She had never seen anyone like Hannah.

Hannah was beautiful, but kind. Intelligent, but shy.

She spent most of her time at the library or at home.

Occasionally, El would visit her, but El was nervous that she'd make her upset.

Today, El visited her.

She looked more tired and anxious than usual when she answered the door.

"Yes?"

El waved with a smile. Truly, Hannah was the only one who made her happy. "I came to see you."

Hannah managed a weak smile in response and opened the door wider. El walked in and then swept Hannah into her arms.

Hannah gasped. "Wha---?"

"What's wrong?" El asked and carried her to her room.

Hannah clutched El's overalls. "Please be careful."

El nodded and opened the door to Hannah's room. That was really difficult. She set Hannah on her bed.

Hannah crossed her hands in her lap. El sat next to her. "So, what is wrong?"

Hannah flopped back on the bed and covered her face. El laid with her.

"My parents. . ." Hannah trailed off. "They. . .want to divorce."

El stuttered, unsure as to how to continue. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’

’I think so,’ Hannah said, slowly. ‘I don’t think it’s set in just yet.’

”Have they…gotten a lawyer?”

Hannah shook her head. “Not yet. I don’t even know if Mum’s moving out.”

”Do you think she will?”

Hannah swallowed. “Maybe.”

El voiced her fears. “Will you have to move?”

Hannah’s voice cracked. “I’m not sure, El.”

El looked at her friend, laying across her bed, about to cry and knew she had to do something. She grabbed Hannah’s hand and dragged her out of the room.

“Come on. We’re getting icecream so we can talk about this properly.”

El handed Hannah her cone and then took her own. They wandered around a little while before they found a bench.

"Even if I have to move," Hannah started quietly, "I'll still be in contact with you."

It was selfish, El knew, but she couldn't stand the thought of not being physically near Hannah.

"It'll be okay," El said. "I'll do anything for you."

Hannah looked up, then leaned her head on El's shoulder. "You're the best, you know that?"

El sighed. "No one's better than you."

They sat for a while, enjoying their ice cream cones. Then El got an idea. A terribly reckless but wonderful idea.

"We could run away."

Hannah looked up, but it wasn't in a 'you're crazy' way. More of 'could we really'.

"You think so?" she asked.

El nodded. "I've read up a bunch on survival, and I know a ton about the wilds. My dad taught me a lot of stuff."

Hannah, for the first time that day, cracked a small smile. "I'd like that."

She rested her head back on El's shoulder.

It was reckless, it was stupid, and it was going to be hard.

But El's plan just might work.

They walked home slowly, the last of the ice cream melting down their fingers. Hannah kept brushing her sleeve across her eyes, as if she could wipe away the day itself.

El stayed close—not touching, not pushing, just there. A steady presence. A gravity.

When they reached Hannah’s street, the sky had already begun to bruise purple. Hannah hesitated at the gate.

“El,” she said quietly, “were you serious? About running away?”

El felt her heart thump once, hard. “Yeah. I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

Hannah looked at her for a long moment. Not scared. Not confused. Just… searching.

“Where would we go?”

El hadn’t expected her to ask that. She swallowed. “There’s a forest past the old quarry. Miles of it. Dad used to take me camping there. I know where the streams are, and the caves, and the places people don’t go.”

Hannah’s breath hitched. “Caves?”

“Not scary ones,” El said quickly. “Just… quiet. Safe.”

Hannah nodded, though her fingers twisted in her sleeves. “I don’t want to be here when they start shouting again.”

That did it. Something fierce and protective rose in El’s chest.

“Then you won’t be,” she said. “Not if you don’t want to.”

Hannah looked down at her shoes. “It sounds impossible.”

“Most good things do.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The street was silent except for the wind nudging the hedges.

Then Hannah whispered, “What would we take?”

El blinked. “You’re… actually considering it?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah said, voice trembling. “But thinking about it makes me feel like I can breathe again.”

El stepped closer, lowering her voice. “We’d need food. Water bottles. A blanket. A torch. Maybe a map. And—”

“And my books,” Hannah said immediately.

El laughed softly. “Of course your books.”

Hannah’s smile flickered. “And your overalls. You can’t run away without them.”

“Obviously.”

They stood there, suspended between childhood and something else entirely.

“El,” Hannah said, “if we did this… would you stay with me? Even if it got hard?”

El didn’t hesitate. “I’d stay with you even if the world fell apart.”

Hannah’s eyes shone, and she reached out, taking El’s hand with a kind of desperate gentleness.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Then… maybe we should plan.”

El squeezed her hand. “Tomorrow. After school. My place.”

Hannah nodded, exhaling shakily. “Tomorrow.”

As El walked home, she felt the weight of what she’d promised settle on her shoulders—not heavy, but solid. Real.

Reckless. Stupid. Hard.

But for the first time, the idea didn’t feel like a fantasy.

They met at El’s house after school, just like they’d promised.

Hannah arrived with a backpack that was far too light for running away and eyes that were far too heavy for a normal day. El didn’t comment—she just took the bag from her, slung her own over her shoulder, and nodded toward the back gate.

“Ready?”

Hannah hesitated only a second. “If I stay, I’ll hear them start again.”

“Then we go.”

They slipped out into the late afternoon, the air strangely still. The kind of stillness that makes birds quiet. The kind that makes the hairs on your arms lift.

El noticed it first. “Feels weird today.”

Hannah walked closer. “Like what?”

