She waited by the tracks, under a crumbling bus shelter that the plants had taken over decades ago. The tram sometimes came this way and it was her only chance of seeing another human, or at least something human-shaped that she could talk to.
It felt like she hadn't seen anyone in years but she knew it had only been ten months. Time passes slowly when you're foraging in the remains of a long dead city where every street looks the same and the only sounds are your heartbeat and footsteps, both muffled by dense foliage.
The closest she'd come to finding animal life there was a pile of bones that might have once been a horse or a cow, its hard to tell them apart when the head's missing. For all the silence she knew she wasn't alone and these bones proved that something else was there, or at least it had been there.
Much as the trams were her lifeline, she couldn't spend the rest of her life on them. Not without losing her legs and joining the other parasitic passengers who gave up on having lives of their own before she'd even been born. At least they weren't as lonely as her, she supposed, if that was worth losing their individuality.
The idea came to tempt her when she was deep in the heart of the old settlements. The passengers always seemed so kind and so happy to talk to her, even if it was about something as commonplace as the weather. She had to keep reminding herself that they weren't separate beings anymore, all sharing one consciousness that gradually swallowed their former selves until they were all equals.
Still, she eagerly waited for the tram and the chance to speak to the coalescence of humans.
Anything was better than the silence she'd been smothered by the past few months.
Anything to distract her from the feeling of countless eyes waiting for her guard to drop.
It felt like she hadn't seen anyone in years but she knew it had only been ten months. Time passes slowly when you're foraging in the remains of a long dead city where every street looks the same and the only sounds are your heartbeat and footsteps, both muffled by dense foliage.
The closest she'd come to finding animal life there was a pile of bones that might have once been a horse or a cow, its hard to tell them apart when the head's missing. For all the silence she knew she wasn't alone and these bones proved that something else was there, or at least it had been there.
Much as the trams were her lifeline, she couldn't spend the rest of her life on them. Not without losing her legs and joining the other parasitic passengers who gave up on having lives of their own before she'd even been born. At least they weren't as lonely as her, she supposed, if that was worth losing their individuality.
The idea came to tempt her when she was deep in the heart of the old settlements. The passengers always seemed so kind and so happy to talk to her, even if it was about something as commonplace as the weather. She had to keep reminding herself that they weren't separate beings anymore, all sharing one consciousness that gradually swallowed their former selves until they were all equals.
Still, she eagerly waited for the tram and the chance to speak to the coalescence of humans.
Anything was better than the silence she'd been smothered by the past few months.
Anything to distract her from the feeling of countless eyes waiting for her guard to drop.
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