The cloudless blue sky, brought to full glory by the relentless onslaught of the sun you’d come to expect of a midsummer noon, paints a remarkable contrast to the vast expanse of a ruined city. The towers of humanity’s desire to pierce the heavens have crumbled and returned to the ground once anew especially are almost delightfully ironic to Sorin. Part of him remembers that there was a term for those odd constructs, yet that’s one of many things lost to his rather undependable memory. Then again, it had been far too long since it’d last held any relevance to him either, so it’d be rather distasteful to blame him for forgetting. He wonders why exactly those who disappeared so eagerly sought to distance themselves from the ground they stood upon. To even go as far as achieving the accomplishment of flight - when Sorin had first heard the story from a far older voyageur he had trouble believing it!

  Before losing himself in his train of thought however, the brown-haired man soon finds his attention diverted towards something of far more importance. Tucked away behind layers of foliage and roots which grow from places where the city’s pavement has given way for flora once again, his emerald green eyes spot an exceptionally intact building. That’s hardly the important part though, but rather the word spelt out by specifically pronounced shapes hung up above the shattered glass doors. Whilst he can’t read the language around these parts of the world, and on second thought is uncertain whether he could still read or write his own, sapient life’s age old partner of pattern recognition takes center stage once again. A supermarket, as one would call it. His expression lights up in glee at the sight, body turning towards it as he changes directions to head straight towards it.

  “Alright, let’s see what we’ve got this time!” He exclaims to himself upon stepping through the frame of what once was a glass door leading inside. The loud cracking sound accompanying his steps, glass cracking and shattering when met with the sheer force of his body weight applied through sandals, indicate his entry with fanfare. These sorts of stores were nothing short of a miracle earlier on in his journey, but by now it’d be foolish of him not to expect all sustainable foods and drinks to have been ravaged for a long time. Luckily for Sorin, there are often quite a few things which people seem to neglect in these places. Various tools, materials to use in setting up camp and even the occasional only moderately rotten food. Even bottles of plastic left behind, likely by people who were in a rush and only cared for its contents, are valuable. After all, the more water he can take with him whenever he finds a clean source of it, the better.

  Whilst humming a chipper tune to himself, visibly content with even the possibility of valuable findings, Sorin begins to scale down the aisles in search of anything left of worth. Cobwebs, dust and rubble line the empty shelves as one may expect, leading to a rather unsatisfying haul. Not to mention the fact that due to subpar lighting conditions inside, the only natural light peeking inside being through slight cracks in the walls and ceiling, he’s often unable to even tell if there’s an item in the first place. From time to time, he ends up squatting down because his peripheral vision told him that there might just be something of interest, only to be met with a deceiving pile of pebbles instead. Whilst there is still the clothing section he could potentially scout out, there’s frankly little need for that. He has to admit that what he wears isn’t exactly the most appealing, yet part of him simply made the decision not to let go of what he has for now. The bar for sentimental attachments has gone down considerably seeing as there’s little left to otherwise get attached to. The torn leather tunic reaching all the way to his ankles specifically has journeyed too far with him to possibly be replaced …

  Although, he can make peace with taking it off temporarily as he currently has in favour of not dying due to heatstroke. What lies beneath is a ragged white shirt and a grey fabric tied around his waist bearing some resemblance to a skirt, but that’s hardly of any importance right now.

  Eventually, he comes to a halt near the far end of the store in belief he has scouted out all aisles. To his dismay, he found nothing except the taste of dust whirled up in his face when he let out a slightly too powerful exhale. Rubbing the nape of his neck in a mixture of exhaustion and disappointment, a habit he picked up when doing so didn’t mean ruffling up the overgrown hair trailing down just below his shoulders, he decides that there’s nothing else here for him and turns to leave. Footsteps drown out the noise of Sorin’s continued humming, the tune he settled on far too catchy for a slight setback to end it. But right before reaching the outside once again, there’s a breath for air not originating from him.

  Sorin stops abruptly, standing still and no longer humming as he turns his head to the right in search of the inhale’s origin. There, like a deer in headlights, stands another man clearly attempting to sneak past, or perhaps away, from him. The two lock eyes with similarly surprised expressions, with Sorin being first to break the mutual gaze in favour of briefly analyzing the man standing in front of him. Tall, or at the very least taller than him, broad shouldered, messy black hair and an unkempt beard are the first few things which spring right to attention.

  The stranger is first to speak in a low but seemingly conversational tone of voice. He still seems on edge all things considered, which is fair seeing as hostile travellers who’re more than content with killing whoever they come across aren’t the rarest occurrence. Resources can be sparse and when their own life is on the line, what does that of another possibly mean to them?

