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Safe haven
A few hours had already passed since it begun: the end of the world. It happened so fast, but the horse saw it all. Bright lights came falling down from the sky, devastating everything nearby. Not many animals survived, since most of them were caught off guard. As the dust started to settle, the horse limped through the rubble, trying to make his way out of the war zone. It was the apocalypse, caused by the raging anger of the gods.
As the horse made its way through the barren landscape he spotted a deer a few hills away. The animal jumped its way to the horse. He appeared shook, but without a scratch.
“Hello, friend. Where are you headed?”, asked the horse.
“Not much to head to, right? It’s all a wasteland right now”, replied the deer.
“That’s true… I’m parched… have you seen any rivers or puddles nearby?”.
“Just dry rocks and radioactive puddles”.
A few moments of tense silence ensued.
“I heard that there’s a safe haven down south, where the trees still grow and the grass is still green”. Said the horse with a slight hint of hope in his voice.
“No such thing”, the deer stated bitterly, “those are just fairytales”.
“Before the end of the world, many animals talked about other lands, some of them said that they would try to make the journey south”.
“Do you have any reassurance that they DID in fact got there? And even if they did, how do you know they have a better life than we have? And there’s a pretty big possibility that the end of the world also got to the South”.
Good point, acknowledged the horse.
“So what do you plan to do?”, asked the horse.
“Die…” Silence again.
“How?”
“It’s the end of the world. No food, no water, no shelter… It’s bound to get me sometime”
“Don’t you plan to do anything about it? You can come with me to the South”, said the horse.
“Again with your South talk… it’s not gonna happen, I’m not gonna walk a thousand miles to be disappointed when I see an endless plain of barren landscape… I think it’s best to part ways here”.
As the deer made its way down the hill, the horse turned around and headed South. Small steps, head down, but relentless. The horse walked endlessly. He walked until his knee buckled under him. He rested, and then kept going. Three days and three nights he walked alone, with nothing but his lonesome. And just when he thought it was hopeless, that the deer was right and that he should have stayed back there, he saw something. Far away, it blinked in the darkness. A light. Was it a hut? He tried to make his way towards it, but he was so tired that he fell to the cold ground, and darkness embraced him like an old friend.
The horse woke up the next day. He could not believe what he saw. A green forest, and in the center a wooden cabin. Slowly he walked in that general direction. There wasn’t smoke coming through the cabin’s chimney, but there were clear signs that it was used not long ago. On the side of the cabin a sign said: “Welcome to South Korea”. The horse then knew it was all going to be okay.
-Alexa Terrazas & Mauricio Torres.
