Delilah

Delilah awoke in her decrepit shack to the smell of rotted wood and the whistling of
wind. The warm breeze swept through the cracks in the walls, kissing her dry cracked lips and
disappearing in the very same instant. As she rolled over, her eyes met her daughter's who
silently stared back.
"I'm hungry momma," the girl whispered as her mother reached toward her with callused
hands. She brushed them through her long blond hair and gave a smile that revealed her chipped
front teeth.
"Daddy'll be back soon, darling," Delilah reassured her little girl as she gently ran her
fingers through her hair. "He's been gone for long enough now."
As if on cue, the door to the shack swung open and banged against the wall which caused
it to shake. An imposing figure of a man appeared in the doorway, his face blackened as the sun
shone from behind him. The rough outline of a beard could be seen lining his jaw and his broad
shoulders crowded the entryway.
"My girls!" he proclaimed as he stepped forward and shut the door. Dropping a sack on
the ground he knelt down to face his family, a jovial smile on his otherwise aged and harsh face.
"We're eating well today."
"Daddy!" the little girl exclaimed as she jumped into his burly arms, looking at him with
the biggest little grin that the world had ever seen. Her mismatched eyes, one green and one blue,
matched his perfectly. Both had long blonde hair that rested like golden crowns upon their heads
even when covered in dirt and grime. He reached out and tickled her as she squealed in delight.
Gently lowering her to the ground, he turned his attention to Delilah. No words were
exchanged but their glances said it all. He gave her a look that every girl in the world dreams

someone will give them in their lifetime and she returned in kind. Even in a dirt filled hovel, the
unconventional family was the exact definition of love. Delilah leaned in slowly, her lips aimed
directly for his.
Then... Delilah jolted awake from her sleep, torn from dreams of better times and a life
that had long passed. Her hair was a tangled, knotted mess that was covered in a fine layer of
grime. Both her and her daughter were dressed in clothes, patched with whatever fabrics that
they could find. Though she had been cheerful and loving in Delilah's dreams, that sense of
idealism had been drained from her little girl the day that her father had left the two of them.
Dusting the dirt off from herself, Delilah stood and stared out of the dilapidated building which
they had sought refuge in for the night. The second floor had crumbled in on itself and blocked
most of the ground level, but patches of it still stood that provided a semblance of protection
from the sky above. Though the ground level was safe for now, it would surely not last until the
end of the season.
Delilah noted her surroundings as she stared out of the window. A sea of overgrown grass
stretched out for a mile, the only bald spot being the cracked and broken asphalt road that ran
through it. When humanity had abandoned that planet after the Resource Wars, they left
everything and everyone not deemed worthy of being saved behind. Yet despite all that they did
to damage the planet, life still found a way. Though they had thought that they doomed the planet
with their actions, their self-imposed exile ultimately saved it. Those who were left to carry on
were now stranded and alone on humanity's homeworld with only forgotten memories left
behind. The survivors were determined to carry on.
Delilah turned away from the window and rested against the decaying wall, listening to
the sound of running water off in the distance. Slowly she slunk down to the floor as she

weighed her options. A chance to bathe was an opportunity that seldom found itself to her and
her child, but the risk of running into danger was also an all-too real possibility. The sun was
going down and the night would surely cover them long enough to rinse the grime off of
themselves before moving under the shroud of night.
At night, Delilah's thoughts would often shift to the man that had left her. She would
spend countless sleepless nights with thoughts about him. He had gone north and never returned,
but he had always told her how to find him. "Just look for that star right there," he would say as
he pointed at one of the brightest stars in the sky with his sausage fingers and smile full of
broken teeth. "That's north."
He would hold her close with one large hand firmly squeezing her shoulder whenever he
told her about it. Delilah never wanted him to let go, but he always did and the last time he did it
forever. He always dreamed of going north because he had believed the rumors about a colony of
people up there. But there weren't people up there or anywhere, there never were. In the south
they said north, in the north they said south, in the east west and in the west east. Anywhere that
people were, they held out hope for some remnant of society clinging to the old world.
The day that he left for the north, he had begged Delilah to come with him but she
refused. Their baby girl was only a few years old and it was too risky to even leave their little
shanty for a mile let alone for a journey north. His thirst for adventure eventually led him to
leave one day out of the blue. The only thing he left was a little note scrawled into the door from
that read, "I'll come back for you when I find them."
Delilah and her little girl waited a year before she began to accept the realization that she
would never see him again. People gone for more than a few days rarely came back in these
times even survivors like him. She knew that she was going to have to find him, she knew that

