Lastly alone

“Brown and brown and brown and brown...”

She chipped at the earth with an iron rod she had dug from a collapsed building. The earth was too cold to touch now. Above her loomed the carcass of a once great tree. Its branches cracked upon the floor beneath.

“Brown and b...”

She muttered something she once remembered that had been poisoned by the landscape. As she thrust the iron into the ground her woollen mittens frayed and curled away from her blistered palms. There were no roots here to find. And she could no longer burrow. Exhausted and now waiting, she turned to the hummock and began to traipse her last steps.

The dog stood up now and drew it’s dry paws through the dust, keeping a few meters from her. She thought it might be blind as it never looked at her, instead seeming to follow her sounds and scent which had become repugnant.

She picked up a rock and threw it at the animal as she had many times and this time hit it square on the head. She shouted some plosive sounds from her lips. The dog howled and slunk against it hind legs, then growled menacingly. Their truce remained.

From the top of the hill she collapsed behind a large rock, cowering from the wind and looked over the landscape she had returned from. A small labyrinth of buildings were gathered in the darkening distance. Sandy clouds were drawn across the sky and at it’s fringe with the distant lands, it was almost inseparable. The dog had found a log with which to rest upon where it would continue to listen carefully to her. As she watched back across her path, a great tower leaned awkwardly. In silence a billow of dust erupted from its foundations and it progressed it’s final descent into the buildings below. Then a slight rumble reached them. The dog became aware of the building now. The impact arose a cloud of ash and dirt. The crash bounced across the plains and landed upon them. The first sounds and movement, other than each other, that the two had come across in longer than either could remember.

“Brown and...”

The memory of a song once sung about something she never saw was vanishing from her closing mind. Either she or the dog would outlast the other. She thought it was her heart beat the dog was tracking, not kinship or warmth. She tried to imagine what the song might have been about but it was impossible to find inspiration. She had trekked through the city and passed many villages. She had picked up the dog in one of these. She didn’t know how long she had walked alone for, never seeing a person like her, or a bird in the sky, or an insect on the wind, but her hair had grown from her neck to below her shoulder blades. Her feet could no longer carry her across the steel lands. There, somewhere lost, the dog had attacked. It’s gummed mouth unable to hold on to her as she shouted and thrust herself away from it. They wrestled desperately for a long time until they were wasted and wet with sweat. Each crying in desperation. The dog had followed her here now hoping to outlive her for livings sake.

Before that there was someone. Another like her, thin and beech. she had gone a long time ago.

Sulpher snow began to fall from the sky, not pristine and crystalline, but a sort of orange, oaky, and burning. She pulled the plastic tarp closer around herself and watched. When she turned back to check on the distance between them, the dog had gone. Vanished. She was alone at last. Lastly alone with her final song. She whispered once more to herself.

“I can see a rainbow... see a rainbow... see a rainbow too...” And she waited.