I woke sometime before dawn to the sound of Thaïs thrashing. Fire burned in my nerves and adrenaline crashed through my veins. It took me a moment to realize we were alone in the small room and not under attack. I listened intently for a long moment, but heard no sign of bombardment. It was hard to feel relief with Thaïs clearly caught in some kind of nightmare, however. Both of us had left our sleeping bags unzipped, since the cellar was cool instead of cold. It made it easy for me to quietly slip out of mine so I could be next to her.

Thaïs had thrown her covering off in her tossing and turning. The carbide lantern was up past my head, but I didn’t want her to wake up to a stark white light after the phosphorus bombs that had gone off in Seisa. Instead, I put a hand on her back in the darkness and rubbed slow, soothing circles until the thrashing faded. Her cries slowly faded into tears. I couldn’t see her face in the darkness to wipe them away, so I eased closer and leaned my head against hers.

“I’m here, Thaïs.” I kept my voice a murmur so it wouldn’t wake her if she was still asleep, keeping up the soothing circles on her back. I was laying on the hard packed dirt floor, but that was better than leaving her alone to struggle with her pain. “I’ve got you.”

Her fingers knotted in the front of my shirt and pulled me close, but she didn’t say anything. I wasn’t certain if she was awake or asleep, but that uncertainty wasn’t going to stop me from offering comfort. I wrapped my arm around her and held her against my chest, tucking her head under my chin. We were still for a minute, maybe two, as her erratic breathing gradually slowed and found its rhythm again. I hummed low in my chest, some half-remembered lullaby I had used as a girl when Endeis had her night terrors in our shared room.

The trembling tension in her body faded with each pass of my hand up and down her back. She shifted to get more comfortable against me but made no effort to pull away, still clinging to my shirt.

Exhaustion was already weighting my eyelids again. “I’ve got you.” I sighed to release the last of my discomfort and reached behind me to grab the lumpy pillow from Brygos. Once it was under my head to ease the worst of the pressure on my stiff neck, I settled in for the rest of the night, keeping my arm around Thaïs.

I admitted to myself in the darkness of that cellar that the warmth was probably more comforting to me than Thaïs. When she wasn’t in the middle of the devastation or asleep, she seemed so self assured and confident. I was the one always coming apart at the seams, or at least that was how it seemed in those early days. My life in Seisa hadn’t prepared me for this apocalypse, whereas Thaïs had long ago learned to negotiate an existence among powerful, violent people who would gleefully do her harm if she breathed wrong.

Even if she didn’t need this, though, I would give it. Thaïs had lost more in Seisa than I had. We’d both lost a world, but it was a difference of scale. I’d only lived in Seisa a few years and only held the friendships I’d made in the movement when the bombardment happened. Thaïs’s entire life had been shattered into oblivion.

I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

When I woke up, I was covered by a sleeping bag to protect me from the chill. There was no trace of Thaïs. Anxiety poured through me at that particular realization. Was she alright? Had something happened while I slept? I scrambled up, cursing when I realized how stiff and sore I was. I fumbled for the carbide lantern and then had to struggle for a moment to get it turned on again. Once I found the switch and flipped it, I grabbed the handle and rose to my feet. I stopped to slip on socks and shoes, knowing that if we had to run, I didn’t want to do it barefoot. This part of the cellar was low enough that I could only stand bent at the waist, but I made my way out the hidden door and shifted the boxes so I could pass through the rest of the cellar, carefully replacing them.

It was late morning when I stepped outside. I shut off the carbide lantern and left it in the darkness of the cellar by the door, then looked around with owlish blinks. I heard Thaïs laughing around the side of the house and blew out a sigh of relief. At least she was doing better than she had been the last night. I wiped some of the dirt off my arm and hoped I didn’t look too messy as I rounded the corner.

Brygos and Zita were there in deep conversation, drawing in the dirt in front of the farmhouse steps as they sipped their morning coffee. Thaïs was amusing the children out in the yard while they conferred, lining up a shot in a game of marbles currently being narrated like a boxing match by Zita’s little boy, Haemon. Two small teams of kids were chattering on, one side cheering on Thaïs while the others rallied behind her opponent, a tall boy I didn’t recognize from the night before.

“Karsa!” Zita called, waving me over.

Thaïs looked up at me just as she made the shot. The marble went wide, flying out of the circle without hitting its intended target.

“She shoots, she misses, she loses!” Haemon announced in what he imagined was a booming voice.

I stopped the large marble with my foot, then rolled it back over to Thaïs. “Nice shot.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She laughed and handed the cat’s eye agate marble over to the girl next to her. “Probably for the best. They were going to start ganging up on me soon,” she said as she stood up.

Her little supporters looked crestfallen for a moment, but apparently not enough so to quit the game. Instead, they fixed their hopes on the girl Thaïs had picked as her replacement. “C’mon, Althea! You show him!”

I held out my hand to help Thaïs up off her knees. She stopped to brush some of the dust off her pant legs. There was no acknowledgement of the night before, which I took to mean she had been asleep the entire time. “Glad you’re up,” she said. “You want the good news first or the bad?”

