River, Sun, Freedom

There's a new girl on the block

Eventually the dog dropped the jacket into her lap and Nate listened to her laughter as it did so. The dog placed its head in her lap and she stroked it, peacefully. They made a pretty picture amongst the grass and trees.

“Not your type huh?”

Nate flung around and saw Richard shaking his head at him. He glared at him as he rose, and Richard raised his hand with the palms facing him in a calming motion. Nate decided he didn’t want to talk and walked past Richard towards his room, but when he passed him he couldn’t help but steal a glance at Jodi who was leaning back on her arms as she gazed upward. The posture was so peaceful, so beautiful that Nate’s heart skipped a beat. He hurried back to his room.

* * *

The next few days were amazing to Jodi. She didn’t have to constantly be on the move or always be on the alert. She spent her time in the garage with Kaede while Jake stayed with Beatrice upstairs in her library. While Jake was recording everything he had memorized on sheets of paper, Jodi was fixing weapons that didn’t work and making bullets for ones that did.

The garage was huge, one of the larger rooms in the bottom level. It had been dug out and extended underground. Kaede had his own ramp that extended right around the room to lessen it’s steepness, and he often made jokes about Jodi’s ability to jump from great heights without hurting herself. Jodi loved it here, where she had a huge table, a pile of scrap metal just waiting to be melted, a furnace, and the thing that had excited her the most was a beautiful, powerful gas torch. She gladly threw away her old chef’s torch and immediately made use of her new one.

In her own spare time she worked on her gun, breaking away from the garage room only for meals and when the day was over and Kaede had to take the many solar lamps upstairs so that they could be switched with fresh new ones that had been charged that day.

“Her part" of the garage was only a small portion of the entire room, the rest of which housed many vehicles, including her bike. She watched as Kaede cleaned it and replaced the old solar charger with a new one that was faster.

Everyday, different people came in to oversee what happened in the garage and they tended to lurk around her more often. Regulars were Richard and the orphans, Jamal and Iqbal, who appeared to idolise Kaede. Nate also came, but unlike with anyone else, she often found herself almost unconsciously occupying herself with tedious and simple things as they talked in order to avoid staring into his beautiful eyes.

She knew by now that her feelings were “attraction”, something that Grandma had spoken about, but something she’d never quite understood. She still didn’t, and like many people, she was afraid of things she didn’t understand. But like all things, that was soon to change.

***

“Christmas?”

“Don’t you know what Christmas is?” said Alice. They were in Sara’s room, helping her sew new blankets out of scraps of cloth by stitching them together.

“Of course I know what it is.” Replied Jodi, thinking of colourful wrapping and tinsel and a giant tree with many colourful decorations. “I do know, but I haven’t celebrated it in so long.”

“Well, it’s tomorrow and we celebrate it every year here. We kill and cook some of the chickens and maybe a sheep, and we decorate the willow tree, since we don’t have a cedar one.”

Sara smiled. “And in the evening we have a party, just the adults, where all the girls wear their finest.”

Jodi frowned which made Alice rolled her eyes. “Just because it’s past the end of the world, doesn’t mean we should forget how to have fun.” She waggledher finger at Jodi.