Lost Change - Snippets

Alone

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Author's Note - CONTENT WARNING.

This chapter is fairly disturbing.  I skimmed over the gruesome bits, but it isn't a pleasant one.  It would take place within chapter 14, right after the Votak destroyed all the cities.

One thing that always bothers me a little in post-apocalyptic stories is a lack of coverage of a particular difference that exists between 'civilized' people and people who can and will do what they have to in order to survive.

Originally I skipped over it, too. It would have added a far darker tone to the story than I wanted just yet, even though it may have allowed me to foreshadow some things, and it also felt like it would have slowed things down. The story was always going to be about Nate and Minna's relationship, and while Nate's character growth immediately after becoming a dragonet was an interesting idea, as was the idea of a thread of him slowly loosing his 'humanity' and coming to grips with the nature of the new creature he had been turned into, I didn't want to spend too much time on it.  I also knew what was coming with Susie, and didn't want to add a bunch of extra scenes with her that would ultimately only add to the hurt that would be coming.  And this idea in particular felt like it was at odds with the rest of the feel to Lost Change.

So while I had ideas for this, I glossed over the first time Nate killed something.

Because... most of us cannot do that.

It's one thing to squash a bug, or empty out a rodent trap.  But it's a big step to go from doing that to hunting down another living creature, deliberately ending its life, and then turning it into a meal.  Mentally and emotionally, life has not prepared most of us to do that.  We care too much. We emphasize. We know what we are about to do to another living, breathing, feeling creature.  It's not a bad thing - we are actually incredibly fortunate, in that most of us will never be forced to do anything like that.

But in the stories where people are suddenly removed from civilization - be it a shipwreck such as in Robinson Crusoe, or the world falling apart because of an EMP or deadly disease, or just being lost out in the woods for a long time - then at some point, the main character will have to face that obstacle and find a way to overcome it.

Upon Wings of Change avoided the issue ever coming up because the dragonets could survive off of fruit.  The main flock didn't face a deadline they were forced to meet, of needing to kill something in order to continue surviving.  They didn't have to work themselves up to it, and they didn't have to deal with the knowledge of what they had just done.  Whenever one of them was hungry, they could just fly up in a tree and pull lunch off one of the branches.

Nate was not so lucky.

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I sat on the tree branch and stared out into the distance, towards whatever ruins remained of the human city. There couldn't be anything left there. Not after the explosion I had seen. No more buildings. No more streets. No more lights, no more electrical wires, no more cars.

Susie whined from the ground beneath me.

No more food.

I looked up above me in the tree and stretched up to grab one of the apples hanging in the leaves. A simple tug was all it took to pull it away from the branch, and I spread out my wings to glide back down towards the border collie. I held the apple up towards her...

Her tail sagged behind her and she whined again, looking away from the apple.

I sighed and dropped the apple to the ground. This wasn't working.