Ashfall Supper at the Edge of Never [Wraith]
The sky hangs low like a bruise that never got the chance to heal, sick greens smeared into purples over a horizon of broken teeth and fumes and bone-dry dirt,
Once there were forests here that sang in orange and red before winter came calling; now it’s all cracked earth and charred ribs of trees, ribs of a planet left for dead and left to hurt.
Wind drags its fingernails along the busted ribs of old power lines, tugging on frayed wires that used to hum with a thousand useless comforts and lies,
Now it just carries dust and the faint ghost-scent of a past November where kitchens steamed and windows fogged and nobody looked up to watch the world’s slow demise.
A shack leans in the middle of all that dead, built from scavenged doors and torn billboards and a church pew that outlived its faith by decades at least,
Walls patched with cardboard saints and faded smiles from a grocery flyer promising “fresh for the holidays” over pictures of long-extinct beasts.
Inside, a fire wheezes in a salvaged drum, a tiny orange heart that works too hard and smokes too much,
Sarah crouches over a battered pot, stirring broth that’s mostly memory with a spoon that lost its shine three families ago to hands that shook and clutched.
“You really think we can pull this off?” she asks, not with hope, not with dramatic flair, just that worn-out tone you get when you’re trying to sound brave and only manage tired,
Her hair’s wild, her sleeves rolled, smoke stinging her eyes while the heat bites at chapped knuckles that still remember washing dishes after feasts that always left her wired.“We don’t even have a turkey,” she mutters, as if naming the missing bird might conjure it,
Like the bones of the last one roasted might rise from the dust, feathers refit.
Matthew sits on a crate with a busted leg, chewing a memory that never seems to go soft,
He drags fingers through his sweat-tangled hair and lets out a laugh that climbs too fast then drops off a cliff, never getting off the ground, never quite lifting them aloft.“It was never about the turkey,” he says, but even he can hear how thin it sounds, stretched over hunger and rust and all this ash,“It was about having a reason to sit down together and not just count rations and bruises and crash.”The words hang between them like fragile decorations, the kind you know will shatter if the room breathes wrong,
A promise made of chipped porcelain hope and old song.
They drag two planks over, balance them on plastic crates that once held bright drinks and cheerful poison, line them up until it resembles a table if you squint and don’t move too quick,
On top they spread their museum of left-behind cutlery: one chipped plate with a storm-blue ring, a knife with no handle, a fork bent like it learned to flinch, a cup with the motto “World’s Best Something” half-scratched off and sick.
The centerpiece is a pumpkin that should have died five seasons ago, skin wrinkled like a stubborn elder,
But it’s still stubbornly orange in places, clinging to color the way their father clings to pride and their grandmother clung to her recipes and fading shelter.
“It’s not perfect,” Sarah whispers, arranging that pathetic royalty of squash in the middle of the planks like it’s a golden bird,
Her hands tremble just enough to show the cost; she forces a crooked half-smile anyway, because this is the religion she knows: you keep going or you don’t, there’s no third.“But it’s ours,” she adds, and the words land heavier than any blessing,
A small claim staked in a world that keeps repossessing.
“I remember when Grandma made stuffing,” Matthew says, eyes gone distant, not to some poetic heaven but to a kitchen with a radio, a towel over her shoulder, and a pan that hissed and crackled like it loved her,“She’d crowd the bread and onion and sausage into that old pan and tap my hand with a wooden spoon when I stole a taste and swear the secret ingredient was love, like she had a patent on it and refused to share.”Sarah’s mouth twists; she stares at the pot of thin stew that smells a little like spice if you lie to yourself, a little like smoke if you don’t,“Love didn’t fix the weather,” she mutters, voice cracking at the edges. “It just made the fall of it hurt more when nobody listened, nobody stopped, nobody won’t.”
Outside, the ground’s the color of forgotten promises, split and flaking, each fissure a dried-out river that used to carry children’s reflections and the shine of migrating sky,
Now it just drinks what little poison rain still falls and keeps it all, like the planet finally learned boundaries and decided no more charity, no more supply.
The sun sinks behind a curtain of haze that glows wrong—green veins pulsing through purple smog like the sky’s developed some terminal, incurable disease,
The shadows stretch long and jagged, fingers made of absence reaching toward the shack, reaching through cracks with practiced ease.
“Come on,” Matthew says, forcing cheer into his voice like stuffing back into a ripped seam, “Let’s at least say something we’re thankful for, before the stew decides to grow legs and leave too,”Sarah snorts despite herself, rolls her smoke-stung eyes, but she nods, because tradition is a weird stubborn animal that survives radiation, famine, grief, and you.
Their father sits down slowly on a crate that used to sell candy, his joints popping like the fire, face carved in lines that look like dried riverbeds on old maps,
He’s dressed in layers of whatever they found—jacket, old flannel shirt, someone’s discarded work vest—all of it stitched and patched and pinned together with scraps.
