Flowers That Led to Faith

As the snow fell all around her she walked happily the streets of her abandoned suburban neighborhood wrapped in her night comfort to keep her warm she playfully walked the empty streets for no other reason than to enjoy the gift of snow the day had given her and her companion. As she walked she watched the snow falling into its own place. How envious of the snowflake she felt as she watched it fall from the sky to a strangers world and find its place perfectly first try packing in to allow room for the friends who followed them there. The neighborhood's darkness had been hidden away by the thing that brings all wars to a grinding halt. The snow, and boy did it choose a tricky time to show up for the girl who had decided the night before to take her companion and flee the abandoned home that used to flourish with so much life now emptied from the apocalyptic world she had woken up to. "The snow has buried its way into the world this day," she whispered to the ball of twisted covers in her arms. She was noting this not just for herself or the extra weight she carried in her arms but for the supernatural group of hidden beings that walked with her through the night unseen to her or to anyone from her world. As the lonely girl wrapped in the comfort of her beds covers walks with an unseen creature curled up in her arms with her laying peacefully in her arms as she walked down the abandoned street adjacent from the street her home was secretly placed on. "The darkness even hides from the snow," as she whispers this to herself she hears a man giggle from behind her and she turns and stops right in the street and begins to say "If there is no one else her, left, or showing up, why is it that you are still hidden?" Just as she finished her question a surprise caught them both at an unaware moment. The man leading the group that followed her unseen briefly shows his self as he instinctively reacted to the coming lights from behind her. He appears just long enough to throw her into the ditch and through a mental loop of questions. She had landed to the left of the road, stunned as she watched silently as he covered in his cloak guarding her and her beast from the light traveling towards them quickly from behind her. The motorcycle stopped right in front of where they laid silently and the man got off his bike and circled the street covered in ice and snow. The man choked up his voice as if he had used it in some time now and began to speak clearly and terrifyingly, "Excuse me, I know you're there." The man trembled from the cold and the fear of the unknown moved around some more looking at the footprints in the snow around him. The women still stunned at the first visual of her unseen stalker laid silently and watched the man from the motor bike in front of them locate her footprints. She quickly turned to the man who hid her in the shield of invisibility by the road a familiar man whom she hadn't seen since before his funeral. Many years before the current lifestyle had even begun. Holding her dragon close to her in her blanket she tightened squeeze the creature and handed him to the old lover from a past in a time of people, places, and holidays such as Christmas. She put her finger to her lips and motioned his silence. He obeyed because he had already realized the prints led the stranger to her home. She snuck out of the cloak to behind a near standing tree and coughed loudly as he was looking towards the turn that led her way home. The man turned quickly identifying the cough as a woman immediately said "I'm not here to hurt you. You can come out." The woman shocked to her another familiar voice had stumbled over her words and could barely speak from the echo of the man in front of her in her head. She said in her head, "Oh s**t, P.O.A." who she had last seen in her neighborhood before the first wave of death rolled through. The man startled and amused began to speak but this time with more surety with himself then the last time he spoke. Not wanting to out himself as the voice in her head he lied and said "Ma'am I seen you in the distance and thought we might know each other." The women again in her head repetes the word "Shit." and then out loud in a voice barely above a whisper said to the man before her "Depends on what you mean by know, we may." Uncaring of the sarcastically spoken words and noting to the girl as he responds quickly enough to keep her blinded from remembering the man who had thrown her into the ditch on his arrival was still watching in secret with her quizzical companion. "Seeing as it's a different kind of world we are in now, and the rules have completely changed id like to think we could have a sit down maybe catch up on each other's situations considering our relationships to each other in the past." "s**t," she had spoken this time in her head and aloud. She started to turn up to the sky to remind God of her previous answer and changed her mind quickly not because he wouldn't listen anyway but because it had been awhile since she seen people let alone people she knew in her past who had been able to survive, "The coming of the end of yesterday today because tomorrow wasn't planned for appropriately," or as another more simple or religious person might refer to the dead rising as "The rapture of Christ." She walked from behind the tree still wrapped in her snug blanket towards the man in front of her she turned to the ditch to say without a word "meet me at the bunker." She knew couldn't respond but the voice in her head was shocked as he listened to her mimic her words there while she spoke them with lips where they stood. He knew she was hiding something, someone, or as he had heard crazy. She didn't look at the man but said to him as she passed by, "go to the second lot on the right on the street ahead and park behind the trees in the back by a tall pile of rubble that was once a house. Stay and wait for me there till I catch up after i conceal our path. Saying nothing more she lifted a hand and started playing an unheard tune as the snow began to dance around her feet and up her body towards her arm as it made its way to her hand in front of his eyes the snow flew over their heads to the marked ground behind them as she redirected each flake by asking the snow in her own way to hide the tracks she left behind. He had heard of her nonsense and her tinkering and was shocked to see her nonsense turn to necessity in front of his eyes. Shaking It off quickly he got on his bike went to the lot and waited as he watched her from the lot he was mesmerized by the magic that flew from the girl he had known so long ago. It was so unbelievable that he wouldn't have believed a person even if he trusted them and they had seen it from their own eyes. She almost dancing made her way to the lot where he stood with his bike and she then said only "follow me and bring it with you" talking about the bike as she walked through her pathway to an unseen path hidden by rubble and brush. She had made her hidden path to detour travelers from the front of her home which never was used and was guarded by her own unseen forces and full of traps made to contain and not to kill. He had remembered a different time where he had seen her on this street he had no idea which way she went nor did he look because the boyfriend of that time was following her down the street. As she walked to the back of the next lot she crossed a corner point of two fence lines with just enough room to squeeze behind one and infront of another with a motor bike. they walked that yard till the garage and went behind the pathway of the garage and into another fenced yard. After crossing into the yard she pointed behind the shed towards an overgrown garden protected by a green tarp from the elements. "You can hide your bike behind the shed by the garden be careful for the line closest you is poisen Ivy I've been harvesting for weaponizing to catch people who have already been sneaking around the neighborhood by the time I meet them they are usually covered in rashes and praying for mercy." As he parked his bike in the covered of the ivy and other helpful herbs and plants he notes to himself, "this is a witch doctors lair." Being careful not to say it everywhere said it was just loud enough for her to take it the wrong way. "Well, actually, they have disappeared. The Witch Doctor and The Warrior haven't been seen since the second wave of the dead. I've taken it upon myself to keep it going for them to return or to at least stay profitable with what I know I can do by watching the witch doctor heal the wounds of his traveling companions, especially The Warrior. He looked at her confused and said, "I'll have to take your word for it." as he had expected she unlocked the shed and guided him inside her apocalypse bunker as she felt a tap on her shoulder she waited providing the unseen a way inside before she locked down. She had already figured out how to handle the next part as she came inside herself and locked the door from the inside and sat in her spot. On her bed towards the back of the shed with her foot on the bed to the left and the coffee going on the table to her right. While her stuff was scatter across all the areas of her bed where she sat, on her table with her coffee and all around her foot on the second bed. "Nice set-up," he said out loud. It's almost as if she was very comfortable in the lair of a madman he thought. He had studied the situation more than he cared to admit. And not just to her, but to anyone who would even listen to such biblical nonsense. Well, before the dead rose anyway, he thought, As she picked up the spot on the lower bed and guided him to a seat. "Coffee?" she asked and he gratefully responded "please." She made his the same way as her own, refusing to ask him how he liked it. Because the sheer thought flushed her face and the unseen was on her mind directly right now and she feared he had already noticed.