01. rain

The air around him is warm and arid when he wakes, like he’s just spent the last five hours baking in an oven. His skin stretches tight over aching muscles as he pushes himself off the pieces of foam he’s been using as a makeshift cot for the last few days now. He’s still tired but he knows he’s overstayed his welcome. Staying longer than a couple of nights in one place is suicide after all.

He glances out the hole in the wall that used to be a window, notes the blood red of the sunset, the lack of clouds in the sky. He can’t remember when the last time he saw a cloud was, the last time he felt moisture on his skin. The heat feels neverending, like all he’s ever known. Ever since the asteroid, Earth hasn’t been the same. In the beginning, scientists said it was nothing to worry about, just a couple of degrees, a couple of kilometres. But that was before the sun burnt away the ozone and left nothing but heat and radiation behind.

He shakes himself out of it. The past is the past. There’s nothing he can do about it now. He’s here, and alive. Somehow. Except, the yearning is stronger now, it comes more frequently. The sheer *need* to feel water on his face, in his hair, running through his fingers. To smell the petrichor and feel electricity buzzing against his skin. He wonders if the rumoured underground oceans and springs will be able to facilitate that same environment, a pathetic facsimile of the rain that used to fall on this planet. He remembers when scientists were so sure the apocalypse would come with ice and storms, he wonders how many of them are still alive to experience how wrong they were.

He sighs, approaching the window but careful to keep out of the rays of sunlight that will cook him the minute he steps into it. How terrible that the end of the world should look so devastatingly beautiful, swirls of pinks and oranges and reds. Like the sky is perpetually on fire. Until the sun sets and the danger comes from the ground instead of the sky. He can already hear them, the gangs of people, scavengers, on the hunt for materials and anything else that can keep them alive another day. 

Stepping back into the shadows, he pats at his pocket where his knife is kept. Judging from the sounds coming from beneath him, he’s certain he will be needing it tonight. Taking one last look at the broken down floor of the skyscraper that had been his home, he pushes thoughts of rain and water from his mind and steps out into the night.