Zach Sanford

Remembrance

An extraordinary crimson sunrise illuminated the forests south of what used to be Portland, Oregon, high in the Cascade Mountain range. The light crept through the blinds of the second-floor window of a young woman whose eyes fluttered awake at the touch of the morning sun. Rolling to her side, she sighed before pushing herself up to face the day, her sixteenth birthday. Her room was plain with white walls, a sturdy oak door, a vanity from before the collapse, and her bed, another relic of the recent past. The only real point of interest was the window that she marveled at every morning. Pulling up the blinds revealed the sprawling forested mountains that the cabin nestled itself in with. A large garden sat between the house and the edge of the forest ripe with the spoils of fall.