Cocoons | A flash fiction story
41 of 💯
Jax kicked the 3D-printed door open. “You here.”
Maya peeked into the bowels of the now-ancient building. “What’s this?”
“Living pods,” his hoarse voice explained. “From the first settlements.”
“I know what it is,” she crossed her arms. “I meant… is this your plan? Are we a couple now?”
“No. Separate pods. I’m there.” He pointed to another building. There were six of them, tall solitary cocoons in the rocky desert, basalt walls built by explorer robots ages ago, marked with sparse mirrored rhombuses. “Not a couple,” he said. “A tribe. A band.”
“A band of two.”
“We’ll find our people,” he grunted.
“Look, Jax,” she scratched her head, her legs tired, her body aching. “I appreciate you saving me from those weirdos in the woods, but there is no ‘our people,’ there’s no ‘we’.”
He turned his back to her and took a deep breath. A breeze swept the fine dust of the wasteland and threw it against the brown curved walls. “People need people.” He didn’t look at her. “Stay.”
As he walked to his pod, she thought she could hear the wind carrying a hoarse “please,” barely a hum. She shook her head, arms akimbo. “You’re gonna regret this, girl.” She went inside to examine her new home.
