Fable for the End of the World

by Ava Reid

Maybe I’ve survived this long so I could know how it feels to hold her. Maybe all my life has been one long gauntlet, running, fighting, searching for her.

Maybe she won’t appear today. But I’ll come back tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, if I have to. I’ll push through the crowds. I’ll watch and I’ll wait. I’m seventeen, and I have a thousand brilliantly hued hazardous sunrises to spare. And yet not a moment of it will feel like a waste. Because I know that when our eyes meet, through the glass, over the heads of strangers, in the bright, shining dawn or the soft, fading twilight, she’ll remember.