nile & joe + "fire"
The others keep promising her she'll get used to sleeping out under the stars. It hasn't happened yet.
The fire is low, but every now and then it still sends sparks up to cross the dome of stars like meteorites in reverse. It's too many stars, without any light pollution to drown them out, and this is not a night when Nile wants a reminder of her smallness.
The last thing she needs is to feel like she's going to be spun off the surface of the earth into that void.
All she hears is the pop of the fire, Andy and Nicky's steady breath, and the creek of pines in the cold breeze.
Joe has the first watch tonight. He tilts his head when Nile gets up and gathers her sleeping bag around her, but he doesn't look back, so the fire won't leave an afterimage on his vision. Nile walks the quiet way she's learned, over the last couple years, to move silently over rough ground even in her heaviest boots.
She hesitates a moment behind Joe. He nods, so Nile sits down with her back against his, and gathers her sleeping bag up over her chest. She watches the orange logs break down. "Do you ever forget?" she asks. She feels him shift just a little. "What century it is, I mean."
He makes a hmm sound she feels on the other side of his ribs. "The less we bring with us, the closer it feels to the old days. You don't need as much as you think to survive."
She's got a sleeping bag rated for twenty below zero, a weatherproof jacket, combat boots, a high-capacity rucksack with all kinds of molle attachments plus a water bladder, a pair of stun batons, a Ka-Bar, a Glock, a windproof lighter, a portable water filter, and a burner phone.
She could walk out of camp alone and without any of it, and walk out of the woods alive later, though it wouldn't be pleasant.
There was a time when fire was the only key to humanity's survival. Where there was fire, there was civilization. At the root of everything, maybe that's still true. They've made things awful complicated though.
The warmth of the fire and the warmth of him at her back are finally settling her restlessness. Breathing in time with him helps--gravity feels a little extra heavy now. As one of the logs dissolves in golden sparks, Nile lets her eyes slip closed.
"Wake me up when it's my turn," she says.
"I will," he promises.
