Day 2,379
EVA SAT ATOP A LARGE boulder touching the shore, half submerged in the lake; this boulder was the place she had first found her plastic creatures, first discovered Abel. That day, Abel had sped along the shoreline full of more vitality and spirit than any other creature Eva had encountered on Earth. He had been the first living thing Eva had touched in almost a year. The creature before him had been a fish covered in tumors, and she did not remove her gloves, did not touch it skin to skin.
When she traveled back to her cabin with little Abel on her shoulder and crossed the sandbar, he had gone limp, all that vitality vanished. He was dead or worse, he had never been alive.
Later in the cabin, Eva had believed she had finally lost her mind, that she had imagined these little pl
