Chapter One: The End of Summer

The sun rose red on Onett. In the first few minutes of dawn, it was a gentle pink, but as the sun moved from the horizon into the dirty cloud cover of the morning, the pollution painted it the rusty color of old blood, reflecting dimly onto the dead grass. By midday, thought Tracy as she watched out the window, it might be crimson - or it might be gone, if the gathering clouds turned into rain. They were certainly dark enough, the angry brown-grey that heralded a day she'd have to put up the tarp and huddle inside.

Tracy had watched all too many of these sunrises. Some mornings, in the fuzz that always followed a bad night's sleep, it was hard for her to remember that things hadn't always been this way: that she'd loved rain once, or that she'd ever slept well. Her dreams were getting worse, incoherent flashes of childhood haunting her, and even the nights without them were restless. She wanted to kid herself and pretend it was just the autumn coming on, but she knew better than that. The chill was in her mind, not the weather.

But this wasn't getting her anywhere. Tracy stood up, crossing the single room of the house and unrolling the tarp to cover the gaping hole that had once been the north wall. It wasn't a great solution, but they'd hung enough hooks that it kept the rain out, and there wasn't much else they could do with the place in the shape it was in. Thinking of it again, she had to swallow a harsh chuckle; as a kid, she'd spent days playing house in this place, back when it had just been the abandoned shack on Beak's Point. Who could have imagined she'd spend years living here? That it'd be the safest place left in Onett, and one of the most intact?

A groan from the bedroll told her that Picky was waking up, and once Tracy secured the final hook, she turned to check on him. Picky was half-upright on the bed, watching her with eyes sunken into his ever-gaunter face, skin dry and jaundiced. "Hey," he said, voice weak and raspy. "Morning, Trace."

"Morning, Picky," Tracy replied, trying to put a smile on. It was so hard to see him this way, withering away before her eyes; he looked even worse than yesterday, and they both knew it couldn't be long now. They'd watched his mother die of the wasting, and they'd known what was coming from the day he'd started coughing, almost two years ago now. The wasting had taken most of the survivors of the initial attacks, and soon it'd be Picky's turn.

"It looks like rain outside," Tracy continued. "I was just putting up the tarp. Looks like I won't be able to go out foraging, but I think we'll be able to live on our stocks for a while. Are you hungry?"

"I could eat," says Picky, with the smile that he always wore when he was humoring her. Between the weakness and the nausea, Picky'd barely been eating for weeks, and Tracy knew he'd probably give up the fight soon, but as long as he wanted to try holding on, she'd help. "Do we have any fruit left?"

"I think we have a can or two." Tracy crossed the room back towards their storage rack. They still had a dozen cans or so of food from the last few foraging runs: enough to feed them for a week, at least. It was the one advantage of living in Onett now, she thought grimly. So many had died in the initial attacks, and so many had caught the wasting afterwards, that the supply stores were still holding out surprisingly well. Between the grocery stores and the Escargo Express warehouse, Tracy would probably be able to scrape along for a few years here - maybe longer, she thought, since soon she'd only be feeding herself.

She hated thinking that way, calculating everything in terms of every day that she might be able to stay alive, but she was almost used to it by now. And once Picky was gone, wouldn't that be what living would become? Surviving for no better reason than simple animal drive?

At last, as she shifted a can of beans to the side, the still-bright orange of a can of peaches caught her attention and let her return to the present. "Here we go! Can of peaches," she said, as brightly as she could, and she grabbed the can opener. "Sounds good?"

"Sounds great," replied Picky. "Peaches? Really?"

"Unless the can's lying."

"Peaches sound wonderful," he echoed, voice wistful now. "You remember the time you came over to my house for dinner, and Mom made peach cobbler? It was great. Even Pokey liked it, and Pokey never liked anything Mom cooked."

