Looking for Heaven

In which we find another egg

You see, the minorities of non-humans weren’t exactly minorities in the strict sense of the word but in the sense that they were various groups of people with different cultures and abilities that didn’t tend to communicate between themselves before the coalition’s appearance and once they decided to change that, it was already too late. 

The coalition was on the power and the human population was a concise group, acting as one, attacking all the different groups. And while the number of non-humans outside of the concentration centers grew lower and lower, the humans still weren’t satisfied. 

One would think after 5 years they had got enough time to see we aren’t dangerous to them and stop this nonsense but, no, they are still very active in their plan to end with the freedom of all non-humans, so paranoid that they called the coalition to my parents just because my dad would go behind the house and stay there for 2 or 3 hours twice in the week for a couple of months. 

The abandoned building we stay in this morning is an old farmhouse, the house looks to be empty for maybe a year or two. The pictures on the walls make it obvious that this was a non-human residency before its abandonment and they probably got sent to one of the centers.

I put Josh to sleep on the couch and the egg carrier and other bags at the armchair by his side before I go to the kitchen look for cans still viable.

On the counters, there is still plenty of food, but it’s obvious that there were still more, rodents and other mammals have got here before an all that was in a plastic bag is now crumbles but we are lucky and most of the cans still have a year or more within the expiration date. I open two or three before waking Josh up and making sure he eats his share.

Before we go out next evening we will go by the house and look for things we wouldn’t want in the hands of the coalition if they haven’t taken it yet. If we get lucky enough maybe there will be an old vehicle or something and info on the old owners. 

Since we started this travell a week before I’ve been feeling like it is my duty to the owners of the houses where we sleep to preserve their lives and memories the best I can. Until today, all I could do in this regard is to collect some old photo albums and write addresses and names when available.

After eating all that Josh didn’t eat I put one of the cushions on the floor and got myself prepared to sleep, once all was ready I got the egg out of his bag and by my side, sleeping with it gave me a sense of security nothing else could give since we got separated from our parents it was like only knowing the three of us were together I could breathe easily enough to get to sleep.

I woke up at the end of the day with Josh rummaging through our bags and looking for something easy to eat while caressing absently the egg. It’s incredible to see how much he take care of it even if it may never become his nephew or niece. 

After breaking the feast we started to look for things that could be useful in the journey or that could be dangerous to be left behind. Besides the cans we found some jars with jam and some books that looked to be from another non-human group, their cellar had a little trunk with other books and some other kind of egg. I wanted to take it all with me but unless we could find some way to take it all with us, I would have to choose between what was more important, and looking at my shell I just knew I wouldn’t be able to left another possible hatchling, even if it was not one of ours to get left behind. 

The books and the egg were put on the coffee table as well as the jams and cans while I started to sort our bags and take out all that wasn’t necessary. The nest lost all his supports because new ones could be made, the tissue got on the shoulder bag with both eggs and all the books and albums on the backpack where there was still some space left for a change of clothes to me and Josh. Josh's small backpack was fullest with the food and water for snacks and that was it. the got another full meal with the cans and jams and hoped that we would find more on the way.

With all the stops we had to take for Josh little legs get some break we hadn’t still got out of the state even living no more than a 3 hours drive of the line and who knows how much more time it will take to reach grandma's home if we can’t get a car.

By the following nights, that’s what I looked for while looking for a place to pass the day, abandoned houses that could have a car left behind. 

In the first days of the coalition government when the non-humans were still considered a small group they would claim their homes to the government and try to sell them, but as time passed and more and more non-humans were locked away it became clear that the market was saturated with so many houses and the number of buyers always decreasing. As the biggest part of the non-humans lived in small cities and rural areas these parts of the country became almost full of ghost-towns and no sooner than that the big cities started to feel the loss of so many hands to do the hard work on the fields, the government had to sustain the non-humans while studying them and the human population needed food, so the coalition decided instead of taking the properties of non-humans that lived inside even the small cities they should only take the properties of the farmers and ranchers and put non-humans to work on them. 

The non-human population still free lives in constant fear of losing family and friends being held on the concentration centers or be put to work forcibly in the farms.