I Missed You

A red ribbon looks up at me from the dust, the silk looking like spilled blood. I pick it up gingerly, as if it might fall apart from the slightest touch, and tie my hair back slowly.

There isn't much here but broken fragments of metal and glass. I secure my bulky, makeshift gloves and drop the fragments of glass into a small metal box. Then I begin to shift through the shards of metal, looking for the weakest, softest metals. Tin, a bit of aluminium and a bit of lead. I plop them into my worn canvas bag, the letters long faded, and continue walking.

Amma tells me places such as this used to be scorned. Now landfills are prized and protected by the families close. Glass and metal are rare and any materials must be scrounged from already made creations, than heated up into new items. The poor workers of the world look through the garbage of the rich, desperately praising their trash.

I am told that many people predicted the fate of materials. But people are greedy, and many saw it as an opportunity to rise above. The world had been slowly heating for many years, but instead of saving it, some plundered it even more until the world was truly divided, no longer by race, religion or gender, but by power, as it always truly had been.

I walk past an old vehicle - a car, I think - and stare down at the dusty earth beneath it. It gleams in the face of the beating sun. Oil. Spilled oil on the ground, precious oil that could have heated my family's house during the too cold nights, or given us light during the dark of winter. Not that it's winter like it used to be, according to Amma.

The windshield is smashed in, glass glittering on the seats. I scoop the pieces up and begin my trek home.

Amma has lived in this city all her life. She tells stories of how it used to be, shiny and bright and new. Fresh lawns, and shrubs. In the spring some trees would become pink with flowers. Now it is dusty, old and desolate. The only water safe to drink comes from the clouds, and even that we boil - a waste not only of water that escapes through steam, but of precious oil and gas. In the beginning of the end, it snowed sometimes, and we would scoop up the pristine white powder before it became tainted by the sad reality of our world. Now, I haven't seen snow in years, just ash as it fills the air from a careless, easily avoided fire.

My too small shoes are worn down to threads, and the heat of the pavement burns my feet. I pick up the place slightly, rounding around the curb. The pain is stinging, but I'm used to it. I count the cracks in the pavement as I navigate with my head down. A rare tree there, that old crashed truck. It's best to keep your head down and walk fast lest you be waylaid by jealous beggars.

I see the old apartment building where my family lives out if the corner of my eye. There is no security to prevent outsiders from getting in, all that was lost along with electricity, but all the rooms have keys and padlocks to start and many go even farther and scavenge what they can find to protect their family.

I walk through the empty door frames, avoiding the shattered glass that sticks out. I lift my head and run quickly up the stairs.

Floor one, floor two, floor three... I get out at floor four. Our apartment is number 416. I can get to it now without looking at the metal plaques. I walk quickly through the halls and shove my key into the lock. It swings open and I step inside.

"I'm home!" I call. Everyone rushes to me. I am the best choice for a scavenger besides my hulking brother Brock. Amma is too old and Mama is too busy with my baby brother. Besides them, Kat isn't a good choice - despite being quick on her feet and with her brain, she's only thirteen. When Papa died in an accident, another person was needed to help scavenge. Brock couldn't do it all alone, so being the second oldest, the task was left up to me. I'm smaller, so I normally go to junkyards and landfills because I can slip between the wreckage. Because of Brock's hulking size, no one would mess with him, so he often goes out for days on end to the small farms that remain. Not much grows now, and farmers have to creative to work with the arid soil and lack of rain. While the toxins in lakes are fatal to humans and animals, they don't seem to harm plants, so some farmers build around lakes and rely on them to irrigate their crops. Unfortunately, there aren't any lakes nearby, and thus no farms, as we live in a city. Brock still isn't back yet with meager yet welcome supplies of rough potatoes and pumpkin, which grows plentiful and relatively normally.

Normal. This is my normal.

"Sayu! You're home!" Bella just turned five, and has lately become a bundle of energy.

I smile and hold out my hand to stop her from coming any closer. "Hugs after the sharp things are off me, remember?"

She nods with all the seriousness of a child.

I untie the knot holding the wood to my back and unload the few planks I have. They'll be firewood for the shockingly cold nights, likely, or maybe, with their straightness and general consistency, they'll be used to patch up a couple things around here.

Next I slide off my bag and hand it to Amma. She nods and takes it. She has a little forge of sorts set up where she manages to heat glass and metal to a melting point with her lucky find: a blowtorch. Unfortunately, this takes up a lot of valuable gas, so she never makes anything unless absolutely necessary. There's only been one exception that I know of of that rule: anytime my mom gave birth to another child, she would make as a little pendant, a good luck charm. Nothing fancy, but somehow still intricate and beautiful. I've watched her make my youngest sibling's and she always heats up the glass or metal so hot that it melts and then quickly carved and shaped patterns into the molten liquid before it cools.

Mine is a fox. It's copper, which is a common metal to find. It has tiny ears and a swooping tail and outstretched legs. I've worn my necklace for as long as I can remember, yearning to be like the fox. Untouchable. Swift. Fierce, and cunning.

I rub it now, once for good luck and once for joy.

Next, I unpack my satchel. I've filled it with all the fabric scraps I can find. I hope Mama will be able to patch together a new coat for Kat and maybe repair my shoes. I hand off the bundles to Mama, then hang up my bags and jacket. I don't take off my shoes, though. We never take off our shoes now, unless we're sleeping. The floor is just too risky, and although we try to keep it clean, we don't have the supplies for treatment if anything happened. Another safety precaution.

"Alright, Bells," I say, turning around to hug her, but she's already got me. She buries her face into my long hair.

"I missed you," she says, her voice muffled.

"I missed you too," I say.