"Yeah, I remember that." It hadn't rung any bells at first, but as Tracy thought about it, the evening snapped back with frightening clarity. She'd been eight years old, and the Minches had done everything in their power to pretend to be a happy family around her; with the rough edges of the memory worn off by age, all she could remember now of the dinner conversation was Mr. Minch laughing too hard and Pokey looking at her like she was some kind of strange, exotic insect. The dinner itself hadn't been anything to write home about, but that cobbler had come out, and - well, it hadn't been any better than anything her own mother could have made, but Mrs. Minch was so proud, and that pride made it taste magical. Picky'd been delighted, even then; now, with the darkness closing in, was it any wonder he was clinging to better days?

"It was great, Trace," said Picky. "Just great. I... I miss them, you know? Mom, and Dad, and even Pokey. I think about them a lot. I wonder where Dad and Pokey ended up."

No doubt they were as dead as the rest, but Tracy couldn't bear to admit it. "Who knows? Your dad was a smart guy; he probably found somewhere to hide out. And Pokey was always in his own world anyway. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if he came back here one day, just like he always was, looking for Ne-"

Halfway through the name, Tracy choked, heart and bile rising into her throat. God, she still couldn't say his name. Ness: her big brother, her idol, the bravest boy she'd ever known, the boy who'd headed out to face down the Sharks and ended up on Giygas's trail. The boy who'd died like an ant somewhere out there, and who'd made Onett one of the biggest targets when Giygas decided to unload all his artillery. Some days she hated him, but most days she just missed him.

"Ne...?" Picky stared at her for a moment, and then the light came on in his eyes. "Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, Trace. It's hard some days, isn't it? Even now."

"It's stupid," murmured Tracy, with a small shake of her head. It was ten years since G-Day, for God's sake! Ten long and thankless years, three of them with Lardna and seven on their own, living hand to mouth. After all that, how could she still be such a child?

"It's not stupid!" Picky paused. "Look, Trace, there's something I want to ask you."

"What is it?"

"Will you promise me something?"

"Anything," said Tracy quickly, without a moment's thought. Whatever he wanted, if she could give it, it was his.

"After I'm gone," began Picky, "promise me you'll go find other survivors? Maybe there are some in Twoson, or maybe further east, but... please try? I can't bear the thought of you alone here."

Slowly, Tracy nodded, swallowing hard to clear her throat. A time like this, and he was thinking about her? "Of course. I can't promise I'll find anyone, but I'll promise I'll go look."

"Thanks, Trace. That's all I can ask." Picky brightened a shade, staring down at the can of peaches in Tracy's hand, the can she'd more or less forgotten. "But we should eat, huh?"

"We should." Tracy shifted closer to Picky, spearing a peach section on her fork and leaning forward to offer it. With a small grunt, Picky leaned in to meet her, taking the peach in his mouth and chewing slowly and carefully. "Well?" she said once he'd swallowed. "How is it?"

"'s good. You have some too? I know I won't finish the can."

He wasn't likely to finish more than three mouthfuls, Tracy knew, and she had to admit she could use the strength. She brought out another peach section, taking it in one bite; the flavor was strong, the canned sweetness too concentrated from all the years it had waited to be eaten, but the pure taste of fruit was still there underneath it. How long had it been since she'd indulged in fruit? A season? Longer?

The tarp rattled in a strong draft, and soon the sound of rain began, soft but growing louder; the storm had come. Tracy shrugged it off, spearing another chunk of peach for Picky. They'd have the taste of fruit and the sound of rain, and maybe they'd be able to be happy.

The rain kept up all day, and Picky was asleep by dusk, when Tracy crawled into bed to join him. She wasn't tired, not really, but the sound of the rain on the roof carried her to sleep surprisingly quickly. Soon, she was standing in the old, bright Onett of her dreams. She and Picky were were children again, standing near the hill on a night too beautiful to believe; the sky was a dark purple-blue and cloudless, filled with more stars than she could ever remember, and the near-full moon cast its soft light on everything. Picky turned to her, and when he spoke, it was his old voice, as clear as if she were really hearing it.

"Tracy, I'm not going to make it through the night."

She opened her mouth to answer, but before she could, Picky shook his head. "We both knew it was coming, and it'll be okay. Whatever's going to happen, I'm ready for it. But it's not really me talking now, you know. It's you, the part of you you don't trust. The part that's like Ness."

