Ellie In The Echo

When Jonah woke, the first thing he noticed was the light.

Not the buzzing flicker of the bunker’s LEDs, forever dimmed by battery rot. Not the burnt-orange haze from the firestorms that curled above the wasteland like angry ghosts. This was different. Warmer. Gentler.

Sunlight.

Real, golden sunlight spilled through gauzy curtains, draped across the floor like silk. The air carried the scent of lilacs and maple syrup. He lay on a bed that felt far too soft, too warm, too clean for someone who’d spent the last three years sleeping on cold concrete or rusted metal.

His fingers clenched the bedsheets. Cotton. Washed. Folded at the corners. He bolted upright, heart hammering.

The last thing he remembered was the grocery store. A husk of a building, roof half-caved in, vines wrapped around freezer doors. Ellie had gone in first, knife drawn. Then—gunshots. Chaos. Her name on his lips. A scream.

And then—nothing.

Now he was here. Clean. Whole. Alive.

He swung his legs off the mattress, testing the ground with caution. Even the floor beneath his feet felt wrong. Wood, smooth and polished, not gritty with ash. The light on his skin wasn’t harsh and hungry like fire—it was warm and steady, wrapped in birdsong.

Birdsong.

He hadn’t heard a real bird in years.

“Good morning, sweetie.”

The voice made him freeze.

His mother.

He turned slowly, breath caught in his throat.

She stood in the doorway, bathed in golden light. Her hair was tied back in a messy bun, the way she used to wear it when making breakfast before school. A floral apron clung to her like memory. Her eyes—those same soft hazel eyes—sparkled as if they’d never dimmed, never watered with smoke and sickness.

“I made pancakes. Blueberry.”

Jonah stared, mouth dry. His mother had died three years ago. Her lungs filled with soot and silence during the first ashfall. He’d held her hand as the bunker trembled and the fires raged above them. He’d buried her beneath a slab of concrete.

Yet here she was, smiling like it was a Saturday morning in a world that still made sense.

He stumbled past her without a word, down the stairs. Each step was lined with family portraits he hadn’t seen in years—vacations, birthdays, school plays. He turned corners he used to know, brushing fingers along the banister carved by his father’s hand.

In the living room, the old armchair sagged just the same. The bookshelf leaned slightly to one side. On the mantel, the same dusty clock ticked a rhythm he hadn’t realized he missed. His chest tightened.

Through the front door, sunlight poured onto a perfectly mown lawn. Across the street, two children zipped past on bicycles, their laughter echoing. A dog barked. A sprinkler ticked and spun lazily.

A neighbor waved. “Morning, Jonah!”

It was impossible.

None of it made sense.

Over the next few days, Jonah drifted between awe and dread. His body, once bruised and skeletal, now felt strong. He was thirteen again, not sixteen. The jagged scar across his ribs, the burn on his left palm—both vanished.

“Just dreams,” his parents said whenever he asked about the world beyond town.

“You’ve always had an active imagination,” his father added, tousling his hair.

But the dreams kept coming.

Not the ones with sunshine and pancakes.

Dreams of Ellie.

Older now, tougher, with cropped hair and sharp eyes. They scavenged abandoned cars together. She taught him how to siphon gas, find clean water, shoot without flinching.

The world was wrecked in those dreams, but Ellie was real. Vivid. Alive.

Every morning he woke in that same soft bed, birds chirping outside, pancakes cooling on the table.

One night, he dreamed he found her.

They were in the hollowed-out remains of a library. She was bleeding, cornered by ferals. He fought them off, heart hammering. She grabbed his wrist.

“Don’t forget, Jonah,” she whispered. “You promised. You said you’d find me.”

He jerked awake—

—and this time, he wasn’t in bed.

He was in a forest.

The grass was yellowing, brittle underfoot. The sky was low and gray. His clothes were torn, blood drying on his sleeves. His left hand was wrapped in a dirty bandage.

He blinked, dazed.

The house, the pancakes, the smiling parents—gone.

Had that been the dream?

Stumbling toward a rising plume of smoke, he tried to steady his breathing. Memories collided—sunlight through curtains, Ellie’s eyes in the firelight, the smell of burning rubber, the sweetness of syrup.

Was this a nightmare inside a dream? Or had the dream grown teeth?

He reached a rusted sign choked in ivy: “Welcome to Ember Falls.”

He remembered this place. They’d passed it weeks ago, arguing over whether to detour. He’d wanted to skip it. Ellie insisted it was worth a look.

Then came the ambush.

Then nothing.

Then—

“Jonah.”

He turned.

Ellie.

Wounded, limping. Alive.

“I knew you’d come,” she said.

He stumbled toward her, but something shimmered in the air. Her image wavered like a heat mirage. For a second, he saw blue sky again. A woman’s silhouette in a window. His dream-mother watching from that impossibly perfect house.

“Jonah,” Ellie said again, voice sharper now. “They want you to stay asleep. You have to fight it.”

The world stuttered. Skipped.

And he was back in bed.

Sheets damp with sweat. Sunlight streaming. Pancakes on the table.

But this time, the bandage was still on his hand. And underneath it—the burn.

Jonah began testing the boundaries.

He refused breakfast. Climbed out the window. Tried every road out of town.

Each one circled back to the house.

Time looped. A boy fell off his bike every day at exactly 10:12. His neighbor waved in the same arc, said the same six words. The sun never moved.

He confronted his parents.

“You’re not ready,” his mother said, and her smile twitched at the edges, almost tearing.

“You need more rest,” his father added, his grip like iron on Jonah’s shoulder.

He hurled a mug at the kitchen window. It shattered. Beyond it wasn’t sky—it was canvas. Painted blue. Flat.

He pressed his hand to the wall. It rippled like water.

He ran.

Jonah woke in the library.

Real dust stung his nose. Real pain lanced through his chest. The ceiling was half-collapsed, and the air reeked of mold and smoke.

Ellie knelt over him, pressing a canteen to his lips.

“You were gone three days,” she said, her voice cracking. “I thought I’d lost you.”

He sat up slowly, groaning. The bandage was there. His arm ached. His body remembered what his mind had nearly forgotten.

“They built it like a trap,” he muttered. “It felt so safe. Like… it loved me.”

“That’s how it works,” Ellie said. “It gives you everything you miss until you forget what matters.”

He nodded. His hands were shaking.

Then he torched the place.

Later, as they picked through the smoldering remains of Ember Falls, Ellie handed him an old photograph—curled and faded but intact.

Their family. Before.

Jonah stared at it for a long time.

“I still remember the way it smelled,” he said quietly. “That house. Her pancakes. The light.”

“I know,” Ellie replied. “But it wasn’t real.”

He nodded slowly.

“Sometimes,” he admitted, “I wish I’d stayed asleep.”

Ellie put a hand on his shoulder, firm and warm.

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

He looked out at the scorched trees, the broken road, the gray sky stretching endlessly ahead.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Me too.”

And together, they walked on—into a world still wounded, but finally real.