Missed the beginning of the story? Start with Part 1 here.

Cola couldn’t believe it. She’d already been up for hours, looking over her things. She’d had breakfast, and then put a little more food in her belly than usual because she really didn’t know what to expect. She’d heard stories of the Outgoing, sure. But they were just rumours. No one talked about their journies, really. They just said, you’ll know when you get there. Or you’ll know when you come back.

Other than that, she was ready. She’d been ready since the day their scores got posted. Before that, even.

So it made her extra crazy to find that Yin wasn’t there with the rest of them yet, seated on stage at the very center of The Lake.

The Lake had been transformed. All the chairs that usually lived haphazardly around the room had been organized into a neat circle around a center stage, where their cohort of 50 iwere gathered, waiting. Their cohort had been scheduled to leave early, while Cola knew some from the other tents would leave much later. For that reason she knew most of the faces there, while there were a few that seemed out of place. Odd, she thought. She’d felt she’d at least seen everyone from her tent.

Cola watched as some milled about. Others, like Cola, sat, fixed to their chairs. Cola looked furtively around at the different entrances, trying not to look expectant.

She and Yin had said their goodbyes the day before. That part of her life was over now.

“Where’s your friend? Isn’t he coming?” a girl she barely knew from behind her said. Cola ignored the voice, thinking it was for someone else until the girl leaned forward and asked again. Cola looked back at her with annoyance, though that’s not how she felt inside. She watched as the girl’s face withdrew, and regretted her coldness. Tried to make her own face appear more warm, but the damage had been done and the girl looked elsewhere, started whispering with someone else. So Cola just looked back at her lap, twisting her fingers and wondering where Yin was in spite of herself.

They had stayed up late talking the night before. Grandma and Sam and Samuel, and even the other guards and attendees seemed to know that the goodbyes were happening. All over the tents, small voices rumbled. Which is how she knew there were others around her whose friends had been selected for different times; put in different cohorts. Others had friends who didn’t grade high enough to make The Outgoing at all. She had heard those whimpers as well, but was too busy focusing on Yin. On saying goodbye. On memorizing each other’s faces.

Because they’d promised each other to laugh at how different they were if they ever saw each other again. So she had looked hard at him, studying like she studied the rest of the world: slowly. Methodically. Piece by piece. She looked at the small brown mole under his left eye. At the sqaure-ish lines that were becoming his cheekbones. At the ears too large for his bald head. She would remember those things. Then she looked into his dark black eyes, made even darker in the night of the tent, and saw that he, too, memorized her; the straight black hair she could disappear under and the fading thin scar across her cheek and chin. The roundness of her face otherwise. The slight frown she always wore. The crinkled line forever in her brow.

She had watched him read these things in her, remembering what he’d said before about family, then felt a sharp bubble move through her chest, as if it reached toward her throat. Whatever it was pinned her breath to the back of her tongue. She had looked to Yin then, panicked. But he just reached across the bunk from where they sat cross-legged and put his hand on her shoulder.

“We can do this,” he’d said.

And then she felt it, back in that giant room, surrounded by all those empty, organized chairs, surrounded by the people who would either make or break her future in the next few weeks of their journey. Even the light on the walls seemed a different shade of blue. She turned around to the other girl who had been sitting behind her, to tell her that her and Yin had said their goodbyes, but the girl had moved somewhere else.

But another girl sat in her place, talking to a light-haired boy beside her. She caught Cola’s eye when she turned around, and smiled. Cola smiled back. Hi, she mouthed. The girl waved her hand lightly, smiling with her eyes while still talking to the boy. Cola felt pleased. More confident. She could make new friends once she saw how everyone else did out there.

“Cohort 2940! To your seats please.” A starkly tall woman in a long white coat – though in the light it danced blue – strode to the front of the stage, her back facing the empty seats organized all around. Cola stayed where she was, and waited for everyone else to settle down. It happened thankfully quickly to Cola’s standard, and she could tell the woman up front was pleased as well. Suddenly, Cola wished she had sat a few rows closer, to be noticed more–though still in the back of her mind Yin’s absence nagged at her. She cursed him for distracting her. This was exactly why they had said their goodbyes in the first place!

