After lunch that day, they decided to make the ruins a little more pleasant to live in. Finding water, a way to survive, had made them less eager to leave and face the unknown once more. Here, they fad food – sort of – and they had a relatively safe place to sleep.

But it was also apparent that they wouldn’t be able to keep the place dry should it start to rain.

Lizzy and Maya decided to go scavenge for more food, to create some sort of pantry.

John and Claire went into the woods to get wood, both dry for burning and green for building. The plan was to reinforce the roof, maybe create some sort of extra wall with a door to better enclose the space… Maybe separate the sleeping area between the boys and the girls if they could find vine or something.

Edwin, Tom, and Claire stayed back and were trying to create some tools. They didn’t have much knowledge. Tom had watched one or two survival videos online, Edwin was into science so he had a few skills, and Jamie was familiar with camping. That only made them somewhat effective.

“I don’t think I spent enough time being grateful for society,” Tom grunted after grazing his hand again while trying to make a rock sharp to create some kind of knife. “Seriously, how did our ancestors survive anything?”

“They ate apples and fish,” Edwin suggested.

Tom chuckled. “It was a great meal, considering, but I’m not sure how I feel about potentially rating that for the rest of my life.”

“We’re really not going home, huh?” Jamie asked.

Tom wanted to kick himself for this. Hope. That’s what keeps people going in the darkest of times and that is what they needed then. Especially the younger ones.

“Of course, we will,” Tom promised hoping that his words would exude more confidence than he was actually feeling.

“How?”

“The same way we came.”

“And how did we do that?”

“I’m not sure. But as soon as we figure that out, then we’ll be able to cross right back.”

“Yeah,” Edwin assures too. “It’s just science.”

But Tom and Edwin exchanged a look that clearly said that this wasn’t science and that even if it were, they had no idea how to reverse it. But even the two of them needed to believe that, at some point, they would find a way back home. In many ways, Tom was still ignoring all the signs that this wasn’t home, that he did see two moons in the sky, that he ate a purple apple… all he wanted was to wake up home.

He would even have settled for a parking lot somewhere. Or the middle of an American forest. Or anywhere on Earth. Somewhere he could just walk long enough to find a phone, and then let some adults take care of getting him home. Here, adults or not, even if he decided to take matters into his own hands… there was no going home possible.

That thought always seemed too big to handle so he kept pushing it down, burying it as best he could, and he was trying to make sure that Jamie and Maya stayed as far as possible from this thought. He didn’t know how long they would be able to keep pretending, but he was willing to keep this on for as long as possible.

“Plus that meal wasn’t that bad, right?” Tom insisted. “We could do that for a little while.” Fish really wasn’t his favorite food, he was more of a meat and fried vegetable person himself, but… beggars can’t be choosers, right? Besides, he wasn’t lying: the food had been alright, none of them looked like they were developing food poisoning, and he could see himself eating that – even only just that again and again – for the foreseeable future. It also had put some food into Lizzy and even if Tom wasn’t her biggest fan, it did lift something off his shoulders.

Jamie shrugged. “It was okay. I would have liked to go fishing. I would have caught bigger fish.”

“You can do that next time,” Tom promised. “Because let’s be honest, if anyone is counting on me to catch anything, on land or in water, we’re all going to starve.”

“Then again, the girls caught fish that were already trapped using a t-shirt. I think we could all have done that,” Edwin replied.

“No, I really think I could have messed up even that,” Tom insisted, very aware that right now, the group was maintaining them alive much more than any individual in particular. Especially not him.

“It’s true that they did provide a nice meal. Even if Lizzy was kind of a bitch about it. She really dislikes you, doesn’t she?”

“Apparently.”

“Why?”

Tom shrugged. “Because she is an entitled cliché of a cheerleader wannabe who cannot even make it to the team so she takes her frustrations on anyone else? Besides, I’m pretty sure she hates John even more.”

“Look!” Jamie exclaimed. “I did it!”

He had managed to secure one of the sharpened stones on a piece of wood and pretty much created a knife.

“Well done!” Tom replied. He understood that however small an achievement it seemed, however unsharpened and frail the thing might be, tools were important for survival. They might also have been the first steps of civilization. Or was that farming? Can you even farm without tools? “Do any of you know how to grow stuff?” he asked the other boys. “Like… plants and stuff? It might be better to have food here than to have to scavenge further and further away for it?”

“Weren’t you in the school’s gardening club?” Edwin asked.

“Yeah. But that lasted like five weeks before everyone stopped going. I know how to clean the school’s old planters…”

“Well, anyway, I don’t think the plan is to stay here for months and I’m pretty sure that’s the time it takes to grow stuff.”

“Do we even have a plan?” Tom asked.

“Survive another day,” Jamie replied, a little gloom. Then again, he had a point, didn’t he?