The thing I wanted most was never meant to be

[theroadremains]

WHO: 'Casey' - Son of John
WHERE: The village, the inn, & the river
WHEN: February 19th
OPEN TO: Anyone
WARNINGS: None currently
STATUS: Open

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The Village: Handing off of the box open to one person

There was no shame, in Casey's world, to be had from looting those who had died or gone. Survival meant taking what you could find when you could find it, and those rules hadn't changed just because the camp had food, clean water, and clean air. He had been slipping in and out of old and unoccupied houses and rooms between chores, scavenging bits of wood and forgotten items. His backpack was weighted with some journals he had picked up, thinking Kira might help him find a use for them. There was a knife and a canteen of water at his hip, the weight of both leaving him far more comfortable with the state of things. His worn to rags scrubs had been ripped apart for use as rags and replaced with some sturdier light gray clothing he had found tucked under a bed in the inn.

It felt good to slip back into his old life for a moment. He climbed out the window of another abandoned house and dropped to the ground with a lighter step, despite the added weight to his pack and his bedraggled and filthy appearance. His coat was in tatters and his skin caked in dust and dirt, his hair wildly mussed and sticking up in random places.

On one of these exits, he held a box in his hands, a small one. His name had been scrawled on the card attached, and he had added it to his pocket with the other saved cards, meant for study later to aid in his learning. There had also been a chunk of flint attached by a leather cord to a steel shard in it. He had recognized it for what it was, and tucked it away for later as well before he slipped a wooden sheep into the box in its place.

He thought little of handing it off to the first person he encountered on his way back to the inn.

The River

Everyone who had offered to teach him to swim had done so with a caveat. Wait until the weather grew warmer. The phrase had been meaningless to him then, unable to imagine a world warmer than the canyon already was. Even the snow had seemed softer in the camp, enough that when the weather finally began to warm and he sank deeper into the melting snow, he lost the surety of his footing. The packed snow had been too soft and grown thinner by the day. Now as he stood by the bank of the river, its level and speed raised with the water from the melting snow, he had his first real look at green trying to sprout from the ground at the river edges. It was nothing more than moss on rocks, but he had slipped dangerously close, laying on his belly on the bank to reach out and touch it.

The camp never got any easier to believe. Even though his lungs had become accustomed to not needing to gasp in deep breaths of clean air or regulate his breaths to short, stifled intakes through a mask, he was still in awe of the air, the sky, the water. The apparent endless ability of the camp to provide at least a little meal for its ever growing numbers. It all unsettled him as much as it amazed him. Even after over a month of it, the camp still felt like a dream he would wake from at any moment.

At some point he dosed off where he was sprawled on the bank, his fingers creating a current where they dipped into the cold water and his cheek tucked against the crook of his other arm.

The Inn

It was dark by the time he made it back to the camp. He had taken the day to himself after finishing his morning chores, and he was in good spirits about the productivity of his scavenging, and distracted by the stars above. His eyes were so focused toward them that he missed the larger box until his foot bumped into it, and the contents made a noise like a sneeze. He hesitated, looking down at the box as it shifted and crouching before it.

Another card, another scrawl of a name that had been loaned to him. He wondered if perhaps the things Kira claimed to be his had really been meant for another, but the brass casings that clinked in his pocket as he moved suggested otherwise. He opened the box to find a pair of deep brown eyes staring out of the black darkness at him, lit by the light of the moon and the dancing colors of the aurora's in the sky above them.

He reached into the box without fear, letting the small, furred creature put her paws on him, a tail thumping into the side of the box. She didn't whine or bark, and he said nothing to her as he lifted her from it and tucked her into his coat to keep her warm, moving only far enough to sit on the steps of the inn.

Hours later, he could still be found there in the dark of the night, a sleeping bundle of black fur curled up on his lap, half hidden in the folds of his ragged, tattered coat. Late though it was, he was playing softly on the harmonica, keeping the level of the music as soft as he could, with his head tilted back toward the stars and auroras above.

[It takes a moment to start but in this post Casey's harmonica sounds a bit like a softer, quieter version of this.]