Early Morning Thinking

The sun was rising, and Lavinia was greeting the dawn with a cup of coffee. It’d been her morning routine since her mother first taught her how to brew the stuff at sixteen. And, barring a few key instances, she’d never missed it. Most of the time it was just a relaxing way to get the day started. Other times, when she was experiencing “Heavy Thoughts” as her mother always put it, watching the sunrise gave her time to mull things over. At least that way she might not be too distracted working on a repair job.

She glanced over at the three sleeping children on the other side of the campfire. Even Astus lay sleeping, with Capri perched on his left antler. Being up long before Arlo was nothing new, though. Back in Seventy-Seven, he was almost never awake by the time she was out watching the sunrise.

It crept up over the hills, spreading light over the acres of trees and green ivy, and across the rooftops and windows of the empty city behind them down the road. That place was partially weighing on her mind that morning. And the whole place seemed incomplete without the Builder’s presence. She sighed to herself; that was probably the only Builder she’d ever get the chance to meet. There was more she wanted to ask it, to learn from—

“I still don’t understand how you can like that stuff,” Arlo said as he walked up behind her. Lavinia jumped, nearly spilling her coffee.

“Heck, Arlo, you were just asleep…” she mumbled. She turned back to him. “How’re you feeling?”

“Better than before. But I felt the same way last time too, before I got worse…”

Lavinia held her arm out and the boy sat next to her. They were quiet for a time, embracing the silence and each other’s presence while Lavinia continued looking out across the horizon. Since Felix and Mira came into the picture, shared silence was becoming a rarity. Not that it was always a bad thing. Felix was a good influence on the boy—Mira, not so much.

“What are you always doing out on the balcony in the morning?” he asked.

“Just thinking, usually. Or working on something that’s been giving me the runaround, like that old radio was.”

“What do you have to think about so early every single day?”

“O-Oh, it’s nothing interesting,” she said. “It’d only bore you back to sleep.”

Arlo looked up at her. “I like knowing more about you.”

Lavinia sipped her coffee, trying not to look at him; trying not to notice how much he looked like a dejected puppy as he stared up at her. But she couldn’t keep it up.

“Okay, fine…” she relented. “Sometimes I've considered starting a garden, like mama has. Except with food crops instead of flowers. I’ve been thinking about Mae more, for… reasons… And sometimes I think about my repair work. Even if somedays, it feels like I’m not doing enough with my life.”

“What do you mean?” Arlo asked, frowning.

“It’s like—Look over at the old city. There’s no telling how many people Back Before didn’t survive when the old world went to pieces. But I did, and my mama did, and her mama, and a bunch more of them.” Lavinia shifted some. “All my ancestors had to survive all sorts of junk for me to get here, and all I do most days is fixing old stuff and whatnot.”

“But you like fixing stuff…”

“I know, and I’m not gonna stop now. It’s just, sometimes I gotta wonder about where I’m going with my life. If there’s more I could be doing than tinkering with radios and air conditioners. But even when I’m thinking about that, I never regret getting into repair work. Wanna know why?”

Arlo looked up at her and nodded.

“Because it’s how I met you,” she said, smiling at him. Arlo smiled too despite himself, and she pulled him in close to her. “And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

The boy rested his head against her shoulder and the quiet returned. But after a few minutes, he looked up at her. “I haven’t always been asleep when you thought I was. Sometimes I’ve been thinking too.”

“Oh yeah?” Lavinia smiled at him. “What are you usually thinking about?”

“When I first woke up, before I got to know you, or Seventy-Seven, or Felix, or Mae, I could only think about how different things are from the world I knew.”

“And now?”

“Now it doesn’t bother me. At least, not as much as it did. But lately, before what’s happening to me now, I’ve been thinking about the future. If we can fix me, and I can avoid being trapped under anymore collapsed buildings, I’ll probably live a long time.” He hugged himself. “Maybe… even longer than you will. And it terrifies me, being alone…”

“Hey, hey, c’mon now. Look at me, okay?” she said. The boy glanced up at her and she brushed some hair out of his eyes. “I’m still here and you’re not alone. I went through the same thing too, when mama went grey and her vision started going. She was about the only person I knew in the whole world.

