First, I’d like to apologize. I skipped the entire month of September. This was largely accidental, but I think subconsciously I recognized that I needed a break. Also, the end of summer is always chaos for me. The Shakespeare class I’m in, while wonderfully enjoyable, is also extremely difficult. I’m glad it’s the only class I’m taking this term as it takes the amount of work of two.

If I may, I’d like to ask please don’t lose faith because I haven’t posted in a bit. I’m human and I miss things sometimes.

As a special treat to apologize for missing some post deadlines, and to get the ball rolling again, I’m pleased to present a snippet of Last Ark Chapter 2. While it has been self-edited and peer workshopped, it is still subject to further editing including a potential shift in chapter number. Please enjoy!

Chapter 2

            The crash had dropped our remaining population down to only a few thousand, but it was still enough to keep us going. After I told Hale to shut up, I walked among the survivors, and the wreck. Everyone was covered in dirt and grime, and most people had patches of dried blood crusted somewhere on their skin. The bodies of the citizens who didn’t survive were already starting to smell faintly, and the heat from the crashed starship didn’t help.

            As I walked along the wreckage, I came to a pile of deceased citizens whose bodies smoked next to some hot part of the ship, a piece of engine maybe. I didn’t know the anatomy of the ship as well as I should have, I suppose, but it didn’t matter now. I held my arm to my nose trying not to breathe the noxious fumes of destroyed starship and slightly burnt corpse. A left hand stuck almost straight out of the pile though the fingers were limp.

“Neil?” I whispered, and already my eyes began to well with tears. I recognized the wedding band around the ring finger of that hand: plain, white gold, speckled with a few small rubies, which I placed in my pocket. I screamed up at the sky and cursed the beautiful planet which we now orbited, inside though, I felt as if I was the rope in a tug-of-war, because while I loved him, and wanted to make things work despite his cheating, there was a sense of relief underneath the pain, like running cool water over a burn. I forgot, for a moment, the duty of a widow to grieve for her lost husband, and thought only of how I no longer need worry whether my position as councilor would be at risk.  

            I would later come to realize that Neil’s death was, statistically, almost a certainty since only about ten to fifteen percent of us survived the crash. When I saw his hand though, my heart sank, and I fell to my knees. The heat of the ground scorched my pants lightly, and by the time I stood, my knees felt sunburned. Our last words with each other rang fiercely in my mind. I wept, for how long I don’t know, it felt like eternity.

            “Evelyn.” It was Ashley’s voice I heard calling in the distance, but I couldn’t look up from my own sorrow. She found me and sat with me until I was able to calm down a bit. I felt terrible for it, but I climbed the pile of bodies. I reached for Neil’s hand and removed his ring. I wasn’t sure what had hurt more, the fact that he was dead, or how despite his last words to me, he was still wearing his wedding ring.

            I gathered myself, and returned to where the survivors of the council, science team, and military command had formed a meeting.

            “The council is done!” I heard Hale yell as I approached. “I’ll be leading us from here on. Every decision you all have made has only made things worse. Look at where we are and what’s happened!”

            “Hale,” I said, a vein in his forehead protruded when he saw me, “We have to stay together, or we won’t survive. What we need to do first is cover our survival needs. First, salvage what we can from the wreck, and then we need to find a source of water, food, and shelter. None of that is going to be easy.” The calmness of my voice surprised even me. “In fact,” I continued, “I think it would be wise to defer to military judgement here,” Hale’s eyes widened, and his mouth fell agape, “because you all have been trained in survival situations. But we need to make decisions together, and we need to stay together. We don’t know how long we have until nightfall; we should get to it.”

We started organizing the survivors and informed the whole crowd of the plan. When we had salvaged what we could we gathered everyone again. I thought it best to let Hale feel like he was taking a little more charge, plus as I had said to him, he’s been trained for this. I felt it would be wise to listen to his advice.

            We started moving the group toward the spot where the mountain and tree-line met, hoping there might be a river or some other body of water there. The meadow we crashed in was so beautiful. The flowers growing were unlike any I had ever seen, pink and yellow blossoms dotted across the whole meadow. Their scents were alluring, and the whole meadow smelled sweet, as if made of candy.  We heard the songs of strange birds, and I watched them fly overhead. Their vibrant colors almost glowed. In the distance I could still see the plumes of smoke rising from the crash site.

Thank you for reading and sticking with me through the quiet period.

Kathryn

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