Chapter Text
There is a ship on the shore.
You don’t know what you’re supposed to do. The landscape of your home never changed as drastically as it did, just now.
You wait.
When you try to go into the forest this time, the deer is waiting for you at the edge of the trees. You ask him why he’s denying you entrance. His eyes track your movements.
You turn back.
The ship is still here, contrasting with the turquoise of the water. The sails are down.
The cows stopped browsing in the meadow. They stand huddled together, like they’re freezing, like there’s winter coming. You try to animate them to eat. Their now dull eyes stare blankly ahead.
In the house, dust starts to appear. The bath doesn’t smell like lavender and mint, but like rotten eggs and bad milk. If you try cooking, it always gets burnt. Your clothes come back just as dirty as before.
The ship is still there.
You don’t know how long it has been there. Keeping track of time is difficult here. You just know that it’s somehow the root of all the things gone wrong here.
You wait.
You desperately try to enter the forest, but the deer is relentless in his efforts to stop you. One time, he chases you out, only stopping when you are on your porch. You don’t try again
A calf lies dead on the grass one morning, it’s eyes wide open and staring into the sun. The cows ignore it. You try to shovel a grave with your hands, but the soil is as hard as rock and cuts open your fingers.
During the night, you see shooting stars, sinking into the ocean. One time you stayed up until the sun came again. The food is rotten now and the wood is breaking beneath your feet.
The ship is still there.
After the dead calf is gnawed to the core by the ravens, you see them before you hear them.
Humans.
They’re making their way up the hills, a small group, maybe five or six. You’re nervous. You forgot how awful nervousness feels and you throw up into the creek. It doesn’t matter. There hasn’t been water in it since some time.
Two days pass before you can hear them. Loud and clear echo their voices through the air. You can’t understand them yet.
You’re not sure if you want to.
You’re sitting in the grass next to the fence, when they arrive.
Three women, two men.
They’re vaguely familiar to you, but you couldn’t name them.
They speak.
You understand.