“Alright,” Sarah says, tugging at her sleeves like she’s about to give a speech to ghosts,“I’m thankful for this moment. For sitting here and not being smoke or bones or names on one of those weird lists they used to read on emergency broadcasts along the coasts.”Her voice comes out thinner than she meant it to, but she doesn’t take it back; she lets it stand in the flickering light,
A small, shaking banner against the endless, poisonous night.
Their father clears his throat, eyes shining in the dimness like someone forgot to turn the grief off and it’s still running in the background,“I’m thankful you’re still here,” he rasps. “That I get to see your faces when I wake up, even if the sky looks like it wants us gone and the air tastes like old smoke and burned ground.”He lifts his cup of murky water like it’s a crystal goblet filled with something finer,
For a split second you can almost see him at a much older table, in a much greener world, lit by softer light and still a fighter.
They go around the table with their little list of rebellions: thankful for boots that still hold together, for the busted radio that sometimes hums,
For a day without raiders, without another collapse, without losing more teeth to cheap canned food and stress, without waking up to find someone you love just numb.
Thankful for the pumpkin. For each other. For breath that still rises and falls even when it hurts,
For a memory of Grandma’s apron, for the fact that some stubborn part of them still cares enough to dress this dust in old shirts.
That’s when they feel it—low in the soles of their feet first, then up through ankles and knees and spine—A distant rumble that isn’t thunder, not like the old stories told it; this is something heavier, something that makes the spoons rattle and the pumpkin lean a little, as if trying to read the sign.“Did you hear that?” Matthew’s voice snaps, sharp in the cramped space,
Eyes dart to the thin patched wall like it’s going to suddenly turn clear and show him the shape of what is coming in this ruined place.
Sarah’s hand tightens around her metal cup until her knuckles go pale under all the soot,
Her pulse jumps in her throat like it wants to run for it on foot.
Their father listens, jaw clenched, a vein ticking in his temple like a countdown clock,
The rumble rolls again, slow and steady, not frantic like a storm, more like a thing that knows its time will come and doesn’t need to knock.
“We’re not letting it take this,” he says, and the words scrape coming out, shredded by years of swallowing panic and anger until his insides probably look like the outside of the earth,“We lost the oceans, lost the forests, lost the neighbors, lost the goddamn calendar, but we’re keeping tonight. We’re keeping this table, this stupid pumpkin, this holiday, and each other’s worth.”His voice trembles, but he doesn’t sit back down from that stance; he stays there like a scarecrow daring the storm to pluck his last straw,
One hand on the table, one on the air, like he could hold the whole sky up if he just squares his jaw.
They eat whatever’s in the pot, pretending it’s enough, chewing slow,
It tastes of burned roots and seasoning scavenged from a store that collapsed fifteen summers ago.
Eyes keep sliding to the doorway, to the places where the boards don’t quite meet,
Where darkness presses in like an eager listener, patient, knowing they’ll all eventually meet.
Outside, something rolls across the far horizon: maybe a sandstorm, maybe a collapsing tower, maybe a convoy of people who didn’t find family tonight,
The rumble swells then fades, leaves silence behind that bothers them more than any roar might.
In that silence, Sarah starts laughing, broken and soft,“Imagine this is it,” she says. “The last Thanksgiving, and we’re eating stew that tastes like boiled batteries and burnt cough.”Matthew snorts, claps a hand over his mouth, then lets it drop and laughs with her, the sound shaky and wrong but real,
And for a second the shack warms just a little more, because if hell exists, this has to count as the part where you still get to feel.
They keep talking until the pot’s scraped clean and the fire’s gone down to stubborn coals,
Tell old stories about football games and midnight runs to buy whipped cream, about relatives they used to hate and now would kill for just to fill the empty chairs and holes.
They argue about whether the sky used to be this color or if memory is messing with the palette,
Trade small insults like candy, because affection in this family has always come wrapped in sarcastic bullet.
Later, when the cups are empty and the pumpkin sits like a tired guard over their tiny empire of scraps,
They lie down on pallets made of old coats and flattened boxes, listening to the quiet like it might collapse.
Sarah stares at the warped ceiling and thinks: this might really be the last one,
Not with fireworks, not with parades, just three people holding onto a dead holiday with cracked hands under a sick, poisoned sun.
Out there, the world is all edges and endings and slow-motion collapse, a place where gratitude sounds insane,
But inside this crooked shack, gratitude is an act of defiance, a middle finger raised at all that ash and pain.
If the world is ending, it’ll end after dessert,
After one more story about Grandma’s stuffing and love that didn’t fix the weather but made the meals less hurt.
They have no turkey, no guests, no guarantee they’ll ever do this again or even wake up to the same sky,
But tonight they have a table, a fire, a pumpkin, and three voices saying “I’m thankful you’re here,” into the dark, and that’s the feast before the next goodbye.