“But I’ve got Mae, Vic, you, and even Mr. Blackwell down at the market. And you’ve got me, and Felix is sleeping right over there. No matter what the future looks like, we’re both right here, right now. And we’re not going anywhere any time soon. That’s not so scary, is it?”

Arlo stopped hugging himself, and instead wrapped his arm around her. Her returned hug almost pulled him off the ground and spilled her coffee all over them both.

“Whoops, better put that down before I make a mess,” she said, sitting her cup down.

The boy glanced at it. “Could I try a sip…?”

“Of my coffee? Well, sure, but I don’t think you’re gonna like it.

She released the boy and handed him the cup. He lifted it up to his mouth, and immediately knew she was right.

Ivy

“Why is everything covered in ivy now?” Arlo asked.

He sat in the cart with Felix, gazing out over the shimmering hills of vines while the other boy fed some seeds to Capri.

“There was ivy all over the place before we got to Seventy-Seven too,” Felix said.

“Mama had trouble with the stuff when we were clearing the land for her garden back in the ruins,” Lavinia added from the driver’s bench. Then she sighed and slumped back in her seat. “Too bad she never had Astus to help her out.”

On the second day of their journey, she found the less-traveled roads beyond the rebuilt city likewise etched with vines of ivy. Although worried at first about holes hidden under the green that Astus might step in and hurt himself, she instead encountered a new problem. They’d only made it roughly a mile in the last two hours because of how often Astus stopped to eat the plants that crossed his path.

If Arlo hadn’t been relatively stable that day, Astus’ constant distractions would have been worrying. But since he was, the delay was more annoying than anything else. The deer had to get full sometime though.

“The ivy only got this bad because the humans went away,” Mira said. “They used to have a way to stop its spreading, but now it just grows wherever it wants.”

“How’d people stop it from spreading before?” Felix asked, looking around for the girl. She sat up from a patch of ivy, startling him.

“Armies of trained goats were the only way to contain the vines. The plants were conjured by the last Dryad Host in their last attack against humanity before the old world fell into ruin.”

Lavinia turned to the girl. “What the heck is a Dryad?”

“They’re tree nymphs,” she replied.

“Uh… huh.” Lavinia shook her head. “See, that all doesn’t sound right, but I don’t know enough about how things fell apart Back Before to dispute it.”

Astus, apparently having enough ivy for a time, started walking along again up the street. The sudden lurch almost toppled the driver over, but Mira walked up behind the cart and easily climbed into the back. Her swift movement might have been more impressive, if the deer showed any particular interest in hurrying instead of taking his time. Arlo shifted away from her as she joined the children in the back, but Felix turned to her.

“Are there still any of those Dryads around now?” he asked. “They sound kinda scary…”

“Maybe,” Mira said with a shrug. “But I’ve been traveling for a few centuries and haven’t seen any.”

Lavinia glanced back over her shoulder. “What’d you even do out there for all that time? I mean, after you—”

“Left me for dead,” Arlo interrupted.

A silence set in for a few moments. Mira turned to Arlo, but the boy wouldn’t look at her.

“Er… Yeah,” Lavinia said. “After that.”

“My protocol made me go back to the factory first, but it was wrecked and nobody was around. I spent a couple years there until I could upgrade my programming to the point where I could finally be autonomous and go off on my own. After that I started walking all over the place.”

Mira drummed her fingers on the side of her face, thinking. “I went north, first. I wanted to see the Ottawa Crater, but the walk took longer than expected, and my body stalled out from a blizzard somewhere in west New York until spring. After that I turned around and went as far south as possible. I spent a few years making my way across South America.

“At one point I stayed in a sheltered village in Choloma for a few years with a bunch of others, but trying to blend in with humans is hard. After a while it’s always ‘How come you don’t eat?’ or ‘You don’t look like you’ve aged at all,’ or ‘Please don’t kill me, I promise not to tell anyone your secret.’” She rolled her eyes, “It just gets tedious after a while.”

Felix paled a bit and tried to shift away from Mira. But Arlo only glared at her.

“So, you spent all that time hurting other people,” he said. “I wish I could be surprised.”

“I survived.” She glared back at him. “You slept for a couple centuries and moved into a friendly little town once the world settled. I had to be out there when everything was in chaos, and people wanted to blame mechas for it. And I had to do it alone.”