  Putting all that aside, Sorin can unfortunately not understand a lick of whatever the strange man is attempting to tell him. It’s a foreign language to him, quite possibly the one of this region, which complicates manners quite a bit. Regardless, he simply attempts to return what is assumedly a greeting.

  “Hello.” Speaking slowly and deliberately, resuming a more docile and casual stance as he attempts to figure out how to go about this without making himself seem like a potential threat. “I … am … friend …-ly.”

  In spite of awkward delivery, the strangers eyes do seem to slightly light up at the words. For a moment, the two stand there in silence as the black haired man is visibly thinking, before eventually responding in an uncertain tone of voice. “How can I trust you?” There’s a distinguishable accent when he speaks, but that aside, fluency can be assumed in a now shared language. Communication is possible, but judging by the fact that the stranger's right hand is now wandering over to fasten its grip on the hilt of what Sorin can only assume to be some sort of weapon it’s not going to be particularly easy.

  “You can’t, really.” Sorin responds in a matter-of-fact, perhaps even eerily deadpan tone of voice as if it’s the most natural thing to say in this situation. “But I don’t want to hurt you in any way.” The silent dance interwoven in tension continues, the black haired man’s grip slightly loosening for a moment before returning to its ferocity from before. Eventually, Sorin simply chuckles to himself. It breaks the silence in an unexpected manner, as though he had just remembered a joke, but he follows up just afterwards.

  “Ah, to hell with it, we could end up dying any day now anyways.” After having said that, he stretches out his arms outwards and resumes a wide stance, leaving himself open for any attack. “Come on, stab me if it makes you feel safer a bit longer.”

  The stranger’s eyes widen at Sorin’s odd declaration, visibly dumbfounded by whatever he’s attempting to do. Part of him assumes a bluff. Deception. A trick to catch him off-guard. But in spite of all that, he seems to relent as his hand wanders away from the handle of his weapon, most likely a machete upon closer inspection, and takes on a more casual stance as well. Perhaps the braindead display convinced him, but there seems to be a bit more to it than just that.

  “Right.” The black-haired man responds in a brief fashion, before letting out an exhale and vaguely pointing towards Sorin. “Put your arms down. It makes you look … uh, stupid.”

  Despite lacking authority or eloquence, Sorin complies rather easily with a smile on his face. “Can do.”

  The two then simply stand there for a moment as if not having anticipated their conversation to go in this direction at all. Sorin especially briefly glances to the side as though avoiding eye contact, attempting to figure out what to say after all that as for once his carefree self feels a bit lost, but before he can say anything the stranger speaks up first.

  “I’ve got a camp set up in the outskirts of the cities. You mind coming with and helping with a few things? Got food as well.”

  The sudden switch in attitude from the man should honestly be rather alarming to Sorin, the mind of any functioning survivor blaring the alarm bells of blatant trap. But then again, if the stranger hadn’t suggested it first, he would’ve not soon after. Not that he has a camp set up, he prefers the nomadic approach quite a bit more, but the possibility of spending time with a fellow person has unfortunately become a rarity. So much so that he likes taking any chance he gets at doing so.

  “Yeah, sure, lead the way!”

  After a brief pause, the black-haired man turns his back to Sorin and walks out of the dimly lit abandoned convenience store - out into the blazing heat of the ruined city once again. Not that it was much cooler inside the ruined building, but the shade was refreshing if nothing else. The two walk in silence initially, but once passing through empty streets overrun by vines, roots and the occasional growing tree becoming too bland for either to bear conversation is struck up once again.

  “So … what’s your name?” Sorin asks in a chipper tone of voice, devoid of that deadpan stillness from their tense confrontation before. Slightly speeding up, he stops walking behind the stranger and rather comes to walk beside him in favour of making talking to each other a bit more bearable and less awkward. The black-haired man only briefly turns his head, both due to the shift in position from Sorin and his query, before turning his head back to look forwards again.

  “Shouldn’t you introduce yourself first if you want to know? Or is that not a thing from where you come from?”

  There’s both a twinge of sarcastic rhetoric and genuine curiosity in his voice. It’s most likely that the intent depends entirely on Sorin’s answer and how dumb of a question it actually is.

  “Huh? Oh- Uh, yes, I suppose that’s fair.” He answers in response in a slightly embarrassed fashion, laughing to himself afterwards before continuing. “I’m Sorin.”

