To EllenMillion‘s prompt.

The apocalypse was the last thing I was expecting when I went back to school.

Let’s be honest, I really wasn’t expecting much of anything except an escape from reality.

I liked being a student. I was good at it, I enjoyed it, and, unlike the work world, it enjoyed me back. So, when I got sick of grunt jobs, miserably low-paying crap, and all the bullshit that went along with the Real World, I went back to college. No better way to get out of planning for the future, right?

You’d think that being a Perpetual Student would have ill-prepared me for the apocalypse, but, as it turned out, you’d be wrong. I like learning, too, you see. And classes only fill so much of your time. And college campuses are full of people who like to teach you things.

All of which combined to turn me into sort of a post-apocalyptic Jane of All Trades.

Step One: Fail at the Real World. Check.

Step Two: Drop back into college with a vengeance. Check.

Step Three: End of the world. Check.

The Botany department has a cabin out past the edge of the town where they do field studies. By the time the armies overran the town, I was already out there, with two Botany students and a pre-med guy who tagged along.

We did some shopping first, of course, and then some more shopping, afterwards. It’s interesting the things people will leave behind when they’re panic-shopping. It’s interesting how much use you can get out of those things.

Now the four of us are running a school. It amuses me, a little, that I’ve gone from real-world dropout to teacher, but those that remain need a lot of teaching. And they have a lot to teach, too, or they wouldn’t have made it through the first three passes.

Everyone takes turns, teacher and student. And everyone – everyone – takes notes.

We’re planning for the future, here, after all.

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For imaginaryfiend‘s Prompt.

The prelude to Souvenirs.

It started with my daughters.

We used to vacation a lot, back Before. And we’d pick up a little something here, a little something there, before the girls were old enough to really pay attention.

But once Emily was five, she started picking out things she wanted to bring home. Postcards. Sea shells. And then she and Mary, with Candace and Patience “helping,” made a little shadow box and hung it on the wall.

We did one big vacation and one little vacation every year, and so that was two shadowboxes every year, Emily, and then Candace, and then Patience helping to pick out the souvenirs, and all of them arranging the shadow boxes.

The girls loved those things. When Emily was packing for college, she asked if she could take one with her. Candace and Patience wouldn’t hear of it. It nearly turned into a Family Fight, but Mary and I intervened.

We went through the house, and put together a Visiting Home Souvenirs Box, as pretty as the ones from our vacations, and sent that off with her. Two years later, we did the same for Candace.

A year after that, the world ended.

We were too close to the trouble, so we packed up everything we could into the van and headed for our cabin in the mountains. Patience insisted on taking the shadow boxes, so we did, giving up a couple summer shirts and my suit for the space.

Candace had a car by then, so that gave us a bit more space. The problem was Emily.

The problem, more specifically, was Emily’s college. Candace had been at a local school; Emily had gone four hours away. Four hours closer to New York City, closer to the mess. Her school had been evacuated by the time we called, and she’d never been good about carrying her cell phone.

So I got the family to the cabin, got the shadow boxes on the wall, and then I went looking for my daughter. Town by town, city by city. And every place I went, I picked up a souvenir, so she’d have something to see where I’d been.

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For lilfluff‘s Prompt.

The island was big enough to sustain life for their small group.

Which was good, because they couldn’t figure a way off of it, and, even if they had, they weren’t certain there was anything to return to. They had escaped onto Jacob’s fishing boat at the last moment, just as the city was burning and the lava was filling the streets. The waves had knocked them onto this island. And here they were, with fresh water and a little bit of fauna, a little bit of flora, a little bit of shelter.

In her heart, Suzanna knew it wasn’t sustainable. They had food, but not enough for the seven of them. The water would last, and as long as this was as territorial as they thought it was, their makeshift shelter would do. But the only food they’d found was on trees, or the small animals that ran around the place. Making it last, not eating up their entire food supply, would be tricky if not impossible.

And, without birth control, if they were here long enough, if nobody rescued them, if they couldn’t find a way off the island, that problem would only get worse.

“Hey, Suze,” Martin called, from the stretch of beach where he was supposed to be gathering seaweed. “Suze! Gretel! I found something!”

“Something” could be just about anything, but she made her way over to him, if only to stop the shouting. “What is it, Mar?”

“It’s a wine bottle. Message in a bottle sort of thing, maybe? I mean, fat lot of good it’s going to do us, but we could always add our own message and throw it back into the water.”

“We could,” she agreed, because quashing anyone’s hopes was just cruel. “Let me see it?”

She opened the bottle, tugging the cork out – surprising it hadn’t popped out; it wasn’t set home properly at all, and turning the whole thing upside down. Much to her surprise – and, it seemed, everyone else’s – a single red rose dropped out, stem first, its thorns catching on her skin.

“It has roots,” Frank was the first to notice. “I’ve never seen a single rose with roots. Think it will grow if we plant it?”

“It might be nice.” Andrea was still so shy, even with only the seven of them around. You could barely hear her over the waves. “Might be nice to have something of home.”

After that, even if James had wanted to argue, he would have been outvoted. They planted the rose in a sunny, well-drained spot, and hoped for the best.

And, to Suzanna’s private surprise, the rose grew, faster than she thought a rose ought to, taller than seemed reasonable, with longer thorns and thicker vines than anything should have. And, in a matter of a week, just as they were contemplating their dwindling food stores, the vine that should have been a rose produced fruit.

They were skeptical at first, and confused – roses didn’t make fruit – but they were also growing hungry and, after one of the small island mammals devoured one of the fruits and suffered no apparent ill effects, they decided it was safe to try.

Martin, he of the most sensitive digestion, declared himself their test subject and, gingerly, cut one of the breadfruit-like globes apart and ate it, slice after slice, declaring it delicious.

When it came her time to eat it, Suzanna stared at their salvation-in-a-bottle, their wine-and-roses fruit, with a bit of tired suspicion. “Now all you need to do,” she told the solitary flower, “Is figure out how to grow into a house.”

She turned away before she could see its vines start to stretch and grow again.

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For EllenMillion‘s prompt.

I like to pick up a little souvenir in every city I visit, a remembrance, if you will, a way to hold the place a little closer to me.

When I started, I was pretty haphazard about it, a postcard here, a commemorative t-shirt there, a city-opoly game in the next place.

The problems with that, though came down durability and portability. Paper deteriorates, board games lose their pieces, t-shirts fall apart after a while. They all get hard to carry, and hard to store. I wanted something that would last. I wanted to hold onto those memories for a very long time. I wanted to be able to bring them with me.

It was maybe six, seven cities in that I stumbled upon shot glasses. The ultimate solution. Almost every place has them, they’re amazingly durable, they’re distinctive in some way, and they’ll fit in a pocket if I have to. So now every city I hit, I stop in a rest stop or a souvenir shop, whatever I can find, and pick up two – one for my van, and one for the place back home, sort of a museum. Sort of a mememto… you know. That thing.

I had to go back, of course, to the first six. Now that, that was hell. Not the hardest thing I’ve done in my line of work, not by far, but it still wasn’t easy, retracing my steps, going back into the ruined cities I’d already cased for survivors and supplies, looking for one little glass.

But I like to have a remembrance that I’ve been there. A way to remember these places the way they used to be.

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