Easy (Part 3)

But when I look to the top of the snow drift to where I saw the movement, I see only a single silouhette in the bright sunlight which beams from behind it. A person stands there at the crest, tall and regal. Staring down at me I can see only that it is human and female and alone. It is a single silhouette bathed in golden rays and for the briefest moment I am filled with something I long ago forgot the word for.

“Agatha?”

And before I even know what I've done the rope is lying in the snow and my feet are leaving ragged craters in the soft white ground as I run toward the top of the bank, my boots sinking in down to my knees. Fast as I can I am there but as I crest the top she is gone and I am blinded. There is only the golden glow of the harsh sun in this thin air and I can see nothing for a moment but even then, when it finally comes together, there is only a shape running away from me in the snow. Toward the horizon and the sun.

She is beautiful even from here and I know that she is Agatha, her skin as pale and clear as the white of the fresh snow and her body as fit and lean as one who has been forced to live in this hellish waste for years. She is running and as she does her blonde hair waves out behind her and shimmers in the light. My own footsteps fall through the snow like a wounded horse in relation and she quickly moves away as I slow, winded and hurting as her silhouette is gone from view.

It's then that I realize, looking down at my own feet burried in the white that there are no foot prints save my own. As closely as I followed her path it is only my own steps I see and none leading away. None leading toward her or toward anyone.

Since I've no way to keep time I have no way of knowing how much time has passed or how long I've been running. As I begin to follow my steps back toward the fuel it begins to snow once more and I become afraid. Without my own steps to follow and if the weather should turn worse I could die here, nearly within sight of the station. Killed by my own hopes and imagination.

But I do find my way back and the cart is still there, undisturbed. The fuel is safe, for now, and I begin the slow process again of pulling it to a new hiding spot, this time behind a rock out cropping slightly closer to the station. The entire time, how ever long it may be, I force the thought of her from my mind. Force the idea of what it might mean from my mind.

The days are long here but they do not last forever and if I am to survive another night, if I am to live to dream again, I must hide the fuel once more and I must refill the generators. I must make sure they are secure and running so that tonight, when the cloud cover is right to bounce the radio waves off of, I can contact her again. It is miracle enough that I can contact her at all with what little power the set has. It would not do to miss any opportunity.

And I will not tell Agatha tonight of what happened. It would not do to worry her. She has enough on her mind and I know in my heart that I am as much the only hope she has as she is mine.

I only hope that she is also well. Lately she has been sounding more and more bleak and I worry for her sanity. It is all too easy to lose these days.

Easy (Part 2)

The outside world is all but completely white and there's only a slight hint of blue in the sky to tell me where the earth meets the horizon. I can’t help but look out at the landscape and see an empty old house with white sheets tossed over all of the furniture to protect them from dust. But it’s pointless really; the sheets are there to stay, the house will never be a home again.

I venture out during the day out of habit mostly. Sight is just as difficult in the white of day light as in the the near black of darkness. Though it is safer in the day, it is only a bit. Markers I left in the snow, sparse breadcrumbs to ensure I didn’t lose myself in the tundra, are barely visible now. New snow white sheets draped over the old furniture hide them.

I had tried to hide the cache in a way that would be too difficult for others to find, but not so difficult as to where I would not be able to find it myself. The first marker meant to travel west for a hundred paces. The second was east for fifty. The third was west again, for twenty-five. The fourth marker in the in the snow was the location, but a fifth and six marker were placed in the distance to lead anyone who might have attempted to follow the trail astray.

As I dig, her words echo in my head. She’s right, it is not easy. I’ve reached the point where I can’t remember how many days I’ve been here. I kept time for a while with my watch, but the battery eventually died. Honestly I've no idea how long it was dead before I noticed. After I did though, I kept with the clock at the station, but as I began to run lower on fuel, I killed all operations unnecessary to survival. And after that, I attempted to keep time with the passing of the sun. It moves slower here, the days and nights are hours longer than I’m accustomed to. I did the math to count the hours for a while, but eventually it grew tiresome and I deemed it pointless and ceased.
Actually, everything seemed pointless, after a time. Survival is our base instinct, our one true purpose, some would say. However, I found, the more I was forced to struggle, to persist, to revert to the base instincts of survival, the less I truly wanted to. I determined that was what separates us from animals. They seek simply to survive. We wish to live.