she needed to know the truth. Gathering up their belongings, she set out with her daughter and
what they could carry. The thought of seeing him again excited both mother and daughter yet as
they sat in this decrepit house it seemed like a terrible decision. Her little girl lay asleep on the
floor, curled up in a pile of dirty old linens and Delilah wished that she had kept her in that old
shack where it was uncomfortable but safe.
By nightfall, Delilah had made her decision. North would always be north but the water
may not flow that way. They were thirsty, hungry, and dirty.
"Wake up child," Delilah said as she shook her daughter awake. "It's time to go."
"What?" she replied, wiping the sleep away from her eyes.
"It's dark, we've got to go."
"Ok," came the response after a moment of thought. Delilah helped her daughter to her
feet then slipped her pack on and put the linens back inside.
Delilah took her child's hand and snuck quietly out of the door. They both slithered into
the overgrown grass and began moving towards sound of water. It grew louder as they
approached and began to sound more like a river than the babbling brook it appeared to be at a
distance.
Coming upon the riverbank, Delilah stealthily moved towards the water and scanned the
river up and down for signs of movement or life. As if by a stroke of pure luck, there was
complete stillness aside from the running water.
"Be ready," Delilah said as she turned to her daughter. "If I tell you to run, then you just
keep running."
Her daughter nodded slowly and watched as Delilah left the safety of the grass. She
brazenly stepped into the open as she palmed the hilt of a knife that she kept strapped at her

waist. She made noise to attract anything or anyone that might be near, testing the safety of her
surroundings. Nothing replied to her outburst of noise and she deemed it safe enough to achieve
her original goal: a bath.
Before doing anything else, she removed empty bottles from her pack and filled them
with water from the river before placing them once more in the container. Then she placed her
belongings off to the side in the rushes and slowly undressed herself. She threw her clothes into a
pile before placing her knife delicately on top. With only a rag in hand, she began treading into
the cold water. Though it was near freezing to the touch, that mattered a lot less than the feeling
of the dirt being carried away. She used the cloth to scrub the grime away from her upper body.
Her dirt covered skin turned to a pink from the scrubbing of the cloth. She dipped her head into
the water and swung her long brown hair back as she brought it out. Never had she looked nor
felt more beautiful than she did in that moment.
She urged her daughter to come out to the river and she did so dutifully. Her daughter
followed her mother's earlier example and threw her clothes in the pile as she tested the water.
"It's too cold!" she proclaimed as she retracted her foot.
"You need to be cleaned," Delilah said as sternly as she felt necessary. "It's not so bad
once you come in."
Her daughter worked up her courage then jumped into the river. Delilah barely had time
to reach for her before the current began to carry her away.
"Don't make so much noise," Delilah warned.
"Sorry momma."
"It's alright," Delilah shrugged off her worry as she stared into her daughter's mismatched
eyes. When she looked into her eyes, she saw the girl's father's eyes as much as her daughter's.

Delilah used her rag to scrub her daughter from head to toe. She struggled to get the dirt
off completely but that did not stop her from trying.
"Y'know," Delilah said as she scrubbed her child's back. "People used to have water in
big things called pools."
"They bathed in them?" her innocent little girl asked.
"No, those were called tubs," Delilah responded with a light-hearted chuckle. "They
played in pools."
"Playing in water?" she asked disbelievingly. "That's weird."
Delilah couldn't help but laugh. It was a very strange feeling to image the uses of water in
the past. No one played in water anymore, it was far too dangerous. You would drink water or
clean yourself with it, but even that was risky. Hunters, whether man or animal, always stayed
close to water sources as it was nearly assured that some manner of prey would find its way
there. Still, if you did not manage to find time to clean yourself then there was a higher chance of
illness and thus death.
Delilah finished scrubbing her daughter down and then brought her off to the riverbed to
dry. She grabbed a ragged towel from her pack and pressed it against her to take the water off.
She dried her as completely as she could before helping her into her clothes.
"I can do it!" Her daughter stated defiantly as she pushed Delilah's hands away and
struggled to put her own clothes on.
She didn't reply to her daughter's outburst but instead opted to dry herself off instead. She
ran the towel down her own body quickly but gently. As she slipped into her underwear she
heard a noise in brush. The few trees that rose out like islands from the great sea of grass rustled

noisily in the warm breeze. The swaying grass whacked at Delilah and her daughter like whips
lashing at them. She turned to look at her daughter who seemed terrified by something.
"Momma?"
Delilah grabbed at her knife which remained in its sheath on the ground. She took the
blade out and held it carefully behind her back, hiding it. Turning to her daughter with the
beginning of a tear in her eye, she knelt down to her level.
"Run."