#oneaday Day 668: Wasteland Diaries, Part 16

I made camp in the endless fields in which I found myself. In hours of walking, I hadn’t seen any landmarks of note ever since the strange episode with the house. I’d kept walking after the sun had set, but to no avail, and now the light from the waning moon was making it difficult to proceed. Although the ground had been largely flat on my travels, I really didn’t want to fall over something in the dark and end up bleeding to death miles from anything. Not that there was anyone around to rescue me, even if I was to find some sign of “civilisation”, of course.

I reached into the pack and pulled out another tin of food, the label of which had been scorched so much it was illegible. The tin itself was all right, though, and the contents turned out to be a mixture of different beans. Rather bland, to be sure, but right now I didn’t care — anything was better than nothing.

I lay down on my back and gazed up at the clear, starry sky. Staring into the sky like this was enough to make you forget about the state the world was in. These twinkling spots of light, some of which were older than the planet I was viewing them from, had a calming influence.

I traced the familiar shapes of the constellations with my eyes. There was Orion. There was the Plough. There were the other arrangements that I didn’t know the names of.

“That’s Ursa Major,” came a voice beside me, a pale, slim arm and hand pointing in the rough area of the Plough. “I don’t know the rest.”

“Orion,” I said, pointing to the distinctive arrangement that supposedly formed the hunter’s belt. “And I’m out, too.”

The girl’s laugh was intoxicating. It filled me with joy to hear, and I didn’t want this moment to end. I felt her take my hand and intertwine her fingers with my own. Her hands were cold, and I knew that she was doing this to warm herself up just as much as to show affection, but I didn’t mind. We were together, and all was well.

I felt her lean over and kiss my cheek. The touch of her soft lips on my rough skin sent a shiver down my spine. I closed my eyes and smiled.

“I love you,” she whispered in my ear. “I wish this moment could last forever.”

I opened my eyes to see the familiar stars above me again — far, far away, further than humanity would ever go in my lifetime. I rolled my head to the side, the dry grass rough on my face, and there was no-one there.

She had gone. The moment had ended. The moment we had both wanted to last forever had passed, and time had moved on to a different and altogether unwelcome future.

I hadn’t seen the girl in my dream — for that was the only reasonable conclusion I could come to  for what had just happened — but I knew instinctively it had been the same girl I’d seen in the photographs; the same girl I’d seen in those repressed memories that desperately wanted to emerge, but always found themselves cut off. It had been the flame-haired woman, without a doubt.

Things were starting to fall into place. Although I wasn’t able to call on these memories at will, I was beginning to draw my own conclusions, and I was convinced that they had to be right. I longed for someone to talk to, to bounce these ideas off — perhaps even to be told they were stupid — but the only person around was me. So I’d have to do.

The flame-haired girl was important to me, that much was clear from the photograph album I’d seen — whether that had actually been real or not. When I’d seen her alone in that house, her head in her hands, crying, something terrible had happened. She’d suffered a dreadful loss. I didn’t know what, but she was devastated by it.

Then there was the matter of the little girl. She’d been at the same house — she must have been the same person. I knew her, too, because I remembered getting into the car with her and her parents and eating the sweets.

I fumbled around in my pack and pulled out the small tin of boiled sweets, putting one into my mouth and wincing at the slight sourness of the flavour.

We’d obviously known each other for a long time. And if the last dream was a memory of a time we’d spent together — a time we’d both wished had lasted for ever — it was clear that over the years, things had run deeper than simple friendship. Whatever had brought us together in childhood had laid down roots and blossomed into young love, our lives unfolding before us, stretching off into the future — times of difficulty seeming as far away as the stars we loved to gaze at together.

But if that was the case, where was she now? Why wasn’t she here beside me in this dry, barren wasteland? Had I truly loved her, I wouldn’t have wished this existence on her, but to be beside the one you love, particularly in times of adversity, is to know strength and support.

A thought which had been fluttering in and out of my conscious mind occurred to me again. This was “Evie”, the woman I was looking for. Something had separated us, and it was important that I found her. That was enough to know for now — figuring out the “why” would come later.

Then I remembered the diary I had pocketed back in the woman Annie’s apartment. Perhaps that had some answers. It was time to investigate.