That is, she
thought, they seemed the least out of place.
She tried hard to read its subtle clues, but still the riddle of
conflicting landscapes eluded her. The only certainty was that the
nuclear holocaust had been everything its foretelling prophets had said
it would be: a complete annihilation of the world she had known, with a
savage and unpredictable rebirth.
Like echoes of a mournful dream, all manner of warm and painful memories
now seemed to come to her from out of the day, phantoms of a past too
beautiful to be real. She thought of her peaceful home in the wooded,
northeastern town. Her father, her friends. All dead. Why had she
been left to go on living? She remembered the words of the Spirit:
'glorious struggle,' and 'the flame within.' But where was
the glory when all she could feel was pain and emptiness? Where was He
now? And as she looked out upon the scene that Nature played before
her, she realized for the first time and with crushing certainty that
life was finite. Physical reality . . .was real. The message hammered
into her relentlessly: all things must one day pass. She would die, as
a hundred billion creatures had died before her. DIED.
It all became too much. Seeking escape, her mind returned to the
present. But that only made her think of her friend, the gentle wolf,
still trapped inside the cave, still in great danger.
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