - and got back to my hooves with Jill’s help.
We went up the front lawn, and detachedly I understood why she walked on the grass earlier. It was much nicer on my hooves than the pavement or stone floors we’d been trudging around on the past few days constantly.
Through the door I went; the same threshold I’d crossed thousands of times over the past two decades after my sister bought the place and moved across the road from our parents’ home; but this time for the first time as a fuzzy grey mini-pegasus.
Shoes - human shoes - were piled in a jumble by the door, as they always had been. Susan was the single mom of two teenage sons, and they did as teenagers do. The older one, Glenn, was into rugby and football, and signs of his having come from a recent practice or game in the latter were by the door, making my hairs stand on end from the stale sweat smell on the protective gear.
Sean, the younger, was a budding musician, taking after his mother; his trumpet, formerly hers, was in its case beside the couch.
The computer was on, as none of them bothered to ever turn it off when they were done with it. I nudged the mouse and Sue’s lock screen came up, with a picture of the two boys as the background.
Jill followed me around silently, though she’d supposedly already been through the place. I first went upstairs, looking in the boys’ rooms, seeing nothing out of place - and by that I mean they were as messy as they come. Just like any teenage boy’s room. It was impossible to tell if they’d vanished, been turned into ponies and walked away, or something else.
Back downstairs to the kitchen. The fridge was decently stocked, though I recoiled at the packaged meat sitting in there - it was probably past its use-by date, but I couldn’t bring myself to stomach its odor long enough to study it. The milk did seem off, though.
Through the bathroom into Sue’s bedroom. This was the ‘tell’, so to speak.
The bed was unkempt and messy, much like the sleeping bags I’d seen in other campsites at the racetrack. Sue had a fastidious love of keeping things organized. She wouldn’t even get dressed after getting out of bed before she made sure it was made up and ready for the next night’s use.
I noticed something on the bedside table and went over, poking at it. The iPhone came to life, still plugged into its charger.
17:21 06/26 LTE TELUS 100%
08:30 ((Alarm))
Sat, May 23
To-Do Today:
Glenn’s Practice 11:00
Get Sean to mow!
Collect Tom’s paper/mail &
water his plants
slide to acknowledge
I just hung my head and blew air between my teeth, completely speechless, brain totally numb, body soon to follow.
I felt a presence beside me; Jill read the phone display and frowned, then leaned her head against my neck in a comforting gesture.
She guided me back to the truck, and I walked, mainly on autopilot, as far as I can remember. The passenger door opened of its own volition and I was lifted into the seat and buckled in.
“Your place is this one? Across the road? It looks really nice,” I remember hearing, and the truck drove the short distance up the highway to my drive, turning down it and parking under the big tree. The one Sue and I had had a tire swing on in our youth. The one Glenn broke his arm falling out of when he was twelve.
I was helped out of the truck, gently, and led in the front door of my - formerly my parents' - bungalow. Somewhere in my mind I registered that everything was as I left it, with the exception of my newspapers and mail on the dining room table - at least the ones up to the 22nd.
The hall to my bedroom was narrow, not wide enough for two ponies, much less two people, to walk side-by-side in, so Jill nudged me forward, somehow guessing where the master bedroom was, and herding me up onto my bed. My pillows glowed briefly, fluffing themselves up, then set themselves down right where my head ended up after I was guided to a lying position.
“Rest,” came the voice softly.
I obeyed it, closing my eyes.
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Wait... so... they are in Markham right now??? If thats the case then you are literally 103 km from AJ. Legitimately, no joke.
6128459 That's why I said 'wait what' earlier. Happenings in the GTA are important to me. :)
6128530 That makes so much more sense! Also don't worry I was planning on AJ staying up by Lake Simcoe for a bit, before eventually moving down toward Niagara Falls
*jaw just dropped* Ho..ly.. shit... I just realized something. Me, you, and graycait ARE ALL CHRONOLOGICALLY SYNCED!!!
There's no way that can't be the most depressing thing in the world. Finding your family didn't stay behind. The odds are just not in your favor no matter what. Still, there's the radio broadcasting constantly now, so maybe these "mares" won't be alone forever. A little hope. NYC has got to have the largest colony (though it might not exist yet), if the transmission reaches that far. Not sure if it does or not.
6128530 6128551 My tale's still quite a ways out from the rest of you guys, but I'm keeping track as well. If only Robin knew how to work radios. Still, I've been keeping note of major events that may or may not influence others in the province. And that's Grey with an 'e'. Get that American out of your spelling!
6129180 New York the state is pretty close, New York the city is still an eight hour or so drive (roughly) from Ontario.
Here's some locations for peoples' benefit:
i.imgur.com/5321h6C.png
#1 is where Tom started his journey.
#2 is the mall where most of the chapters (so far) transpire.
#3 is where "One Step Forward..." ends.
i.imgur.com/5OPxVuI.png
#1, #2, #3 as in the above pic. New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Ottawa, Montreal and various other cities for an idea of scale.
Bonus round: Purple star marks Alex J (OblivionProphet)'s story's start, and the faded dark blue star (hard to see against the lake but look to the NE end of Lake Ontario) is Robin's hood (sorry, Greycait, I couldn't resist that pun).
6129525 Heh... oops. Sorry greycait.
6129600
Robin Hood and Nightwing. So many awesome and unintentional nicknames for him. Honestly. It was my prereader that pointed out the batman thing during the planning stages.
6129670 And don't you forget it!
Triple Word Score! Canadians!
i.imgur.com/ByVtZ8k.png
Wings over Canada, Unite!
“Tell you what. Do what you can by yourself, and I’m going to spend some time playing with my horn. When you get to the bits you need help with, call for me, and either my hooves or my horn are yours for the rest. Okay?”
Get out of the gutter my bloody dirty mind.
(mmm, daisies - wait, what am I thinking??!)
And for the rest... oh man. That went from hilariously entertaining to really hard hitting depressing. Great writing.
This is a great story so far, wonderfully written.
6129720 Ok yeah. We just HAVE to do SOMETHING so that we all meet up somewhere. And if we include Lucky then the two most central places are either Winnipeg or Minneapolis.
6129986 Central in terms of nation. But resources and infrastructure? Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto would be the best on those points. Not to mention all the company head offices and such they hold. And the major transportation hubs. Train lines, airports, shipping ports...
6130110 True, very true
We may loose all we know, but not thing anything of it. That is because we don't want to accept it. We refuse to accept it. But, in that moment we truly do come to terms with what has happened, what we've lost, we break down. Some loose all cohesion, and the world around them seems to just fall away. Others break out in a violent rage, still not wanting to accept what has happened, but soon coming to terms with it. Others cry, cry until all the pain goes away.
In all these cases, we realize that out life as we knew it....is over. This is a brave, new world, whether we wanted it or not.
This is a lot like what the character is going through right now.
I still like my pony words better.
Finally, the reason for the radio number codes in LPOE!
Man... As someone for whom family means the world to, even if I'm not the best at showing it. I admit... I don't have no clue what I'd do if my family up and vanished. Probably cry... Probably go into shock.... Depression.... I honestly don't know