Expectations Met

The ruins gave way to something Maren hadn’t expected.

As she pressed forward toward the glow, the skeletal remains of old buildings began to frame a narrow street. Shadows shifted along the walls, not with the flicker of fire, but with the steady glow of lanterns—hung from crooked poles, tied with ragged cords. She slowed, heart pounding, the worn map still clutched in her hand as if it were a compass guiding her steps.

And then she saw them.

A makeshift village, hidden among the ruins. Shacks built from scavenged wood and metal, cloth tarps strung between crumbling walls, the faint smoke of small fires curling into the dusk. Men and women gathered quietly, their faces etched with the weariness of survival, their eyes reflecting the lanternlight. Children peeked from behind tattered blankets strung up as walls.

Maren froze at the edge of the street. She expected shouts, or suspicion, or worse—knives drawn in warning. But instead, silence fell. The villagers simply looked at her.

Not fearful. Not hostile.

Accepting.

An old man set down the bundle of wood he carried and stepped back, as though he’d been waiting. A woman tending a pot of thin stew lifted her eyes to meet Maren’s, then gave the faintest nod, as if acknowledging her arrival was not chance but inevitability.

Her pulse quickened. Why? How?

She hadn’t spoken a word, yet their eyes followed her with a strange calm, almost reverent. It was as though they knew her, though she had never seen them before.

Maren took a hesitant step forward. The villagers did not move closer, nor did they retreat. They simply… watched.

The map crinkled in her tightening fist.

And in that moment, she realized with a chill that they weren’t just accepting her—they were expecting her.

From somewhere deeper in the village, a child’s voice broke the silence, carrying through the dusk like a whisper of prophecy:

“She’s come.”

Maren’s breath caught in her throat.

But come for what? And how could they know?

 

As they must be

The horizon glows with the first breath of day,

a soft band of rose and gold

spilling upward into the fading night.

Snow rests quiet upon the mountain,

its slopes still and eternal,

a silence deeper than words.

Against this vastness, a lone bird lifts.

Its wings slice the cool air,

not rushing, not resisting—

only carried by what is.

The mountain does not move,

the sunrise does not pause,

the bird does not question the path of its flight.

All are as they must be.

In this meeting of wing, light, and stone,

acceptance is revealed—

not as surrender,

but as belonging.

 

Eaten by Flame

The dirt crunched softly beneath Maren’s boots as she moved through what was left of the outskirts of Los Angeles. The sun had dipped low, painting the ruins in copper and shadow, and the first evening chill licked at her skin. In her hand, she carried a worn scrap of paper—creased a hundred times over, corners frayed, ink faded to a ghostly blue. It was one of the maps she and Silen had studied long ago, before the city fell apart.

She kept it folded neatly, as though by preserving its shape she could also preserve the bond it represented. Each line she traced with her thumb was a memory: Silen hunched over the table, lantern light on his sharp features, his voice steady even as chaos rumbled outside.

Now, the landmarks on the paper were hardly recognizable in the real world. Streets were buried beneath rubble, bridges collapsed into rivers of twisted rebar, and whole neighborhoods had turned into skeletal shells of ash and stone. Still, she pressed on, letting memory guide her where the map no longer could.

Every so often, she paused to listen. The ruins breathed with their own kind of silence—broken only by the wind scraping loose metal against concrete, or the distant cry of something feral scrounging for food. But underneath it all, there was the faintest pull, a sense she could not explain: that Silen was still out there, walking the same earth, carrying his half of the memory they once shared.

Maren passed the charred remains of a mural on a cracked wall—bright colors long since burned out, but a fragment of painted words still visible: FUTURE BELONGS… The rest had been eaten by flame. She stopped, staring, her breath catching. That’s what Silen used to say—that even in the ash, something waited to be reborn.

Clutching the map tighter, she whispered, “I’m coming, brother.”

And then, as the dusk deepened, she noticed something: a faint glow far off in the ruins. Not fire—it was too steady. A lantern, perhaps, moving slowly, carefully.

Her heart skipped.

But was it Silen—or someone else, something else—lurking in the bones of the city?

 

Deep in the Ruins

The candles cast a faint golden circle across the cracked wooden table, and in its glow lay a spread of old maps, edges curled and yellowed with time. Silen leaned over them, one hand tracing the faded lines of freeways and rivers, the other pressing down the corners to keep them flat. His sister, Maren, sat opposite him, her eyes sharp but weary.

Outside, Los Angeles was already groaning under the weight of its own unraveling. Distant sirens rose and fell like the tide, punctuated by the occasional crack of gunfire. The air was thick with smoke—some nights from wildfires that burned unchecked, others from riots that left whole blocks smoldering. The city wasn’t dead yet, but the smell of its decay was everywhere.