Still, she sat attentively to all outside eyes. Then once all were seated, the others waited, equally silent, as the woman in white stood without speaking and looked into each one of their faces, all 50 of them seated there. This took some time, but when her eyes got to Cola’s, she felt that her insides had been turned out for all to see. She felt that the woman could see exactly what she was thinking. Truly, it was possible that she could. Some lineages had other talents than being able to breathe well in the dust. Like seeing visions from someone’s mind, or being able to tap into their pulse and understand their health. But these were folks who would have come from other colonies. Lineages like Cola’s were more easy to come by, and simpler, but she never was one to complain. It was Yin who had wanted more adventure anyway.

Cola thought all these things as the woman’s eyes passed over her, and regretted not having more interesting or capable thoughts. Everything was a test now. And Yin not being there was part of it. She steadied her jaw and forgot about him completely, waiting for the woman at the front of the stage to speak.

This is a short story in progress from my working short story collection called “THIRST: Stories from a Post-Water World”.

For more stories like this one, read Share. Or, enjoy this story from the beginning with Part 1 here.

Or sign up to receive all kinds of flash fiction and short stories by me straight to your inbox:

Missed part 1 of this short story? Read it here.

As they left, they checked out with the tall, pale desk guards just outside the tent. These were Sam and Samuel, a woman and man who both smiled and waved at Cola, but gave Yin nothing more than a cursory nod. To them, Yin was just another being in the masses. But Cola had been asking them to go outside since she was very young, and so knew Sam and Samuel very well. They’d even let her go out onto the paths before she was technically old enough, but this was their little secret. She hadn’t even told Yin much about that.

Besides, because of her lineage, Cola knew that she could get away with a little more than the rest. For one thing, she could last longer in the dust than anyone else. Some mutation of the lungs, Grandma had said. And this put her in the front running for something like The Outgoing, which would test her further on those sorts of things.

Yin didn’t share her lineage, but as it was he never complained or coughed, and had good control of his breathing. And he had always processed water better than her, besides. It’s because you’re so worried all the time, he would say to her. You waste more water that way.

Cola smiled at the thought and shielded her eyes from the over-bright grey of the sky as they walked down the marked paths to The Lake. They walked past the other tents, passed many others they knew and didn’t along the way, and yet they kept their heads mostly down and were silent, as they both concentrated on slowing their breathing down to almost a standstill.

For speaking was out of the question on the paths. The dust could rise at any moment and smother you, if you didn’t know how to watch for it. And in certain places – though the paths did their best to skirt these – the air was completely dead, and you couldn’t breathe at all for risk of dying.

But Cola and Yin and the rest noticed none of this, for it was their normal. So when they reached The Lake and descended into its depths, they continued on with their conversation as if nothing had happened since.

“You better not mess it up for me,” Cola said seriously as they stepped down into the cavern that would lead them to the main hall.

“I wouldn’t!” whispered Yin, mock-offended and clutching his chest. Then he calmed down and spoke normally.

“But seriously, I wouldn’t.” Cola looked up at Yin and thanked him with her eyes. She had made him promise her this many times. He was too clumsy, and his clumsiness often made her clumsy. As soon as The Outgoing started, they would have to be apart if she wanted to do well.

But for now, together still, they stepped out of the long tunnel and into a giant, underground atrium – the Main Hall of The Lake.

Here, many gathered at tables, lounge chairs, on the floor, all of them bathed in the wash of blue light that danced all over faces and walls in little ripples. It glanced along in mesmerizing patterns, catching Cola’s eye this way and that. She had often gotten lost or distracted by this light, which was said to mimic the feeling of being underwater. And she felt calmed by it, too. For in the Main Hall everyone’s voice took on a gentleness that didn’t exist in the tents. As if when they entered the sacred place, like a temple, most only thought high thoughts and spoke wisely, calmly, softly there.