My stomach lurched. “Bad.” It was always better to just take the punch first.

Thaïs’s lips curled up into a smile. “The shower is really, really, really cold.”

“And the good news?”

“The votes are all tallied and double-checked. Raklidí is joining us.” She nudged me with an elbow as we neared Zita and Brygos, dropping her voice. “Your enthusiasm for the cause is apparently pretty persuasive.”

“I don’t think that was me.” I rubbed my neck, aching from how I’d slept. “Think I have time to get a shower?”

“After they fill you in? Maybe. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Brygos offered out a cup of coffee and I accepted it gratefully. “How are you feeling, Karsa?”

I smiled at them. “Sore and a little dusty. Thaïs says you’re joining the fight.”

Zita nodded. “We are too close to the front with too few to fight here,” she said. “But we have friends in every village from here to the mountains. If we make for somewhere more defensible that can support us, we can have a real resistance. The consensus is the Zelen Valley.”

The rationale was obvious. It was firmly a Lathraí stronghold and rich arable land surrounded by desert mountains, right at the root of the River Sylh. It was also a considerable range of territory. “Do they know what’s happened? It’s remote.”

“They’ve been trying to recruit more defenses since the war proper started. There’s a few garrisons of soldiers in the region that they’re eager to force out. They won’t turn us away.” Brygos sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “Kasos has a son who lives there who’s been calling with the occasional update. We let him know what we’d decided.”

Thaïs sighed a little. “I’m going to need new shoes by the time we get there.”

“We can take vehicles up to a point,” Brygos said. “They’ve locked down the major roads, but the old highways are still drivable until you hit Ariti.”

I thought of what had happened to Seisa. “Bombers may be a risk.”

Zita sighed, looking down at her coffee for a moment. “A risk there, a certainty here.”

“Everyone has packed the important things. Many have already left, taking the back roads. The last of us were waiting for you.” Brygos stood up and gave a last bittersweet look towards his house. “I’ve already put everything in the truck. Seeds, stored food, plenty of water, clothes, a few personal things. If you want to gather up your people, we can depart shortly. They should all be in the shade in the square getting themselves ready.”

I nodded. We’d have a chance for me to clean up somewhere along the way, or at least that was my hope. It only took a few minutes to wrangle everyone up and get a head count. Everyone was still dog tired and sore, but at least we wouldn’t be running this time. The big farming trucks, even filled with goods, had plenty of places for us to ride.

Soon we were moving. I sat in the back of Brygos’s truck under the cover beside Thaïs. It was hot, but the back and front of the canopy had flaps that were rolled open at the moment, giving us a steady breeze to cool us down. I murmured a quick prayer of thanks as I settled in on a sack of grain and leaned back against the wooden frame. The rattling was almost soothing, because it meant we were getting progressively closer to hope.

Thaïs sighed, looking down at her hands. “You know, when we make it to Zelen, I’m going to be a terrible farmer.”

I smiled. “Maybe you’ll find something else you like.”

She glanced at me through long lashes. “You make it sound so easy.”

I thought of Variations, still tucked in my back pocket. “In difficult times, recall that fire burns, and when it rains, the earth gets wet. When men are in turmoil, Nature follows herself.” I pulled out the weathered little volume and ran a thumb lovingly across its cover before holding it out to her. “At least, that’s what Arete says.”

Thaïs smiled at my recitation. “Very pretty. Sostrate mentioned your focus was literature, when you were at the university.”

“Those who can, do. Those who can’t…” I searched my thoughts for something erudite and failed. “I suppose we just quarrel about the symbolism of the blades of grass in Laomadon’s work or some other famous novelist’s fixation on fathers and sons.”

Her smile widened. At least I could be entertaining for a little while. “If you love poetry so much, you should write it.”

“My poetry was never that good.” I turned my eyes towards the back of the truck, on Raklidí shrinking into the distance. I felt a pang of guilt for uprooting everyone’s lives, but I knew it was for the best. The war would have flattened that little village.

Thaïs huffed at that, more in amusement than anything else. “Is there anything you think you’re good at, Karsa?”

“Surviving, but please don’t quote me on that. It would dry up the little bits of luck I still have left.” I dug in my pockets for my little matchbook so I could smoke. I didn’t have much of that terrible tobacco left, but I knew I might not get another opportunity for a long time. They were better enjoyed now than held onto for a future that might never come. We were one bomb away from nonexistence.

“There is something you haven’t considered.”

I looked back at her, frowning. If I focused, I could keep the cylinder trapped at the corner of my mouth even while speaking. “What’s that?”

“I might enjoy bad poetry.”

I shook my head slightly, lips curving into a faint smile. “You’re strange woman, then.”

Thaïs laughed. “Takes one to know one, Karsa.” She leaned back against a bag of lentils and closed her eyes, clearly intent on taking a nap while she could. We both knew that it might be a while before we had another chance to. “Better get to work on that poem for me.”

I flicked ash out through a knothole in the wood of the truck’s bed. I didn’t have a witty retort. Besides, I appreciated that Thaïs was trying to keep some sensitive part of me alive.