  Omitting the last name has become commonplace because frankly, lineage has no place in the current state of the world. Perhaps for some obnoxious survivors who are proud of who they once were they cling onto it as though it’d keep them alive for longer, but that's unfortunately a delusion.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Cinro.” The man responds with a content nod. “My name is Cinro. Nice to meet you, Sorin.”

  Before long, the two travellers make it back to Cinro’s camp. The deteriorating buildings have both lessened in quantity and general grandeur, leaving behind only smaller buildings overrun with vines which haven’t succumbed to gravity yet. In what Sorin can only assume to be the former backyard of a one-family house, there’s an impromptu fireplace built with stones to form a ring and ash inside. That aside, there seem to be a few bags with various contents inside, but a lack of labeling makes it impossible for him to discern what it could possibly be, and even the luxury of a sleeping bag still sprawled out on the overgrown grass. After that, the two agree on finding sufficient wood for fire in the nearby area. Whilst it’d be wiser to split up to find more, the two stick together for the vast majority of their search. They exchange stories of their travels, which while mostly monotonous still make for great conversation topics. Cinro specifically has a book’s worth of tales of when he travelled together in a group. Recalling moments when they fought over rations only to settle on nobody eating anything at all until they found enough for everybody, playing made up games late at night and even encountering a bandit who had an inexplicable ability to conjure and manipulate water. Hydrokinesis, as one might call it. Often enough, the stories don’t seem all that rosy, but the way he speaks of them in such a nostalgic and intimate manner deters from that completely. Once the sun begins to set, the two make their way back to the camp. Without much care, they dump their gathered firewood which mostly consist of broken furniture gathered from abandoned homes and twigs they manage to break off from growing trees into the fireplace. Soot and ash whirls up in their faces as they do so, much to the annoyance of Cirno and to the amusement of Sorin. As the two squat down to light the fire, both to banish the darkness and to regulate the cold of the night, Sorin reaches into a bag he’s slung around his back.

  “Hey, I’ve got a piece of quartz and a steel file to start the fire. Easier than doing it with sticks.” Sorin chirps out, but is promptly stopped by Cirno putting a hand on his shoulder and shaking his head. There’s both a determined and slightly smug expression on his face, as he turns to the fire. “No need. Watch this.”

  Cirno then extends his left hand towards the gathered firewood, making slow and deliberate movements in order to build anticipation of what he’s about to do. He draws a deep breath, clearly focusing on something, before snapping his fingers with a loud and resolute sound echoing through the emptiness. Sparks flicker from his skin in a warning shot as he slightly scoots back, dragging back Sorin with surprising strength as he does so as well. Then, mere seconds afterwards, the fireplace erupts in a symphony of flames, briefly flaring upwards in a grand display before settling down into a comfortable and harmless fire. It flickers and crackles gently, as though it hadn’t just appeared like the gates of hell before the duo. Whereas Cinro simply admires his handiwork with a mixture of satisfaction and poorly disguised sadness, Sorin merely delights in the spectacle with an awestruck expression. A feat of the supernatural.

  “Haha, woah!” Sorin exclaims with widened eyes, glancing over at Cinro with clear admiration. “You’re, uh, one of those people!”

  The firestarter can only chuckle at Sorin’s words, taken out of his own mind as he responds in an almost amused tone. “Those people. You could say that.”

  The two then enter a more relaxed seating position near the fire, continuously telling stories to each other. However, the curiosity Sorin displays regarding the supernatural ability used by Cinro just moments beforehand doesn’t fade for even a second. And the firestarter can clearly see that.

  “They say that these abilities are linked to one’s sense of self, right?” Sorin instigates after having concluded a story of his own about getting headbutted and knocked out by a deer while gathering water. “I don’t have any so I can’t really … figure it out. But you do! Come on, tell me, is it true!?!”

  In spite of being a young adult, Sorin acts more like an ecstatic teenager for a moment there, pressuring Cinro into talking more about that inhuman part of himself. Whilst initially hesitant, he eventually opens up.

  “It might be right. Before … all of this, I actually lived in this city. Being a part of the community was great, every day felt so … alive, in a way.” Cinro briefly pauses in a way, muttering something under his breath in that language Sorin can’t understand again. But it’s rather clear he’s cursing himself out for not being able to put his feelings into proper words for him to understand. “But the people running it weren’t the greatest. We rioted again, and again, and again. They never listened, only wanting to get more money out of us. Displaying their city as greater than it actually is. Building more and more, flaunting their acquired wealth through entire skyscrapers dedicated to them.”

