Thantophobia

*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚Chapter 1-Books˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚

Violet trekked through the grown-over streets. The air was stale without a single breeze drifting through. Plants scaled the cracked buildings. The roads and sidewalks were cracked and chipped from being unchecked in the winters. Cars were nothing more than a shelter for birds and whatever little creature could squeeze into the bundles of rust. It was peaceful in a way. The air was fresher and cleaner. The animals roamed freely. The plants grew beautifully and swallowed the annoyances humanity had constructed. It'd been long enough that it was uncommon to cross another human. Even if you were to spot another it could quickly morph from excitement to horror as many had learned the hard way to be hostile towards their kind. It'd been long enough that the only way to pinpoint what had happened would be to read news articles hidden away enough for their fragile knowledge to survive. Vi rounded a corner she knew she needed to find a place to stay the night sooner rather than later. She had her eyes on a store, even if the food would be long, long gone perhaps she could find something to pass the time. She walked down the road slowly. Her guard was up just in case there did happen to be another person nearby. She reached the store entrance and stepped inside. She wasn't entirely sure if the crunching under her boots was glass from the shattered door or something else but she decided to not dwell on it. Perhaps if her mother had been the one to find this place years ago when she was young she would've brushed away the leaves to see what secrets they hid. She looked around the dust-covered store, wandering slowly looking for anything interesting at all. She eventually decided to put down her backpack in a corner that wouldn't be immediately seen on the rare occasion someone did happen to walk in. She then started digging around for anything that someone hadn't already grabbed. There wasn't much but she settled on grabbing a couple of books and bringing them over to where she planned to sleep. Her mother had taught her to read and write. While Vi hadn't seen the point originally when she was younger she was glad her mother forced her to learn now.

Vi hadn't been reading long when she could tell the light from the windows had shifted from the bright shine to the warmer orange tint. She decided to lie down and finish reading whatever she managed to before the light was too dull to see the words. Absentmindedly at some point, she had moved from her spot in the corner. Stretched out on the small shop floor so the half wall wasn't blocking what was left of the sun. Eventually, however, the larger windows couldn't prolong the day and she no longer had enough light no matter how hard she strained her eyes. She folded over the corner of the page and sat up as she closed the book. She stood up, walked back over to the rest of her things, and tossed the book nearby. She laid down and curled up to sleep for the night.