Written in what seems to be everyone's least favorite: third person present.
The second prompt from this Tuesday's club meeting.
The prompt was "She was the last one on Earth."
I've been reading The Lunar Chronicles, and I'm obsessed. I think that's where this came from in part.
In one book, a couple of characters end up trapped out in a desert, and end up suffering from the effects of the heat. The series also has a plague, so I feel like this piece was subtly influenced by that in a lot of ways.
Mine was only three-hundred-seventy words, but it feels longer than that to me.
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She stands alone, hard, scorching sand beneath her feet. The sweltering air suffocates her as she pulls the tattered scarf more securely around her mouth and nose.
They will come back. Someone will come back for her.
She takes another painful step; she's going nowhere, pacing back and forth across this barren stretch of land. She has no water, no shelter, no company. If she doesn't keep moving, she'll forget her own name. She is already forgetting things. The way the sun used to shine bright and yellow-white, not angry and deep red. The way snow fell on the ground that one winter when she was six. It was the last time she ever saw snow, and she's already lost the memory of how it felt on her skin.
Now, all she has to remember this world by is the cruelty; the endless deserts stretching on and on, the boiling air and the firepit of sand beneath her bare feet.
She doesn't remember when the ships left, only that she could not go with them. The plague was their enemy, and her colony was the last frantic culture to flee into space. They gave up on the world, which held no cure and no hope for their future. They abandoned her, too, when they found out she was showing signs of the first stage.
She knows now; they won't come back. In her delirium, it's all she can hope for. She doesn't want this world, this existence, to end in loneliness.
The dust is choking her, despite the scarf she still wears over her mouth. She longs to cough, but she can't draw any air in to replace what she just exhaled. The planet spins around her. Her hands join her feet on the searing ground. For a moment, she imagines a cool wind on her face, a glass of water in her hand.
They'll come back for her. It will all go away.
She sinks onto her side, closing her eyes. She's back in elementary school, laughing in the snow. She's sniffing wildflowers, dancing through the summer grass. She's home. Safe. Protected.
For a moment, when she opens her eyes again, she swears the sky is blue.