Crash Landing

the beginning

The sun burnt and blistered our skin if we weren't covered up, a few minutes in the heat was all it took to be as crispy as chicken.

And the cold was worse.

The dropping of the temperature alone was so rapid, so sudden that it froze over pipes, water lines and formed ice sheets over shattered windows and broken doors.

Whoever didn't have a fire going inside their homes painfully froze to death and those who couldn't control their fires suffered burns before they froze to death when the embers of their flames burned out.

Then came the floods, the tsunamis, the earthquakes, the tornadoes, the hailstorms.

Some were lucky to survive the extreme nature causes though most perished in those terrible events.

But as Mama always says, my sister and I were born into chaos except that didn't mean we had to give into it.

Perhaps that's why she tried to look at the bright side then give into the negativity, such as reading the few newspapers that were printed from a long time ago despite the fact that everything was completely digitized quite a few centuries ago instead of watching the awful news that was constantly being displayed over every monitor, every hologram inside and outside of the cities.

I sighed as I pressed the button to turn off my hologram, the one thing that still worked without electricity.

"Désolé, Mama."

The words that I have been learning from Mama's native language fell off my tongue with ease and I could almost hear the smile in her voice as her chuckle was heard throughout the kitchen, Mama appearing a second later with her beautiful fiery red hair pulled back into a messy bun and her body cloaked with a yellow sunflower sundress that reminded me of the brief glimpses of beautiful sunlight.

Her blue eyes shone with love and appreciation for her children even as the sadness and fatigue wore down her outer shell, her hands full of luggage bags that I didn't even know we owned in the first place.

They were beat up, much like the house that was barely holding itself together thanks to Mama's rolls of duct tape and wooden boards over the missing window frames.

"I see you've been practicing your French, mon amour. Learning is still very important, even in our society today."

Mama reiterated this fact to me even as she took the holographic tablet out of my hands before handing me the luggage suitcase she bought for me long ago, the hot pink dented exterior that was covered up by old fashioned stickers making me inwardly cringe at the remembrance.

Back during the time when Mama was sure she could take Collette and I to see Paris for my tenth birthday, she gave me this suitcase as an early birthday present and I was so elated to have it.

So sure that I could travel the old fashioned way with nothing but a suitcase to my name to a land that I wasn't familiar with but excited to dive into the culture, the familiarity of it all.

But then the wars happened and we never did quite make it out to Paris at all.

"Ma….Why do I need this? I thought you said we weren't going anywhere."

That part was true, she did say that we wouldn't be leaving our home anytime soon so what exactly was it that she was up to now?

Knowing my mother, it had to be something strange and out of this world.

Pun intended on that one.

She was one of the head scientists in her field of work at NASA, albeit one of the most brilliant minds to ever work with such an organization.