January 11, 2025
It’s been 4 years since the Great Terran Civil War and most of humanity is gone. I used to find groups of survivors here and there, doing what they can to hide and get by, but it’s been too long since I’ve seen one. Way I figure it, with our numbers dwindling, someone should make sure there’s some record of our last days. Since I can’t guarantee anyone else will, here I am, although I’ll admit, I don’t really know where to begin.
I’ve been up somewhere in what used to be Northern Canada for about two years, roaming around. Can’t stay in one place too long, just in case. It is cold as balls! I’ve taken a page from the Inuit hunters and started building and hiding in igloos during the winter months. Of course, mine are pitiful in comparison and it took almost the whole first winter to figure out how to build one functionally. Building an igloo is waaaaay harder than it seems, and I already thought it seemed really hard! But I’d managed a halfway decently insulated ice home of sorts. By my second winter, I’d managed to build a nice snowy hobbit home, dug into a hill. I stayed there for a month. It was the longest I’d ever been anywhere since the war. It was perfectly hidden by a bunch of trees and brush and boulders. Honestly, I only moved on because I thought I was getting too comfortable, and complacency will get me killed, or worse, enslaved. That outcome would depend on how much they like me. No, I will not start this journal with all the bad shit!!!
Why am I going through all this trouble to stay where it’s always cold and snowy? With the winter elves extinct and humanity on the brink of extinction, this seems the safest bet. My biggest threat are the vamps + sky fae. But their numbers are super low in the North compared to everywhere else. I think. I...hypothesize. But I’ll tell ya, it fuckin sucks. I don’t even remember what warm feels like. Sure, I have fires for cooking and warmth in the igloo, but it’s not a true warmth.
I’ve gotten really good at hunting. Most nights I’ll have rabbit or squirrel stew, sometimes rabbit and squirrel stew. Once in a while I get lucky and nab a deer or an elk. Man, now I’m making myself hungry…
Four years ago, I could never have imagined myself hunting and building things and living outdoors. I was a cheerleader. I wasn’t ditzy or dumb or anything; I was actually quite accomplished in school, on my way to several scholarships. But I was quite vain and focused on the stupid shit. I actually thought that my bff stealing my boyfriend ruined my life and here I am literally surviving the human apocalypse. Random thought, but I wonder what all those zombie preppers thought when it was everything but zombies? Hahaha
Ya know what, tho, adapting and learning how to survive isn’t the hard part. It’s the loneliness. I’ve travelled with small groups, stayed in small refugee villages hidden in the woods, watched people get taken, watched people die, watched refugee camps get raided. And I was ok with really just being me. When I stayed with a group, it was only ever temporary, and for mutual benefit. I was always up front about my plans to part ways eventually. I always felt like the stakes were too high to allow myself to actually trust anyone. Sure, it was a defense mechanism, but it’s a defense mechanism that has served me well, seeing as I am still alive. I’m very okay being on my own. But that’s not where the loneliness comes from. There’s something else, something in the general energy of the world that feels...missing, empty. And that is the stem of my loneliness. It’s like I can feel the absence of humans in the air.
On that cheery note, I’m going to call it a night before I allow myself to tailspin.
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