Ashes to Ashes

Ash tumbled so softly from the sky it could almost be mistaken for snow with the ways it whipped and whispered if not for two facts:

1) It stained everything it touched with the inescapable smudge of grey

2) She moved through perpetual heat and humidity, impossible conditions for snow to fall. Further, she hadn’t even experienced rain since before the fallout.

Her face was perpetually covered in soot since her bandana had worn so thin that there was no point in keeping it. The greyness accentuated the sharp features that developed over a prolonged period of minimal nourishment. Everything was poisoned, and it would mean the end of her eventually. She saw little point in washing her face since it would just be stained again and it wasn’t like the water was any cleaner. As she walked she wondered how it could stay so hot all of the time. Just one of millions of questions she would never be able to answer. She’d been walking for an indescribable amount of time, leaving behind those who had ever been close to her where they fell, stripped of their belongings. Walking was basically all that existence had left to offer her, and she felt inured to the undeniable fact that it would remain most of what was left to her until she too finally fell.

She had lost everything she initially set off with, just like she’d lost everyone she’d initially traveled alongside. Now all she owned was never originally hers. Her possessions remained scant--she found little point in traveling heavily. Distances were all that remained perceivable to her. Time had faded with the loss of the sun and moon and stars. No distinction could be found between night and day when light remained the same dull grey regardless of the hour. She may have survived the blast for a month, a year, a decade--she had no idea.

When she was tired, she slept. When she was hungry or thirsty, she drank and ate what she could, and when awake, she walked. She had never found another pack of living anything, only carcasses and petrified remains. When she stumbled into the occasional cache of tin cans she stashed them, and surprisingly she stumbled across enough of them to sustain her till time meant nothing. The moral indignation and internal revulsion of eating carcasses had left so long ago she couldn't even remember why she ever felt it in the first place.

The only luxury left she granted herself to signify her humanity was a small, deformed locket. She supposed the heat from the initial impact had warped it, so it was impossible to open. She could remember the day and circumstance with which she found it vividly: clutched between the half-blanched bones of two bodies. She had grown accustomed to rummaging around corpses both fresh and old and couldn’t remember the details of any of them. The dull sensation of mourning something would occasionally creep in when she saw them, mostly reminiscing of the people she had left behind but never imagining the lives of those she saw before her.

These were the only two that stuck indelibly in her memory. They died entwined, both hands clasped together. Their bones remained preserved. She could not begin to speculate how. They were the only people she’d found who looked entirely resigned to their fate and seemed to find it more important to face it together than to run from the inevitable. Seeing the clasped hands engaged her curiosity about humanity for the first time she could remember in a long while. She had yet to see anything like it before and had never seen anything like it since. It got the best of her, and that’s how she found their locket. She took it with no guilt.

She didn’t keep it around her neck, seeing no need for any added irritation. Comfort prevailed as the only luxury left to her at this point. But sometimes, in between eating and sleeping and walking, she would sit down, pull it out from her pack, and think about it. She’d let her mind wander far away and craft whole stories surrounding the locket.

Once, she created a whole backstory of who it belonged to and what could be found within it. She gave the corpses names: Rosemary and Gordon. They had been an elderly couple who saw the end approaching and were blessed with having lived a fulfilled life before choosing to die together. The locket held a picture of their only child, Franklin, who they loved dearly and raised well. Knowing they were to pass without seeing Franklin again, they made sure to hold onto the cherished, shared token he had given them before he moved away. She imagined a picture in the locket of Franklin, Gordon, and Rosemary--except when she did, she could only project a visage of a vague, faceless boy with two preserved skeletons for parents.

The locket had been her salvation in so many ways, both big and small. She found the stories she created around it comforting. She felt less isolated knowing she possessed it. In her wandering she had come across a cliff once. It had been a good long while since she had even witnessed proof that there had ever been any other living things. She stumbled across dozens and dozens of monuments to people--houses, neighborhoods, statues, all partially or mostly destroyed. It had started to weigh on her, and the cliff looked like an inviting space to join all the missing souls. Before she convinced herself to jump, she pulled out the locket one last time, thinking it appropriate to continue its legacy of being gripped while its owner passed. But the locket held an importance greater than herself. It was proof of something indescribably human, and the light it held within it demanded preservation: she was the only person who could maintain such a significant artifact. It required keeping by the living, a permanent testament to love’s indelible imprint.

Often she imagined stumbling across another person. Maybe it was a man, a woman, a child--anyone. She thought about how much joy she’d feel at finding another person and sharing the light of the locket with them. She’d no longer have to just sing vocables to herself anymore. She could use her scratchy vocal cords to talk and connect again. She could show them the locket and explain its significance; it’s evidence of what humanity might have been once. They could share something, and in doing so have a purpose. In times when she lacked a will to walk, it propelled her forward.

It had been a long time since she’d given up opening the locket--she had spent an innumerable number of miles with it in her hands looking for ways to pry it open, destroying her nails again and again in attempts to get at the secret it held within it’s warped golden walls. Often she was amazed at how well it maintained its sheen even with all the soot covering it. She took as pristine care of it as she could now; its value immeasurable. She would use bits of water to wash it when she felt it growing too dirty, and its presence in her pack provided comfort. Sometimes she felt overwhelmed by fear that she lost it and in those moments she knew it was time to stop, check for the locket, and rest. The locket remained with her regardless of her fears. It had yet to leave her and she felt soothed knowing she was likely to die before she lost it.

She was convinced that the locket was evidence that love existed. Over time she became more and more certain that love was one of the only true forces of nature still in existence. Like gravity, love compelled and drove and pushed and pulled and dictated all action. Even without anyone left to love, she thought that love was what moved her. She could never explain to herself why. She had yet to be allowed to explain to anyone else why she knew with such bone-deep certainty that love was a naturally occurring force as tangible and measurable as the laws of physics. But she knew somehow her belief in the compulsion of love was continuously reinforced by the existence of the locket.

Once she concocted a whole story so potent, she almost convinced herself it was true. The locket had always belonged to her. It was given to her by a lover in a less desolate space and time. The lover shared it with her, and inside was a poem only for her eyes to see. It was a shared secret declaration of connection. She couldn’t imagine what the poem was, and that was always the problem with the story. She knew if it had really been hers, and if there really had been a poem, she surely would have memorized it. Something so precious would have locked itself securely in her mind, never to be forgotten. She wanted it to be hers so desperately, but the lack of detail in the story and the foggy images of unknown faces it brought to mind only left her reminded of how it had never belonged to her. She had only found it.

All she had left to her were the stories she told herself about herself and the locket. Somehow it was enough to sustain her as she walked through the petrified remains of a world with never-ending ash falling around her.