❃✽ ❃ ✽ ❃
3067 AD.
The year of the murdered trees.
*
Over dry earth they ran, kicking up the dust like escaped prisoners. They hadn't looked back. Couldn't bear to. Not until the terrain underfoot blended into rare cushioned soil and they could see their objective clearly on the horizon.
The children had risked the small freedom they had for just one chance to see such a spectacle. So whilst their feet grew tired within shoes of radioactive leather, their minds remained wide-awake.
One child- the fastest, squealed in excitement when the first treetop soared into the sky to join the clouds. A hint of life amongst the dead landscape of their home.
They had almost reached the forest now, after days of searching and they carried with them a readiness to explore the unknown.
It was with this same curiousness that the four children entered that forest- blissfully unaware of what lurked behind the bark and branches beyond.
*
"Come on then!" called Tom to the three other children. "Or are you too chicken?" he said, turning to the child who stood closest to him- Kate was her name.
"Why do I have to race you?" replied Kate. "I'll only win. And then you'll go off and sulk like a sourpuss, again." She had ginger hair that curled cunningly around and over her shoulders.
"Stop calling me that. I'm thirteen years old!" Tom glared at the smirking girl, who had succeeded once again in irritating him.
"Oh be careful guys. Why are we even doing this? Don't you know how much trouble we'll be in?" asked Jasmine- the third child. She looked up at the strongly rooted tree, which Tom and Kate were planning to climb. She bit at her nails in trepidation. They were only children after all.
"I agree with Jas. Safety first," finished the last child, who adjusted his oxygen mask over his face and puffed out his chest proudly.
The forest surrounding them was lush and natural and green - a juxtaposition to the toxic towns and cities in which humans now existed. You wouldn't call it living. Living would suggest that they had felt alive in those places. But dying didn't cut it either. Existing on earth felt more like being stuck between the two, life and death, in a quicksand that trapped you into submission but never quite buried you under.
The terrain in their dwellings was covered the closest thing they had come to grass, but the children knew that it wasn't really grass at all. The green urban excrement was something much more poisonous than vegetation. Though arguably just as powerful.
The oxygen masks and tanks the children carried with them to avoid choking to death was certain proof of that.
*
"So are you gunna race me to the top of that tree or not?" Tom was getting impatient.
Finally accepting his challenge, Kate nodded and stood next to Tom at the base of the particularly large tree.
"Can't we just explore? Like normal kids and not make a competition of everything?" Jasmine pleaded with a pout.
"We're far from normal," Flynn told Jasmine, gesturing to their masks and holding her hand consolingly.
"Sorry Jas. When I beat Tom in this race then we can explore. Count us down?"
"Alright," she conceded. "Just don't fall... On the count of five, no three."
Tom and Kate readied themselves.
"One..."
"Two..." but before Jasmine could get to three, Kate pushed Tom over and began climbing up and up and up.
YOU ARE READING
The Fox and The Forest (EDITING)
Science Fiction3067. The year when the last forest was destroyed. The year when Kate Marsh died. Or should have. Little did she know that the government had plans that would ensure she was trapped in the land of the 'living' forever. The mere mention of the fo...