“Like the world’s holding its breath.”

They cut across the playing fields behind the school, heading toward the old quarry path. The sky was a flat, dull grey—featureless, like someone had erased the clouds. Hannah kept glancing upward.

“El… does it look wrong to you?”

El opened her mouth to answer, but the ground trembled beneath them—just once, like a giant shifting in its sleep.

Hannah grabbed her arm. “What was that?”

“Probably nothing,” El said, though her voice betrayed her. “Maybe a truck. Or construction.”

But then the tremor came again—longer, deeper. The trees around the field shivered. A flock of starlings burst upward in a frantic, spiraling cloud.

“El,” Hannah whispered, “I don’t think it’s a truck.”

The third tremor hit like a punch. The ground lurched sideways. Hannah stumbled, and El caught her, pulling her close as the earth groaned beneath them.

A sound split the air—low at first, then rising, rising, until it was a scream of metal and sky. They both looked up.

A crack—thin as a hairline fracture—ran across the clouds.

Except it wasn’t in the clouds.

It was in the sky itself.

A jagged line of white light tore across the horizon, widening, brightening, until the world was bathed in a cold, electric glow. The air hummed. The grass flattened. Hannah pressed herself against El, trembling.

“El… what’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” El said, pulling her in tighter. “But I’ve got you.”

The crack widened with a sound like ripping fabric—cosmic, enormous. A wind roared out of it, hot and sharp, carrying the smell of metal and something older, something that didn’t belong to this world.

The sky peeled open.

For a moment, everything was silent.

Then the first object fell.

A burning shard of something—stone? metal?—screamed through the air and slammed into the far end of the field, exploding in a burst of light and dust. The shockwave knocked them both to their knees.

Hannah clung to El, breathless. “We have to go. We have to go now.”

El’s heart hammered, but she forced herself to stay steady. “Into the woods. They’ll give us cover.”

Another object fell—closer this time. The ground shook violently. A distant siren wailed, then cut off abruptly.

“El,” Hannah said, voice breaking, “is this the end?”

El cupped Hannah’s face, forcing her to meet her eyes. “No. Not while we’re together.”

Hannah’s breath hitched, and for a moment—just a moment—she leaned in, their foreheads touching, the world collapsing around them but this tiny point of contact holding steady.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Lead the way.”

El grabbed her hand, fingers interlacing with a certainty she’d never felt before.

They ran.

They didn’t stop running until the field was far behind them and the first shadows of the forest swallowed them whole. Branches whipped at their arms. Roots snagged their shoes. The air tasted metallic, as if the sky’s wound were bleeding into the world. Hannah stumbled over a fallen log, and El caught her again—her hands firm around Hannah’s waist, steadying her.

“You okay?”

Hannah nodded, breathless. “Just… keep going.”

But El didn’t move. Not yet. She kept her hands on Hannah a moment longer than necessary, grounding her, grounding herself. The forest around them pulsed with strange light; faint flickers of white and blue that filtered through the canopy like lightning trapped in slow motion.

“El,” Hannah whispered, “the sky… it’s still doing it.”

El looked up. Through the branches, the crack in the sky glowed like a second horizon, jagged and wrong. More objects streaked downward, silent now, as if sound itself had been stunned.

“We need to get deeper in,” El said. “If debris keeps falling—”

A distant boom cut her off. The ground trembled again, softer this time, like an aftershock.

Hannah grabbed El’s sleeve. “What if this is everywhere? What if there’s nowhere safe?”

El didn’t have an answer. The truth pressed against her ribs like a fist. But she couldn’t let Hannah see that—not now.

“We’ll find somewhere,” she said. “I promise.”

They pushed deeper into the woods. The light dimmed. The air cooled. The sounds of the world—sirens, explosions, the tearing sky—faded into a muffled hum.

Eventually, they reached a small clearing, ringed by tall pines. El stopped, listening. The forest was quiet. Not peaceful—just holding its breath.

“This way,” El said, pointing toward a slope. “There’s a cave near here. Dad showed me once.”

Hannah’s fingers brushed El’s hand, hesitant, searching. El took it without thinking.

Their palms fit together too easily.

“El,” Hannah said softly, “I’m scared.”

El squeezed her hand. “Me too.”

It was the first honest thing she’d said all day.

They walked hand in hand up the slope. The cave wasn’t far—a dark mouth in the hillside, half-hidden by ferns. El ducked inside first, checking the space. It was shallow but dry, with enough room for both of them to sit.

“It’ll do,” she said.

Hannah stepped in after her, brushing close in the narrow entrance. The warmth of her body, the tremble in her breath—it all felt sharper in the dark.

They sat together, backs against the stone. Outside, the forest flickered with unnatural light.

“El,” Hannah murmured, “do you think… do you think this is the end of everything?”

El turned to her. In the dimness, Hannah’s eyes were wide and shining.

“I don’t know,” El said. “But I know I’m not leaving you.”

Hannah exhaled shakily. “You always say things like that.”

“Because they’re true.”

Hannah leaned her head on El’s shoulder—slowly, deliberately this time. El felt her heart stutter, then settle into something fierce and steady.

“If the world is ending,” Hannah whispered, “I’m glad I’m with you.”

El rested her cheek against Hannah’s hair. “We’re going to survive this. Together.”

Outside, another streak of light tore across the sky.

Inside the cave, their hands stayed intertwined.

And for the first time since the world began to fall apart, neither of them felt alone.