  For a moment, Sorin’s eyes light up in recognition of the term, turning back towards the ruined city now casted in a faint orange hue from the setting sun. Those towers that reach into the sky. They were called skyscrapers.

  “Fire often means … destruction. Maybe it's linked to the part of me that thinks I was aiming to destroy what I hated through those riots.” For a moment, Cinro seems oddly vulnerable and almost hesitant to continue, but he does so before Sorin gets to cut him off. “I can’t remember. I really can’t remember what it was I was doing back then.”

  It’s now that Sorin seems to settle down a bit, realizing the potential implication of what Cinro is alluding to. “Are you … deteriorating?” He eventually hushes out, at which Cinro only nods and follows up with a defeated sigh. “Stage 3. Have been for a long while now.”

  The two fall into silence for a brief while. Mental deterioration, as it’s commonly referred to due to the lack of medical experts left in the world, is an untreatable disease amongst the remaining humans. Or they assume it to be a disease of some sorts. It follows the same pattern most of the time through four stages, with the final one resulting in death. In the case they don’t die, they wind up ending themselves instead.

  “The group I travelled with. I left them behind once hitting Stage 3 around two months ago. It’s because I was beginning to forget them. Their personalities first, then what they liked, then their voices and even their names. All whilst they were still right there with me. And now I can’t even remember the vast majority of what we did. So, what I still can remember …”

  He briefly pauses, only to look away from the fire and Sorin out into the nothingness.

  “I don’t want to forget it either. And I didn’t want to hurt them by seeing me …”

  He then completely stops talking, as if not wanting to speak out the ultimatum of what’s coming for him.

  “I don’t have much longer left, Sorin. It’s any day now. And, uh, I just wanted to thank you for … trying. Spending time with me when it was clearly the wrong decision to make.”

  With only the brief crackling of the fire near them breaking the silence and illuminating the slowly approaching night, Sorin inches slightly closer to Cinro and puts his hand on his shoulder with a resolute demeanour.

  “You should go back to them.”

  Sorin pauses to let his words sink in, waiting for any sort of reaction from Cinro. But he doesn’t get any, the black-haired man simply staring out into the distance continuously.

  “Go back to the people you travelled with. If you feel strongly enough for them that you don’t want to forget even the bad memories with them, then they were good enough friends to stay with you until the very end. No matter how difficult it is for them. You don’t need to die alone.”

  He’s not given any response to his suggestion at first. Cinro only slightly shakes, as though about to weep, but catches himself with a deep breath. Finally turning around to meet Sorin’s gaze once again, there’s a clearly faked smile on his face as he nods.

  “... You’re right. I will.”

  Then, he stands up and briefly stretches his body, before looking out towards where the sun had just been. Night dawns and the moon rises.

  “I’ll sleep over it. You can stay here if you’d like, Sorin.”

  Wordlessly, Cinro then walks over to the sprawled out sleeping bag and slips in. Turning away from the fire and Sorin still seated on the patch of grass, he seemingly falls into a slumber right then and there. The brown-haired man simply looks into the fire a bit longer, before shrugging and dropping down onto the grass with his back. For just a while longer, he stares up into the starry night sky before eventually drifting off into a deep slumber himself.

  Upon awakening, the sun has risen once again. The crackling of the fire is gone, replaced by faint smouldering of soot and ashes instead. His senses return to him one after another, with smell being the very last. The feeling of grass tickling his skin, then the sight of the clear blue sky above him once again, the sound of wind blowing through the abandoned streets and, well, frankly, he doesn’t taste much right now. Unless you’re willing to count the feeling of a sore throat from dehydration. What comes to him very last is the scent of grass, ash and iron. An overwhelming scent of iron, even. Slowly, Sorin stands up whilst rubbing his half-lidded eyes in an attempt to rid himself of drowsiness. A yawn escapes him as he reaches his full height.

  “Cinro? Are you awake?” He asks, mainly due to curiosity if he can smell that odd scent as well, before turning towards the sleeping bag.

  And initially, the sight makes him want to puke on the spot.

  A corpse sprawled out on the ground, with fresh blood leaking out of a stab wound staining both the soil and his clothes. It’s the overwhelming, nauseating scent of blood. A bloodstained machete lays there stained in crimson in the grass right beside him. His expression isn’t a peaceful one. A death twinged in frustration and despair.

  Sorin simply stares at the corpse for a short eternity, before turning around and walking away. He begins to hum a tune once again, banishing the memory as quickly as it came to him - and the memory of the man he met all together before it deters him from his voyage.