“It was your fault you were alone!” Arlo jumped up to his feet, rocking the cart and sending Capri flapping away into the air. “You tore my arm off and left me under a building! And you’ll be alone again after you fix the new damage you did to me! It didn’t have to be like this, last time or now, but it is because of who you are. You deserve this. You’re not a survivor, you’re a monster, and I hate you!”

Lavinia pulled on the reins and Astus stopped. She turned back to him, “Arlo, that’s enough. You need to calm down right now before you—overload, or have some other kind of new issue.”

He glared at Lavinia, about to snap at her too, but saw only concern in her face. The rage that expanded within him dissipated as quickly as it formed, and he looked around from Felix to Mira. She was hugging her knees and refusing to look at him with tears in her eyes, while the other boy stared at Arlo in fear. Arlo looked down at his trembling hands and sat back down in the cart.

“I think I’m already having a new issue…” he breathed. “I’m sorry…”

“It’s… It’s okay,” Lavinia said. “Maybe we should have a little quiet time, for now.”

While Lavinia’s Gone

Mae was face-down in her recording studio booth. She wasn’t even sure what song her radio station was playing; the last three transitions were chosen by her hand blindly flopping around on the panel. She hadn’t been so lethargic at Ivy Tower since she covered the reopening of Vic’s a few years before, when an official news interview turned into a full night of drinking with nearly the whole town. Looking back on that night, she must have seen Lavinia a dozen times without realizing.

Lavinia…

Just that name alone made Mae deflate more. What the heck was that about? They’d only officially been together for a little while, so why did she—

A light knock on the door dropped her back down to Earth. Mae sat up and turned to find one of her “interns” standing there.

“You need some coffee or something, Mae?” Kayla asked. “You’re looking kinda dead in here.”

“I probably shouldn’t, I already had a pot today…” She brushed her hair back out of her face and propped her head up on her desk. “I really miss her.”

“Who? Your girlfriend?”

“She’s been gone for like, a day and a half and I’m in here asking like it’s been a year already,” Mae said.

“She’s that, uh…” Kayla rubbed the back of her head, “That woman in the coveralls that was in a couple of days ago, right? Thought she was here to fix the leaky faucet in the bathroom.”

“Yeah, that’s her. She wears those coveralls almost every day, always has grease stains somewhere, gets distracted by every bird that flies by, and I think I’m in love with her.”

“Sounds pretty special.” She smirked, “When’s the wedding?”

“I don’t know,” Mae confessed. “When she was here that last time you mentioned, she told me she’s taking her… son. Out of town, to get him some medical help. It’s going to be dangerous and I don’t know when she’s coming back. And what did I say to her before she left?” Mae buried her face in her hands. “I said ‘I love this station.’ Did I even think to say I love her too? No. God, I’m an idiot…”

Kayla blinked. “Geez. You’ve really got it bad, huh?”

“Oh you’ve got no idea. The minute she gets back, I’m taking her up to my apartment, locking the door behind us, and I’m gonna be all over her like—”

Furious footsteps and another intern, Poppy burst into the studio, nearly toppling Kayla over.

“H-Hey, watch it,” she said, stumbling out of the way.

“What’s going on?” Mae asked. “Is the transmitter on fire again?”

“You’re on the air!” Poppy shouted.

Mae looked down at her table—and her elbow on the microphone’s deactivated mute button. Her brain emptied, and all she could manage was slowly reaching down and pressing the button again. The music resumed uninterrupted again, and Mae took a slow breath before standing up.

“Well, I’ll let you two handle things for today,” she said, stretching. “Or for the rest of time, I dunno.”

“Well… At least this is our slower broadcast hour,” Kayla offered.

“And your girlfriend's probably out of the broadcast range,” Poppy added.

Mae sighed. “Thanks, girls. I’m fine, really. I’m just gonna go find a nice, quiet place to curl up and die in. See you both tomorrow.”

The two interns watched as Mae trudged out of the studio, seeming to deflate more and more with each step. When she was gone, Kayla turned to her colleague.

"Do you think she'll be okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, she'll be fine," Poppy said. "She says that all the time, honestly."