There used to be colors. Not just the colors of grain—yellow and endless—but actual colors. The green of the forests, the brown of the trees, hell, even the blue of the water and the skies. But now it’s just this. Yellow. The only thing you can see is the yellow of the eternal grain, with the very infrequent bck from the grain fires caused by fools.
Unfortunately grain wasnt something Jonah just saw. He felt it under his boots when walking, squishy in a way that never felt right. He smelled it everywhere he went. Dry and lifeless, a reminder of humanity’s fate. He even had to eat it. With entire ecosystems colpsed grain was the only thing left.
The only pce he didnt have to deal with it, even for a little while was in his haven, the Bckroot Vault.
It was a sanctuary of sorts, a rare air pocket in a world filled with yellow. Inside it Jonah could feel stone under his foot, hard and not giving, always staying like it was, he could forget the suffocating smell of grain, that never changed. But deep down he knew this haven wouldnt st. The walls that kept the grain away was only temporary, just like the peace it offered. Thats why he wanted to find something more permanent. Something that could be considered a true home, a pce to stay at for the rest of his life… If such a pce even existed.
It started as an usual day. Jonah took care of his duties,mainly the relocation of the books from the old library which was discovered recently by his father. His father Johannes was an explorer and he liked to give gifts and mementos to his son from the pces he discovered. These gifts varied from stamps to photos to journals, and maps of the old world. One time he gifted his son a globe. The brass metal stand of it was rusted in some pces, and there was minor damages to the globe itself. Some of the colors were dulled but none of that stopped the globes ability to spin. Jonah thought it was a great gift. He would fall into deep thought while looking at the globe, wondering what could have been. But unfortunately for him the current world infested with grains is what he got. The test gift his father Johannes gifted him was a set of photos which he found in the old library. They were pictures of the city where the bunker was near, taken on a few hills that still existed. Finding this interesting Jonah visited the hills where the photos were taken from. When he reached those hills he compared the city with the pictures. While doing this he felt calm. He felt happy instead of sad because of what the city could have been. This intrigued Jonah. After this moment every day he would go up the hills and compare the pictures and the city.
On the day he was relocating the books from the old library to the bunker, after doing his duty Johan started his hill climbing routine. He walked from the bunker to the first hill, feeling the grain under his feet, hearing the sound of grain shuffling and rustling with the wind. It was oddly rexing despite the circumstances they were in. After walking on the grain for a while he reach the top of the first hill. He sat down at a spot where he could see the city from and took a deep breath, setting down his pocketwatch on the ground before starting to compare the ndscape with the photograph.
Nothing was different from the st day and the day before that. It was still only yellow with some ruined buildings scattered. Even though nothing felt different he felt happy and calm. Truth was he found some beauty in the view. If you ignored the fact that it was the reason for humanity’s downfall it became beautiful. He got up and walked to the bottom of the second hill. Then he climbed the second hill and did the same. Then finally Jonah climbed the third hill, tallest of the three hills, tall enough to see the entire city and began surveying the nd, cross-referencing the city with photos his father had found. He examined the nd vigorously with his eyes again, hoping to see a change—something different that wasn’t just yellow, something that gave the slightest bit of hope, of color. And this time he found it. There were people that were different from the vault inhabitants in the city. He thought they were different people for a second, but he was wrong. They were a group of survivors, the ones taking the history css to be specific, living in the Bckroot Vault, running outside.
When Jonah noticed that he looked at his pocketwatch to tell time. It was 16:49 “That’s weird,” Jonah thought. “The history lesson should have started 9 minutes ago.” Finding this odd, Jonah, now feeling uneasy, started descending the hill with a fast pace.
The history lessons were both an anchor and a distraction for the people who hesitated, whose hesitation caused the world to burn. Not wanting the same mistake being done again, the people made the history csses a constant. It was one of the few constants left in a world where everything was changing. No matter the chaos, no matter the weather it was held at the same time at the same pce every time.The reason for this was to show the world that humanity’s history would not fade, to make a statement no matter what.
But now, that changed. The history lesson hadnt started even though nine minutes passed and instead of starting the css, the history students were trying to run away, seemingly wanting to get away from the bunker. This was wrong. The st time the history csses were deyed was when the vault’s food storage was raided by a group of bandits. This happened seven years ago and Jonah remembered it very well because it happened when Jonah was still attending the history css.
Jonah got to the bottom of the third hill and started running towards the students.
