Warren used a knife to etch another tally mark into the broken chair that he was next to. It had been four months and three days since the opening to the storeroom had been destroyed, trapping him for potentially forever. He dropped the knife down next to the chair and stared at his watch in boredom; it had been his only way to keep track of the days going by.
He had long since dropped his cheery attitude, because only Bubda could see him here anyways and he didn't seem to care how Warren acted.
Bubda thought that this situation was almost perfect. The only meaning that Bubda got from his home being sealed off from the rest of the world was that no unwanted visitors could stumbled into his home anymore. It would be perfect for him now if he didn't have his one unwanted roommate.
Warren, however, only saw it as his own death. He looked around the small space. He had enough food supplies to last for quite a long time- a few years, maybe, if he was careful and managed to keep Bubda out of his food (something that he hadn't been very successful with so far because of some promise Seth had made).
As if sensing Warren's thoughts Bubda appeared, biting into an apple from one of Warren's stores. Warren sighed but gave up the fight before he could even start it this time. "Play Yahtzee?" Bubda asked.
What was it Seth had said? Warren wondered. You can only play so much Yahtzee before you go insane. That was turning out to be very true. The thought of spending the rest of his life with only an unsociable hermit troll playing Yahtzee was disheartening. If this was the price for seeking solitude in his free time, he would spend the rest of his life surrounded by hundreds of people. Silence was the worst sound to him now.
Bubda was still waiting expectantly for an answer. "No, Bubda," Warren told him. "Later."
Bubda shrugged and began to play a game against himself. Warren didn't see how the troll could still like that game after this long, but day in and day out he never tired of it.
The noise of the dice was already starting to annoy him. Warren moved carefully around- which he could do now; his abdomen was almost fully healed- and found some ancient-looking paper in an old box. Digging through more of the boxes and barrels, he found a pen. He leaned back on one of the boxes and carefully tore the paper into over fifty almost even pieces, sketching on each of them carefully. He had never been an artist, but it wasn't like he had a deadline now. When Warren was finally satisfied with his work he piled them into a loose stack. "Bubda," he called to the troll. Bubda looked warily up from his game to acknowledge Warren. "I have a new game to teach you."
The troll looked suspicious. "Like Yahtzee?" he asked carefully.
Warren grinned, finding a bit of his old confidence somewhere. "Even better than Yahtzee," he promised the troll.
As he shuffled his home-made, uneven deck of cards he thought of all of his family that were hopefully out there somewhere: his protective older brother, Dale, his cousins Kendra and Seth, their grandparents Stan and Ruth, and his friends Coulter and Tanu. He wasn't even sure if all of them were still alive, but he had faith that none of them would be easily taken down by the enemy. His confidence grew as he remembered all of their combined resilience, his own included. Despite his current run of bad luck, he had always managed to bounce back. If the situations were switched, Warren knew that he would never give up on any of his family. He had absolute trust that none of them would let him go so easily, either. They would find him; he was sure of it. He knew that he would only have to keep it together until they did.
With his old hope and confidence building inside of him once more he began to deal out the cards.