Through the din, Yin and Cola found themselves a small table and chairs on the other side of the huge Hall, where more of the people their age liked to hang out. They waved to a few friends, who waved back but didn’t move to join them, which was normal. Yin sank into his chair, and readjusted himself until he was sitting almost upside down, slouched and looking at the roof. Cola shook her head, and though she did it more primly, she also relaxed into her chair and looked up to watch the blue light for a while.

“You think you’ll come back here, after?” asked Yin quietly. This was a conversation he and Cola had had many times before. She knew exactly what she would say, and exactly what he would say, but they went through the motions anyway.

“Yes, I’ll come back,” she thought aloud. “There’s so much to be done here. I want to help.”

“And you’ll be good at it, too,” Yin said before continuing after a quiet pause. “But I’m not going to come back.”

“Where do you think you’ll go?” Cola asked, following the lines of one blue ripple until it got completely lost amid another.

“Who knows? Wherever they put me, I don’t mind. As long as it’s new. And different. And exciting. Things are too normal around here for me. And if they put me on exploration…”

“…then you’ll get to see–” Cola interjected.

“Beyond the colonies!” Yin finished with a quiet excitement to him. Then he shifted in his chair to look at Cola directly. “Will you ever come to visit me?”

“Probably not,” she said, smirking and not looking at him. She had always known there would be a day when they wouldn’t be friends any longer. Or at least, couldn’t see each other anymore. They both knew it, and had accepted it.

Or so she thought.

Yin was quiet again. He breathed deeply. The soft sounds of young folks laughing talking singing nearby settled them lower into their chairs. Then he said,

“You’re my only family, you know.”

Cola sat up a bit and looked hard at Yin, wondering if this was another joke. But his face was serious. This was different than what they’d talked about in the past, and she heard a shaking in his voice she’d never heard before.

“Huh?” she asked softly.

“Well you are,” he said a little more stubbornly this time, and without looking at her.

“You’re just nervous,” replied Cola, though she wanted to say something nicer; something else. But she couldn’t think of anything else, and just sat in the silence with him a while longer.

“Yeah. Just nerves. Probably.” He smiled and looked at her again in his old way, as if nothing had changed. “Because it’s all so close now, isn’t it?”

“Just a few weeks now,” Cola said, back to the old script. But she said it without her usual enthusiasm. Something in her felt flat. As if someone had poked a hole in her and let all the air out. She looked at Yin, and then at the room all around her.

She could never leave this place; could never leave Grandma.

She had always known she would come back home.

But it was true, wasn’t it? That things would be very different without Yin.

This is a short story in progress from my working short story collection called “THIRST: Stories from a Post-Water World”.

For more stories like this one, read Share.

Or sign up to receive all kinds of flash fiction and short stories by me straight to your inbox:

“None of us knew we could live more than 3 days without water. Until we had to.

As others toppled over, wasted, under-watered; the rest of us just looked at each other, dry-eyed though we mourned.

And how we mourned.

Almost everything we knew, gone in 3 days. All the water we’d ever seen, disappeared into the bodies of those who ended up dying anyway.

Babies. Fathers. Animals. Crops.

Those of us left were parched, yes. Thirsty, definitely.

But dying? Not even close.

Turns out some of us could go a whole year with just the water in our bellies. And when it all ran out of the lakes and streams, there were some of us had more in our bellies than others.

Not many of us, mind you. Not me. But some of us, for sure. And I’d bet good coin on one of them being the type to come up with Cola.

Cola.

We used to call Cola something different way back when water was as popular as dust in the desert.

Then, Cola wasn’t something you gave your kids except after a baseball game. Parent’s frowned at their kids drinking too much.

Nowadays, you’d be mighty battered to think anyone would frown at a kid and their Cola. Fact is, some of us would give ours up just so kids like you can have some.”

“Yes grand-ma-ma,” said the small girl sitting at the end of her Grandma’s rickety metal bunkbed.

