It had been a year since the meteor crashed into the Earth. Seth and I lived in an orphanage with other kids that lost their parents in the tragedy. A wall had been built around the meteor to keep people away from it. The purple fumes that came off of it were toxic and killed a lot of people. Very few people were actually immune to the toxic haze and many people died almost instantly from the fumes.

The population was cut in half that day and society was now barely getting stabilized after a year. There was still chaos in certain parts of the country, mainly the closer to the meteor, the more dangerous it was. Gangs started to form for basic survival, stealing and looting what they needed. Other people took to helping others in need and sharing what they had with everyone. The military had to step in to regulate things and that stabilized the parts of the country that were further away from the meteor. No matter where we were however, things were not the same.

“Stop slacking off and help me weed the garden, Ash!” Seth shouted at me. I sighed and went back to pulling weeds. The orphanage we lived in was only about 200 miles from the wall so the sky was always dark. The sun only existed behind the purple fog that surrounded us. Anyone who was alive now was declared immune to the fog so I guess Seth and I were lucky enough to survive in this hostile environment. I had remembered the faces of the people who suffocated in the fog a year ago. The terror they felt when they couldn’t breathe must’ve been overwhelming because I couldn’t shake that expression from my memory.

The fog made it hard to grow normal vegetables due to blocking out the sun and making the air less pure. Mutated forms of plants started popping up due to the lack of direct sunlight. There was constant testing of which plants were edible and that cost many lives as well if a new plant appeared and ended up poisonous. Most of the livestock also died out from eating these plants which sent the world into a food crisis for the first six months. Once scientists starting introducing the new plants that people could eat and farming got back up, the food crisis ended for most people.

I looked over at Seth and noticed his shadow. I froze when I saw it. His shadow wasn’t mimicking Seth’s movements as he weeded the garden. It was completely still and that really creeped me out.

“Seth? What’s wrong with your shadow?” I asked.

“What are you going on about?” Seth looked over at me with an annoyed expression. The shadow gained an expression, forming eyes and a smile. Seth’s eyes grew wide when he saw that.

“Ash! Heads up!” Someone yelled. I turned to see a baseball coming straight for my face. I threw my arms up and shut my eyes to block the ball, but it never made contact. When I opened my eyes I saw Seth’s shadow blocking the ball. I stared in awe at the solid black mass in front of me. It was hard to describe what substance it was made out of so I reached out to touch it, but it shrunk back. The baseball fell to the ground in front of me as it disappeared into Seth. My brother had an expression of shock on his face and I could tell he had no idea what had just happened.

“Did you do that?” I asked Seth. He was just staring at his hands and I noticed his shadow was no longer on the ground.

“Are you alright, Ash?” One of the boys asked me, running over to get the ball. It didn’t look like anyone else noticed the shadow thing that had saved me from probably getting a pretty nasty bruise. I picked up the ball and handed it to the boy.

“Yeah, no harm done,” I smiled. When the boy left, I went back to Seth. He was completely freaked out.

“Are you alright?”

“I don’t know how I did that,” he whispered. “I just really wanted to stop the ball and it reacted to that.”

“It’s okay, Seth. We just won’t tell anyone what happened okay?”

“It was just a fluke. No one would believe us anyway.” Seth went back to pulling weeds, but I noticed his hands were shaking. Whatever he had done really scared him.