Day 2212

- Adept Remembers

Her name was Margo. Everyone there called her Eyes, she had the best pair it was said. At 11 I swore she was older than the earth itself. I must have added ten years to that in the time I knew them by my many questions. She could tell me stories of the old world, when she was little and there was something to tell about. More than sand and dirt, and people made of stone, or metal.

I called her Na. I had one, I can pull the memories back on quiet nights if the air smells just right. She wasn’t as old as Eyes.

She said I was a clever thing. I never told her my real name. I told her I was called Adept. She asked if I knew what that meant - I told her what my mother told me. It means I was good at everything. Na laughed, ‘good enough’ she said. She put my youthful energy to use, and taught me the most important thing I could have ever learned. I learned how to shoot. Not a gun - everyone shot those, Na reminded me, and they ate resources that couldn’t be made or found easy. I learned how to shoot a bow.

I practiced for hours. I never lost a single one of the arrows. She showed me how to make them from old scraps found in the waste. She showed me how to do it from the motorbike. She showed me how to ride that too, even though I was too little yet to do much. I got good at it. I was able to help.  I wasn’t perfect. I’m still not perfect. But always good enough to do what I need to.

Old Eyes. She always made sure I had before she did. She always defended my position in the gang. She always reminded them that there was nothing out there in the waste for a little girl like me.

Na was the first to go when the bleeding sickness came. I buried her myself. I was 13, and my world already felt like it came to an end. She was just the first of a line of a family I can rightly remember that I buried.