Ashes of Memory
1437 Words
The Photograph in the Drawer
The Solemn Horizon drifted through the void, silent and immense, a lifeboat in the cold embrace of space. Inside, Elara Voss sat at her desk, staring at the polished metal wall of her quarters as though it might offer answers to questions she could never quite ask aloud.
The faint hum of the ship’s engines was constant, a background noise she had grown used to but could never quite ignore. It was the sound of survival, of forward momentum. But tonight, it only reminded her of what she had left behind.
Elara reached for the drawer, hesitating before pulling it open. The photograph lay inside, its edges worn from years of handling. She picked it up, her fingers brushing lightly over the faded image of her family: her mother and father standing close together, her younger brother perched on their father’s shoulders. She was there too, her teenage self grinning awkwardly at the camera. They looked so happy.
She let out a shaky breath. How long had it been since she’d seen them? Since she’d heard her mother’s voice or felt her father’s reassuring hand on her shoulder? Since she’d watched Sam’s face light up with one of his rare, mischievous smiles?
Too long.
Lessons in a Broken World
Before the wars, before the machines, there had been hope.
Her father had been a teacher, her mother a nurse. Together, they had worked tirelessly to keep their small community afloat during the early days of the climate crisis. Their house had been modest but warm, filled with the smell of her mother’s cooking and the sound of her father’s laugh.
But as the years wore on, the crisis deepened. The droughts came first, then the wildfires. Her father lost his job when the local school closed, and her mother began working longer shifts at the hospital, often coming home smelling of antiseptic and exhaustion.
Elara had been sixteen when the riots started. Food shortages had turned neighbors into enemies, and their once-quiet town became a battleground. Her father had tried to shield her and her brother from the worst of it, but the fear in his eyes had been impossible to hide.
“I don’t understand,” her younger brother, Sam, had said one night as the sound of gunfire echoed in the distance. “Why are people fighting?”
Her father had knelt in front of him, his hands resting on Sam’s shoulders. “Because they’re scared,” he said quietly. “And sometimes, when people are scared, they forget how to be kind.”
“But we’re scared too,” Sam had said, his voice trembling. “And we’re not fighting.”
Her father had smiled then, a sad, tired smile. “That’s because we’re stronger than fear.”
It was a lesson Elara had tried to carry with her, even as the world fell apart. But some days, the fear was too strong.
The first time Elara truly understood how fragile the world had become, she was seventeen.
Her family had been sitting down to dinner when the lights went out. At first, they thought it was a neighborhood power outage, the kind that had become increasingly common in their drought-stricken town. But as the minutes stretched into hours, the silence grew heavy.
Her father had turned on the radio—a battery-powered relic he had kept for emergencies—and tuned it to the local news station.
Static greeted him at first, then snippets of frantic broadcasts.
“…grid failure across multiple regions…”
“…estimated millions without power…”
“…looting reported in downtown areas…”
Elara’s mother turned pale. “It’s not just here,” she said softly.
Her father nodded grimly. “Stay inside. Lock the doors.”
The first night passed uneventfully, but by the second, the streets were chaos. Their neighbor’s house was broken into by a desperate family looking for food. Shots rang out two blocks away, echoing through the darkness. Elara had sat up all night, clutching the old hunting rifle her father had dug out of the attic. She had never fired it before, but the weight of it in her hands was oddly comforting.
When dawn came, the streets were littered with broken glass and burned-out cars. The power never came back on.
Elara had joined the United Earth Forces out of necessity, not patriotism. The climate crisis had left her family in dire straits, and the military offered food, shelter, and stability—things that had become increasingly rare. She had expected it to be grueling, but she hadn’t been prepared for the sheer desperation of the missions.
Her first deployment had been to a refugee camp on the outskirts of Phoenix. The camp was overcrowded, its inhabitants living in makeshift shelters cobbled together from scrap metal and plastic sheeting. Food was rationed strictly, and tempers flared as supplies dwindled.
One day, a fight broke out near the distribution center. A group of men had accused a young mother of cutting in line, and the argument quickly escalated into violence. Elara’s squad had been called to intervene, and she remembered the chaos vividly: the shouting, the swinging fists, the desperate cries of the woman trying to shield her child.
“Enough!” Elara had shouted, her voice cutting through the noise. She had stepped between the combatants, her rifle slung over her shoulder but her stance firm.
“This isn’t the way,” she said, her gaze sweeping over the crowd. “We’re all here for the same reason. Fighting each other won’t change that.”
For a moment, the crowd hesitated. Then, slowly, the tension eased. The men backed down, muttering under their breath, and the woman hurried away with her child.
That night, Elara had sat alone in her tent, her hands trembling as she replayed the scene in her mind. She hadn’t realized how close she had come to losing control of the situation—or how easily things could have turned deadly.
She learned two things that day: the importance of strength, and the cost of it.
A Mission for the Strongest
Elara had been 26 when the Council came for her. By then, the world was unrecognizable. The sky was permanently choked with ash, the sun a dim and distant memory. Water was a currency, food a luxury, and hope a relic of the past.
She had been living with her family in the remnants of their old neighborhood, doing what she could to keep them safe. It wasn’t much of a life, but it was theirs.
The knock on the door had shattered what little peace they had left.
The man who stood on the other side wore the insignia of the United Earth Council—a small but powerful coalition that had emerged from the ashes of global collapse. His expression was unreadable, his uniform immaculate.
“Elara Voss,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Elara stepped forward, her heart sinking. “What do you want?”
“You’ve been selected for the Solemn Horizon program,” the man said. His tone was brisk, as if this were just another routine assignment. “Report to Launch Site Theta within 24 hours.”
Her mother gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Her father’s expression hardened.
“I’m not going,” Elara said flatly.
The man’s gaze didn’t waver. “This isn’t optional.”
“My family—”
“Will not be joining you,” the man interrupted. His voice was cold, detached. “This mission is for the survival of humanity. We need leaders. People who can make the hard choices.”
Her father stepped forward, his voice trembling with anger. “She’s not leaving us behind.”
The man’s expression didn’t change. “I’m sorry,” he said, though he clearly wasn’t.
Elara looked at her father, at her mother, at Sam. She wanted to fight. She wanted to refuse. But deep down, she knew she didn’t have a choice.
Her father hugged her tightly before she left, his voice breaking as he whispered, “You’re the strong one, Elara. You always have been. Don’t let them break you.”
She had tried to hold onto those words, but as the years passed, they became harder to believe.
The comm panel chimed, breaking her thoughts.
“Captain Voss,” Jonas’s voice came through, steady and familiar. “You’re going to want to see this.”
Elara exhaled slowly, setting the photo aside as she rose to her feet. The past could wait. For now, the future needed her.
- Writer