Then I found her voice, the voice that saved my life.

I play out different scenarios in my head; vivid and intricate day fantasies to carry me until the night when I can sleep and dream proper. In my mind, I've shaped her form as if she were molded from the sun. Carved out of gold, in my mind she radiates with enough warmth to melt the snow that's covered this world four times over. She is my hope, my fuel, and the only thing keeping me from shutting down and having a white sheet tossed over me like everything else in this forsaken house that is my world.

I pull the cache from the snow, four fuel canisters covered by a tarp and tied together on a rudimentary sled. It is not incredibly hard to pull; I had the forethought to hide it up hill, getting the difficult part over with early. Though now, finding somewhere better to hide it will be much more challenging than the first time.

Of course it's then, while I'm struggling to pull the sled from where it's lodge in the snow, that I see something out of the corner of my eye. A fraction of a second really, something streaking across my vision, disrupting the infinite white. I keep pulling, trying to tell myself that it was a bird, though I had not seen a bird in all my time here, or a mouse, though I had only seen them scurrying about the nooks and crannies of the station.

Then another something darts by in my peripherally and it becomes nearly impossible to convince myself that these are not the larger vermin that stole the fuel from the generators. Impossible to convince myself that they've not tracked me down to find the rest.

Easy (Part 1)

“I never said it would be easy.”

The sound of her words have barely left the ether that is the space between us when the gentle sound of the power stopping reaches my ears. I can hear the transistors cooling with the loss of energy and I know that I've lost her again. The generators have failed and again, I am alone.

As long as there is gas in the generators there is hope, or so I've told myself these last few weeks. If I can keep the power on for long enough there will be hope; not enough hope to assuage my fears, but more than I've a right to have. More hope for the future and more hope for her.

Walking from my workshop and down the dark corridor though, the little flashlight showing my way before me, her words echo in my mind and I feel the aloneness as a tingling in the air and a depth in my heart. The aloneness that comes when her voice is gone and it is only the idea of her and the dreams that keep me moving. The dreams that I tell myself come from her somehow, through the ether and through the space between us. The dreams are what keep me going as much as the idea of her light out in the darkness.

When I get nearer the door though, I notice that the light is gone from the sky in the window and I look to my watch to find the time is long past when I'd thought. It is night and with the night I hope that the generators have stopped themselves from lack of fuel, from only the lack of my attention to them and not some other force.

I am wrong.

There is a scurrying when I punch the little plastic light by the door and I see the mice moving away from me. Two of them, it seems as if they run together. Even as small, alone, and emaciated as they are I can see they have each other and through that they have strength. One of them looks up at me and pauses, the light of my flashlight glinting off its little pupils and I swear there is an understanding there. He is secure in his companion and I am not.

Looking away I open the door and I see that there are other vermin out, and larger ones. It hasn't been my lack of attention that's killed the generators, it seems, but something else. I silently hope they have found only the generators themselves and not the store of fuel I've hidden away as I click the door softly shut along with the dimming of my light. I hope too that perhaps they haven't seen me; hope is all I have these days, at any given moment.

Quietly listening though on the other side of the door it seems I've been lucky tonight. The steps of many feet move quickly away and I quietly step outside with the quick beating of my heart the only sound to fall upon the snow beneath my feet.

The generators are still there and what's more they are chained securely. It is only the half empty gas can I'd left beside them that are gone, along with the fuel from each tank, siphoned by the thieves. The vermin were thorough tonight but they were quick and they've left my power sources at least. The cache of fuel was beyond them as well and is safe but when the sun rises I shall have to hide it all again and better than I have before. I know that I have been lax in that, so focused on my work these past few weeks.

Focused on my work as well as on the dreams. The dreams of her.