"What? Picky, or whoever you are, I'm not a psychic!"

"You're sensitive enough," said Picky, voice grave now. "You've been feeling my death coming, and now you've got another hunch. I want you to bury me on the southern slope of the hill; you'll know the place when you get there. Whatever you find while you're digging, keep it after I'm buried. Okay?"

"Okay," said Tracy, blinking hard and trying to wake herself up, but she wasn't quite lucid enough to manage it. "But... if I'm really a psychic, won't the robots come after me?"

"They haven't yet, Tracy. Please, trust yourself? Bury me, find what you need to find, and then go searching for others. You can be the key. You can."

"I - I don't understand -"

"You don't need to right now. You'll understand later. Right now, it's time to wake up."

With that, the cool night around her dissolved into the familiar chill of the house on rainy nights, and Tracy's eyes opened on the darkness. The storm had stopped at last, and the room was silent save for the ever-present distant sound of the sea and their breathing, hers near-silent and Picky's more ragged. Tracy shifted slightly to look at him, and thankfully he didn't stir, sleep deep and shockingly peaceful. If this dream came true - and Tracy's dreams came true more often than she liked - she hoped he didn't wake up.

Breathing shallowly, Tracy curled up to help stave off the cold as she watched Picky's chest rise and fall. Too soon, she knew, it would fall for the past time.

The dream was right: when the time came, she knew the place to dig.

With the body slung over her back, it was a long walk from Beak's Point to the northern outskirts of Onett, and Tracy was grateful when she reached the hill. Once she'd carefully set down her burden, she started towards the south slope, waiting for some kind of sign. It was madness to indulge her delusions this way, but the dream had been right about Picky, and what was the harm of following it now? The important part was over, anyway.

The sign of the right spot wasn't visual, just a feeling: a dull hum in the back of her mind, telling her to stop and dig. Tracy unholstered the old shovel from her back and set to digging, grateful that the rains had loosened the hard-packed soil of the hill. In dry weather, it might have been impossible to make any progress, but now the digging was steady enough, if still slow work.

She was over a yard down when her shovel hit something hard. Tracy knelt down in the muck, catching a glimpse of something glinting, and reached down to close her hand around it. She pulled her hand out, opening it to find her prize: a stone just the size to fit in her palm, muddy but with a hint of grey underneath. After she cleaned it off on her shirt, the stone shone a dull silver, like polished granite.

And then the song began.

It was crazy, she knew, bt she could hear it in her head: a simple melody, a few high notes that echoed in her head as if played on a far-away piano. Maybe she was hallucinating, or just remembering a song from a happier time, but it was clear and brilliant, and as she rubbed the stone, it got louder.

What was this thing, anyway? Some form of psychoactive shrapnel from the war, or something older than that? Tracy had no idea, but she could tell it was valuable, and its weight in her hand and song in her head felt decidedly right, if very strange. Still, the fact that it resonated in her mind made her wonder. She didn't want to think about the possibility that the dream might have been right, that she was psychic on some level, but the dream had been right about everything else. What could she do?

For right now, she could lay Picky to rest. Tracy stuck the stone into her pocket, the song in her head dwindling to silence, and then hefted the body once again. It wasn't the deepest grave, but there weren't scavengers these days, and he'd be safe here. The body was too light, wrapped in the soft, worn fabric of one of the Minches' old bedsheets, the nicest thing that she could spare - not nice enough for him, but nothing was now. Tracy knelt to lower him into the grave; when at last the body hit bottom, she stayed at the edge, finally letting the tears come.

It was dark when Tracy finished the burial, and she walked home in blackness, gaze moving listlessly between the ground and the sky. There was only a sliver of moon there, but the clouds were mostly clear, and the stars shone in their familiar constellations. Giygas couldn't destroy everything.

Giygas hadn't destroyed her. It was cold comfort now, on her first night truly alone, but that fact and her promise to Picky would keep her going. She'd set out tomorrow for the outskirts, but for now, she needed sleep.

For once, she wasn't afraid of her dreams.