{"id":3955,"date":"2019-05-08T00:00:43","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T04:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/?p=3955"},"modified":"2019-05-07T12:27:47","modified_gmt":"2019-05-07T16:27:47","slug":"fifteen-03-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/?p=3955","title":{"rendered":"Fifteen – 03"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This post is from Hecate’s point of view.]<\/em><\/p>\n

She walked across the cracked concrete beyond the bridge, past the archway sculpture that somehow still stood, if a little off-kilter, in the center of what used to be a plaza at the heart of the old campus. The manicured lawns and carefully tended trees had gone to wild in the last year since the end of everything, since the day exactly one year ago when everything had changed. Hecate hugged her sweatshirt a little closer and sighed.<\/p>\n

Everything changed. It was a mark of the passage of time, and time was something she\u2019d seen\u2014and forgotten\u2014in abundance.<\/p>\n

There were still a few buildings there that she remembered from the couple of classes she\u2019d picked up there decades ago, long before her husband or his sister had come to this place to pursue their own studies\u2014studies that for them would have had far more significance going forward than anything she\u2019d ever done here.<\/p>\n

Sometimes she wondered how much the interiors had changed, but even now\u2014especially now\u2014it didn\u2019t matter. All that mattered was what they built going forward\u2014and how they would defend it.<\/p>\n

Her hand strayed to her belly again. She wasn\u2019t sure exactly when it had happened, but eventually they\u2019d figure it out\u2014likely not until the child was born, if even then\u2014but even that didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

Nothing will ever harm you, little one,<\/em> she thought, her lips thinning. I swear on my life.<\/em><\/p>\n

She could hear the sound of humming as she came closer to the top of the small hill where several half-standing buildings clustered. The sound came from the tatters of a garden bounded by hedgerows outside of one of them, standing above the hill down to the barrow where they\u2019d buried their dead. Hecate\u2019s brows knit.<\/p>\n

Who\u2026?<\/em><\/p>\n

Her steps carried her toward the archway into the garden, marking a gap in half-wild hedgerows. Hecate blinked when she saw Carolyn kneeling amidst tangles of rosebushes and a dozen other flowers, her hands full of dirt, humming as she slowly brought some order to the chaos. Her breath caught.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d Hecate sighed. Carolyn turned, looking up at her. She smiled.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you want to help?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hecate nodded slowly, moving deeper into the garden. A faint shimmer of power washed over her and then faded. She paused, looking around. Carolyn watched her, sitting back against her heels.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d Hecate said, moving to join her. \u201cWhat are you doing out here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGardening,\u201d Carolyn said with a crooked smile. \u201cThinking. What about you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was\u2014I going to go to the barrow to think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carolyn nodded. \u201cIt seems like that kind of day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d Hecate said softly. \u201cIt does.\u201d She knelt down in the damp grass across the flowerbed from Carolyn. \u201cWhat do you need me to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you can start by clearing back some of the grass from the plants over there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hecate nodded, rolling up her sleeves and setting to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This post is from Hecate’s point of view.] She walked across the cracked concrete beyond the bridge, past the archway sculpture that somehow still stood, if a little off-kilter, in the center of what used to be a plaza at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[299,319,14],"tags":[150,163,171,170,194,149,148,168,147,165,146],"class_list":["post-3955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-7","category-chapter-15-book-7","category-story","tag-awakenings","tag-carolyn-roberts","tag-fantasy","tag-fiction","tag-hecate","tag-original-fiction","tag-post-apocalyptic","tag-serial","tag-serial-fiction","tag-story","tag-web-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EBlN-11N","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3956,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955\/revisions\/3956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}