It's going to be okay. Words that mean nothing. really, just sounds intoned into vastness and darkness, little scrabbling attempts to latch on to something when we're falling.

Mice? Fine. Flying mice? Not so fine.

We'll walk together holding hands, and kiss in broad daylight, and love each other as much as we want to, and no one will ever try to keep up apart.

Time jumps. It leaps. It pours away like water through fingers.

Dystopian novels help people process their fears about what the future might look like; further, they usually show that there is always hope, even in the bleakest future.

But hope got in, no matter how hard and fast I tried to stomp it out. Like these tiny fire ants we used to get in Portland. No matter how fast you liked them, there were always more, a steady stream of them, resistant, ever-multiplying. Maybe, the hope said. Maybe.

I loved to be alone in the woods, especially in the late fall when everything is crisp and golden, the leaves the color of fire, and it smells like things turning into earth. I loved the silence - the only sound the steady drum of the hooves and the horse's breathing.