“We can’t stay here much longer,” Maren whispered, her finger running along the faded outline of the 5 freeway. “If the collapse comes here first, we’ll be boxed in.”

Silen’s jaw tightened. He had always been the one to push forward, to find solutions where none seemed possible. “If we head north,” he said, tapping a spot on the map where the mountains rose, “we might find places still untouched. Small towns, maybe farmland.” He paused, then added, almost reluctantly, “If we can avoid the gangs.”

Maren shook her head. “No. Too many choke points. Too many eyes.” She slid the map aside and pulled another from beneath the pile—an older, hand-drawn chart marked with her own symbols. “The dirt roads, the forgotten ones… they’re safer. Harder to track. If we move at dusk, we’ll have a chance.”

Their eyes met across the table, shadows flickering across their faces. They both knew what they weren’t saying: the city would fall. It wasn’t a question of if, but when.

That night would be the last they studied maps together.

When the violence reached their street days later—mobs pouring in, fires tearing through houses—chaos ripped them apart. Silen had run north, clutching one of the maps, while Maren was swept south in the crush of panicked bodies. Neither knew if the other had survived.

But somewhere deep in the ruins of Los Angeles, under the weight of years and silence, both still carried the same memory: candles burning low, a table scattered with maps, and the plan that had never been finished.

 

Death of a Nation

The year was 2025, and what little trust the people had left in their government was gone. Shutdowns had become a routine spectacle—whole agencies shuttered, workers sent home, and essential services left to rot. It was no longer a rare crisis, but a way of life. Citizens were told to be patient, to "tighten their belts," even as politicians in polished suits lined their pockets.

Taxes, fees, and penalties—those were the words stamped across every notice, every demand from the state. But everyone knew the truth: these were not contributions to a shared future, they were tribute to a ruling class that no longer pretended to serve the people. Corruption had been normalized, legalized, and paraded openly in the halls of power.

The nation, divided beyond repair, staggered under the weight of its own decay. Communities were splintered, neighbors suspicious of one another, each side convinced the other was the enemy. Hope had eroded into dust, and poverty was the common bond that stretched from coast to coast.

The war did not erupt in one single act of violence—it smoldered, spreading city to city, like embers in dry grass. Protest became riot. Riot became massacre. And soon, cities themselves were set ablaze.

At night, the skyline of America was no longer lit by neon signs or the glow of skyscrapers, but by fire. Burning cities reflected the death of a nation. Streets once filled with the bustle of daily life became charred graveyards of steel and ash. The first civil war had been about ideals. This second one was about survival.

And from its ashes, only fragments of humanity would remain. Survivors, scattered and broken, left with one impossible question: could a new world be built on ruins soaked in blood?

In the Silence

The dirt road was little more than a scar across the wasteland, a ribbon of cracked earth winding toward the ruins of Los Angeles. The woman walked it alone, a shawl drawn tight against the evening chill, each step deliberate, measured. Dust clung to her boots, and her lantern—smaller than Silen’s but steady—cast a fragile circle of gold that seemed swallowed by the immensity of the dusk.

Her name was whispered only in fragments in the camps—the sister of the Lantern Pilgrim. No one was certain if she was real or only a story that traveled alongside his, but she knew the truth. Somewhere in the ruins her brother still walked, his vow still unbroken. And she would find him, though the road grew heavier with each mile.

The ruins rose ahead like jagged teeth against the dying light. Smoke clung low to the horizon, and with it came silence—an unnatural stillness that felt less like peace and more like a city holding its breath. She slowed her pace, eyes scanning the shadows where the road fractured into the outskirts.

A shape moved. Quick, then gone. At first she thought it was rubble shifting in the wind. But then came the sound—a faint scrape, deliberate, as though someone, or something, moved just beyond the reach of her lantern’s glow.

Her breath caught. Was it him? Silen? Or one of the gangs that still prowled the ruins after dark, knives flashing like fangs in the half-light?

She tightened her grip on the lantern and took a step forward, the flame flickering wildly as if it too sensed what waited in the shadows. The road stretched ahead into the skeletal city, darker now, deeper.
Whatever followed her was close.

And somewhere, in the silence between heartbeats, a voice seemed to echo—faint, familiar, impossible—calling her name.

She froze. The next step would decide everything.

 

Moment of Awakening

Morning opens with a hush of cool mist.

Wildflowers lean toward the light—

violet, gold, and tender green—

their petals jeweled with dew.

Beyond their quiet colors,

a waterfall spills from the cliff’s edge,

silver ribbons folding into a hidden pool.

Its endless song blends with the first birds’ calls.

Far below the spray, a lone monk stands,

small against the stone and falling water,

robe the hue of weathered clay.

He does not move, yet the whole scene breathes with him.

The sun climbs the ridgeline,

casting warm gold across the cascade.

Water, flowers, light, and distant figure

become a single moment of awakening—

spring itself, simply being.