Maysie's Galaxy ONC 2023

As Years Pass

Years began to pass as their little garden grew. It never needed watering, save for the hard-back kiddy pool that Maysie grew the rice in. It was the first problem she solved on her own. Alder marveled at the ingenuity, not understanding that he gave this child the room to experiment beyond what was normal. All he knew was he spent enough time on a farm and didn't do half of what he was teaching this kid to do.

Other surprises showed up: bees, rabbits, and rats. The first two made their self-sustainability a much easier practice. Bees pollinated the little farm, and once they found the hives, they could harvest honey as needed. Alder cautioned against taking more than what they used. Maysie learned how to candy fruit over their little fire by trial and error.

As their only source of fresh and easy-to-digest protein, the rabbits were a blessing she balked at first. "Why do we have to eat the bunnies?"

Alder didn't want to insult the views of many of his own people, when it came to eating flesh, even if they had joined their ancestors. "Maysie, if we lived in a time before the shell cracked, we could choose our food carefully. Many in my own family didn't like eating meat and found another way. Maybe one day we can worry about what is in our meals, but the reason it's hard to breathe and we are so cold is that we need more protein."

It was enough of an argument for a small child, but it backfired horribly on him the day she served him a rat, gutted as he had taught her to do with the rabbits. The thought was so psychologically revolting that his hand shook as he took his first bite, and it came back up before he could get it down.

Watching him, Maysie didn't even touch hers and gave him a barbed remark that made her sound far older than her 7 years. "Maybe we need to worry about what's in our meals right now?"

He knew that if he left this alone, she might fight him over the rabbits, again. How could he blame her? They were the only living things besides themselves and the bird. "Maysie. The rats eat the rabbits, they'll eat our home, and they will likely bite us while we sleep. They were known to bring diseases back on the shell. While some people had both rabbits and rats as pets because they are soft and cuddly, we are trying to survive and they already outnumber us. One day, hopefully long into the future, we will die, and the rats will eat us. Because of their bad history, it is hard for me to accept them as food. Do you understand this? "

Maysie nodded, even though there were parts that she had questions about. She never fed Alder a rat again. He, in turn, didn't place rat traps where Maysie had to witness them.

It was a further three months before she saw the effect of the rats moving in: the surface of most everything they searched through in wrecked houses was coated in their filth.

For the first time in two years, Maysie had a head cold—a pretty severe one, related to inhaling the mess left by rodents.

After that, she could no longer see a cute animal companion, but monsters that could kill her if she let down her guard. She worked on a few methods of ridding herself of these creatures: learning how to make a decent bow and arrow as well as using a slingshot with rocks. The last result was what she called a rat-a-pult: traps laid by bending down and pinning the feathers to the soil with things that the rats would like as the pin that held it in place, such as rabbit bones. Once the rat chewed through the pin, up would fling the feather, sending the rat into a low orbit around the bird. While all three would lead to death, this last one gave the rat a chance to land far away from her, to live out its life.

With all these measures, there were still too many rats, making food harder to grow. They ate more rabbits and canned food this season than any since they started a garden.

To make the situation worse, the bird finally started its life on the move, slowly circling the sun out to the asteroid belt. Life became colder, and they wore rabbit skins to prevent hypothermia. Frost covered shaded ground, daily.

The garden's warmer plants were only saved by running some heat lamps they found and building a greenhouse around them, keeping the temperatures up in the plant-friendly range. That the light bulbs worked was a miracle.

It became far more important to keep the rats out, as this was a source of warmth. The rabbits weren't helping either. Increasing traps around the greenhouse wasn't enough for total damage control, but it saved them some food.

There was a limit to how cold the world could get because heat came from the bird. It was simply too cold for things without fur, and the furless humans had to sleep, and couldn't defend their warm spaces.

It was a worrying situation until near Maysie's 8th birthday. Alder woke her up with a small bit of fluff in his hands: Maysie held her first kitten.

The rat's natural predator had made its way to the head of the bird in breeding pairs.