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The cabin used to feel so cramped. When you and the one you love came here all those weeks ago, it would’ve been hard to imagine that it would ever feel too large. The kitchen was barely big enough for both of you to move around comfortably in, the single bedroom barely having enough space to pile your clothes on the floor. Whenever you needed to be away from your love you’d have to leave the cabin entirely, either to the front garden overgrown with weeds, or to the expansive hills beyond. When you were gone for too long, the one you love would go out to find you, and you’d spend a blissful evening watching the cows entirely in silence. Now the cabin is far too vast and the silence is anything but blissful. And the cows…
The one you love told you about the cows. It was a little while after it all ended. You were lying on the bed and your lover was curled next to you. You were trying to lighten the mood, to make everything a bit less hopeless. And the one you love laughed, that horrid, humorless laugh, and told you that cows weren’t there anymore, and no they weren’t dead they were worse .
You don’t like to hear about the horrors of the outside world. Your little bubble was fine before the apocalypse happened, and that was before everyone else’s lives became endless torture. The one you love has no choice but to know of everyone’s ceaseless suffering, and you know it’s wearing on him. Neither of you could be honestly described as extroverted, but he cares about people, even more so recently.
There was a woman, one day, before the world ended. She was sitting down on the pavement outside the grocery shop, and the one you love had stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her. You thought you were going to have to drag him away from a potential victim, but he clenched his fist, turned away and went into the shop with you. Shopping went fairly normally, bar your lover putting a caramel galaxy into the basket. When you exited, the woman was still there. The one you love took the bag with the chocolate in and sat down next to her and offered it to her. She took it with a quizzical expression and he explained that he thought it might cheer her up. She thanked him, and said that she always used to share them with her father. Her voice had caught on the last word and she’d almost started crying. She unwrapped the chocolate bar, broke it in two and gave half to the one you love, like how she always used to do it with her dad. He accepted, told her that if she needed anything they lived past the village up north.
It’s something you love about him. How he remembers or knows random facts about you — how you take your tea, what your favourite type of chocolate is — and then references it later, bringing you rooibos tea with a lot of sugar and milk, just how you like it. It’s probably because he’s the Archivist, but it’s still so him that you can’t help but be endeared.
You can’t love him for that anymore. He can’t love like that anymore. Love after the end is… complicated. Beautiful things are twisted and rotten. Houses are only homes when they want you to stay trapped in their suffocating embrace.
You know there’s something wrong with the house. Not too wrong, not compared to the world outside, but there's just something off about it. The walls feel thicker than usual, you used to be able to hear each other throughout all of the cabin, but now you can only hear the creaking of the floorboards, the howling of the wind, and occasionally screams. There’s enough space between the screams that you can almost forget about them, put them out of your mind. Then they come back with a vengeance and you feel sick for having forgotten your unsteady peace is built on the suffering of everyone else in the world. Then you feel even sicker because you can forget while the one you love sits inside the bedroom, forced to see it all.
You call to the one you love, but nothing comes out of your mouth. You could try again, or get up and open the door. But… talking to him is so tiring these days. Perhaps staying on the sofa and wrapping yourself in the blanket is a better idea. There’s no other way to keep yourself warm when you’re alone.
The cabin is far too big for you all by yourself.