The girl had heard all this before, but with so little to do she didn’t mind listening again and again. It was all a part of how she’d gotten her name, after all.

Cola. Cola Prix.

Cola’s grandma paused and took a rattling breath, readjusting the pillows that propped her up against a small headrest. All around them the air was thick with dry voices, snores, burps, and countless other kinds of human chatter. At least 1,000 of them were crammed into this bunker, with 17 more just like it lined all up in a row. The buzz was comforting, in a way. And of course, it was really all Cola had ever known.

For she was born there. And like her grandmother, would die there too. That was just how it went.

“Cola!” someone shouted amidst the rumbling chatter all around. Several people, men and women, looked for the caller, for the name was a popular one among many.

“Cola Prix!” the same voice yelled, and many of those faces turned away.

Little Cola, no taller than 4 feet high, stood from where she sat and crawled up to the top of her bunk, where she slept above her grandmother. There, her little nest was her domain, filled with things she should have and things she shouldn’t–but no one really watched the small ones too closely anyway. Especially not Cola, who had always been naturally helpful and well-liked, and therefore trusted, even with very important tasks (though she was barely 10).

From up on her bunk, Cola could see who called. The tops of heads parted to make space for a tall, bald head coming toward her. She covered her hand with her mouth to hide her smile, then put it down again. Grandma had said she should never cover her smile, even if it was a silly one.

And it was a silly one, for the person who came toward her was close enough in age to Cola, only he towered over her and everyone else so much that they’d had to give him a foot rest for his bunk. And he had no hair, which is often what made Cola giggle to see him coming.

This was Yin, a quiet type for how tall he stood. Even now his voice calling seemed to crawl barely above the din, but Cola had heard it so many times before that she could hear him whisper through it all, if she listened hard enough.

Yin strode up to her bunk bed, dipped to say hello to Cola’s grandmother, and then rested his gangly elbows on the top bunk before giving Cola a hard stare.

“You’re always trying to make me look bad,” he said, though already Cola could see he was teasing. Yin rolled his dark, almond eyes and picked up a plastic toy horse with all the paint worn off. Only pink, worn rubber remained, but Cola liked the thing immensely. So much so that she plucked the tiny thing straight from Yin’s hands and put it under her pillow.

“Not that one,” she said. Yin rolled his eyes again and picked at a loose thread in her blanket until Cola couldn’t handle it anymore.

“Okay okay, what did I do this time?” she asked, sighing so loudly that her bunk-neighbour gave her a curious eye. She waved them away and looked back at Yin expectantly.

“Our scores are up for the Outgoing,” he said, pouting, though a smile hinted at the edge of his down-turned mouth.

“Well it’s not my fault you didn’t study,” said Cola matter-of-factly.

Yin tended to take life as if it was a joke, and this had always puzzled Cola, who was much more serious, even as a youngster. She liked rules. She liked tests. And she had always known (because of her name) that she would end up working for the government there, which saw that everyone had enough Cola to drink, enough to eat, and enough to do. It was good work. Proper work. And work her grandma approved of.

“Yeah well, you only got 2 more points than me,” Yin broke and a full, teasing grin plastered his face. Cola swiped at him to try and slap it off.

“No you did not!” she yelled, laughing in spite of herself. For though it annoyed her greatly that Yin never had to try at anything to be good, she still loved him like a brother and was proud of him for doing so well. The news that she had also done well was little surprise to her, so this, she ignored.

“That means we’ll be in the same Outgoing unit!” she exclaimed, rattling the bunks. Grandma sniffed loudly from the bunk below, which almost sent them into a fit of giggles, but instead Yin waved for her to come down, which she did. With a wave goodbye, they followed their favourite path to the front of the tent, and out into the dust.

This is a short story in progress from my working short story collection called “THIRST: Stories from a Post-Water World”.

For more stories like this one, read Share.

Or sign up to receive all kinds of flash fiction and short stories by me straight to your inbox: