My special friend who protected me for the last six months of the revolution, Kahio, who I love like a brother, helped me with this while I wrote the first draft. This is living history so we think it’s important to be as honest as possible. So, this is from both of us because I respect his valuable contribution. We checked with the Keeper of the Journal to see if it was okay.
He pushed me to do an entree because of my interaction with Tris that night. Some think she’s special but all I saw then was a tired girl who found a book in the young adult section that night and was happy that I read to her, like how maybe her mum had done once. For me I felt like I gave her exactly what she needed after being lonely out there with those things roaming around. We didn’t even get to talk to her because she slept all day and left before anyone got up. But things have changed since then.
I didn’t want to make that kiss any more than her gratitude for company, a warm place, and a good book. I could almost feel how good she felt, maybe so much that I had a dream that night that I haven’t told anyone about. For one thing it felt real, like so real that I was surprised and disappointed to wake up and find out that it wasn’t. This is about that dream coming true. And since then, there have been others.
They said that I didn’t have to do the night Watch because I’m the youngest but hell, I’ve been through as much as they have and besides, I was looking forward to it. In fact, once my turn was up, I couldn’t wait. I really like it on top with all the hot houses and food growing in them! It’s like another world up there, away from everyone, a good view of our surrounding neighborhood, and even the moss and weeds growing between the cracks is the closest thing we have to nature.
Now that we have the night vision monocle from the search party, we can look in the direction of a strange noise if it ever happens. It was near dawn when there was light enough to just see the shapes of things, hot as hell and humid enough to make you sweat bullets without moving, when I heard the hum of a drone. The watch gets one of the guns just in case of whatever scenario but I insisted that I didn’t want it because I knew what would happen.
As it got closer, I could see through the damp fog clearly without using the monocle which was scarier than the approaching drone! Later. It was larger than the ones that used to spay us with tear gas while protesting and carrying a payload. I used the walkie talkie when the thing dropped almost to the front steps and released a large sack and zoomed off.I immediately got Gillean, told her, and left my post to go down stairs. I knew, I knew, I knew! Which is why I left my post because of both things. I knew what it was and how things were about to change. Someone told me that the wheels of justice work slow like molasses in February and the same I think is true for cosmic Justice.
By the time I got downstairs, people were beginning to come upstairs to see what the commotion was all about. Sleepy bunk mates rubbing their eyes watching as our Swat team got ready to go confront the large sack. They watched it for a while for smoke or movement but finally as everyone gathered around, walked down twenty steps, untied it and looked inside. Within a minute, there were smiles and giving the A-OK sign. We crowded around the reading room and watched with bated breath as Gillean slowly unpacked its contents. I’m not quite sure on the order but am certain of the first thing withdrawn from all the OOO’s and AHH’s and a round of enthusiastic applause. A two pound bag of coffee! I think Zenith had a few tears as did others, with the full weight and importance of such a gift. Someone had listened and that someone was a good guy. Were we saved? Would this continue?
There were the staples, flour, powdered eggs, oil, jerky, dried fruit and vegys, dried beans and lentils, rice, salt, sugar, yeast, a few spices and herbs. A three month emergency supply kit with a couple of hundred freeze dried packets of meals, a water purifier with four filters, an emergency medical kit, seeds, two pounds of dried bean soup and a carton of mac and cheese and corn muffins! The water filter and medical kit got as many Ah’s, as did the coffee. It was like Christmas but much better.
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MEETING. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? Of course, it means if we stretch with a really good meal once a week together with what’s growing in the hot houses and the stuff the scouting team has found during searches, we should be good. Will we get any more and how often? We need one more drop to consider it a pattern or see a schedule. Are any others receiving food drops and exactly by whom? Seeds. There are a sixteen packets, two tomato, two pea, two squash, two broccolini, two beans, two sprouts, two herbs and two surprise packets that said surprise and nothing that we already have. That said surprise! That got us into a tizzy! Like, do the Gods have a sense of humor AND empathy! And how did they know what seeds we had? Did Kris look that night? Was she in on this? Everyone is grateful but still not totally trusting. Would an enemy feed his prey before the slaughter?
I think the bigger question is how I saw everything before it happened and if the other lucid dreams I’m having will come true.
So, we celebrated, of course! And we all got into it. Some cleaned off a few of the longer library tables, put them together, found a few nice decorated clean sheets for a table cloth and set candles every few feet down the center. Others selected greens from the hot houses, washed and set the table with what we had, sometimes being, lol, creative, while others planned and put together what has to be one of the oddest celebratory meals in history.
Our cooks and chief bottle washers, Amy and Andy itemized all current food stocks and created what was the start of a meal calendar for a month hoping that we would receive another and let everyone see it and add their own suggestions. Which we all did. It was then revised, democratically, and pinned to the large bulletin board in the children’s section where we post everything. The search party commented that we should try to become self sufficient and not depend on the drops which most agreed but still hoped for a few more.
Turns out we have a bread maker who for our first supper will have a version of anadama bread, a slice for all, due to the corn bread mix, molasses, yeast and flour. Also, we have someone who boasts that he can make killer meatballs from black bean burger mix and what I can’t personally wait for, someone who swears that she can make an apple pie from freeze dried apples. So the real spaghetti from apartment searches and black bean meatballs with a tomato sauce made from canned tomato paste and herbs from our own storage and the hot house, heated up canned sweet potatoes, bread, a salad with a vinaigrette dressing and apple pie. It sounded like dream!
Since they found a few canisters of propane, they hooked them up to the stove in the café across the street and cooked everything over there. The floors above the first have been sealed shut. Zenith, Jagger and Gillean offered our gratitude for those responsible for the drop, praise for a concerted team effort in preparing for our first supper and some poetry to match the occasion. And OMG, IT WAS DE-LICIOUS!
I think I could have consumed the four pies alone! The moveable feast felt in every way a spiritual event of the highest magnitude, a herculean start as the myth builds of us defenders of The Word Smiths Keep. Hah! That’s from Kaiho. The candles sputtered, their light casting strange wobbling shadows of Lovecraftian monsters, who I’m reading now, while the sounds of human pleasure, scrapping plates, clattering utensils, and the volunteer servers taking and delivering plates, pouring water and slowing down to take a few bites of their own.
A battery powered diffuser had been found in one of the searches along with a few essential oils, one frankincense which seemed appropriate and lavender and cinnamon.
The feast de resistance was Suki reading her translated version of The Animals' Conference, a rare satire in which the animals of the world unite to compel humanity to make peace and disarm. When we heard her scream a few weeks ago, we thought she was being attacked but it was finding it in the rare books section.
When the Apple pie was served with reconstituted ice cream, it seemed like a huge weight had been released from my family of kindred, for there was laughter and joking and story telling until the wee hours, as Zenith and Freed refilled short glasses with the stash of wine found in apartment 203 of a fancy outlet store for expensive unisex brands of outdoor wear. No one knew how much had been taken but the rumor was that it would last through the holidays which we intended to preserve, in some form.
And the stories were great! About remembering normalcy, survival stories, or lost friends. I finally had to get up and tell them my dream that made me unafraid of the sound of the drone. It was reliving the whole thing over again without the dinner. The only thing some said was how coincidental it was that I had the shift that it happened. Others remained silent and later asked if I’d had any others to which I responded honestly. During the entire dinner and what came after, I was waiting for knocking at the door.
