It wasn't always this way… I've heard tales from Clow about the time when he was a kid. He says the sky used to be blue. And the sun… a big yellow blazing ball in the sky… it used to shine across the lands. It's hard to believe, though… he used to tell us about the grass that covered the land in endless pastures and the trees and the crystal clear pools of pure water and the birds and insects and… and so many other wonderful things. The only water we have available here that is not contaminated is that which we keep on recycling. Despite the fact that it's broken down into hydrogen and oxygen and then recombined to produce pure water… it still has this strange, metallic tang to it.
Clow once took me to this far away shelter hidden cleverly somewhere in the wastelands where he has this room that is full of all sorts of wonderful, amazing and rather frightening objects from the world that was before the catastrophe. Before the war… there, I got to taste un-recycled water for the first time. Oh how wonderful it tasted. So sweet. So fresh. So… pure and untainted. That was when Clow told me about the oceans too. About how the water was a dark, dark blue, yet it was pure and there were fish and birds and oh, so many wondrous sea creature residing in it. He also showed me a flower! It was all dry and brown and very, very brittle with no fragrance at all, but to me… it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Clow said that it was a pressed cherry blossom.
My parents died before I was even old enough to remember who they were. Clow found me out in the wastelands, held in the arms of my dead mother, wailing my little lungs out. He says he doesn't know the name that my parents might have given me, since my father never really made it either. Their tanks had run out of oxygen before they could actually reach the shelter. From the suits they had worn when Clow had found them… he says they must have come from one of the other shelters that had a shield failure almost two decades back. Or so he says. There is no real way to keep time around here, but Clow insists it has been that long. So that means I am almost two decades old now. Two decades old, and already dying. But it's not that much of a surprise. Most don't even make it past their first decade now. I'm lucky to have survived for as long as I have. But maybe I say this because I have always helped around with Clow at the invalids' part of the building.
I've seen more death than most people living here at the shelter. I've seen people lose hope, I've seen people break, I've seen people go insane with grief and… I've seen people die. I wonder if I would go insane too? Before I die I mean. I know there's no way left for me to live for long but… will I succumb to hopelessness and break? Or would I panic and lose my mind? Both seem like sad ways to go but I wonder if I would be strong enough to keep it together to face what's to come next. An unfortunate side to having worked with invalids for so long is that heartbreaking realization that I know exactly what I still have to go through.