It was the first meteor shower that caught her unawares.
It had not been the sort of soft, amorous meteor shower you read about in love stories.
It had howled.
Flaming stones fell from the sky. They split buildings in two. Set forests on fire. City after city went dark. Grids failed. Skies burned ochre for days.
Julyah had felt it in the villa, miles up in the mountains.Hunkered behind pre-fall tech and solid masonry and hundreds of acres of perimeter, still, she had felt the earth shake. Glass quivered in windowpanes. Greenhouse lights flickered. Something in the sky had screamed in that moment as it tore itself in two.
Julyah did not sleep that night.
No one did.
Or rather… no one she could hear anymore.
Morning was gray and bitter. The world outside looked as it always did. But it was not right. The air tasted like smoke. The birds did not sing.
Julyah pulled on sweaters and a scarf and started her day as always because she had to. Because routine, however frail, kept her sane.
The villa, for all its extravagance, was still standing. At least for now. The perimeter was holding. The blinking green light of the automated security report was still steady. The bunker was still full. And down deep, in the secret chamber of her magic closet, enough emergency rations to last a small war still sat quietly, waiting.
But Julyah didn't know better than to let her guard down.
Preserve the good days. Prepare for the worse.
With the same mundane detachment that she had once used to plan grocery shopping, Julyah scrawled a to-do list in her notebook.
*Check greenhouse systems.
*Plant fast-yield crops.
*Conserve storage rations.
*Practice shooting.
*Cook something real.
She started with the greenhouse.
It had been a miracle of pre-apocalypse luxury. Temperature-controlled. UV-lit. Semi-autonomous. But she couldn't trust the systems entirely. Not anymore.
Julyah rolled up her sleeves and went to work, planting the fastest growing vegetables she could think of: cherry tomatoes, spring onions, spinach. Vegetables that wouldn't fight back. Things that wouldn't resent her for being a rank amateur.
She knelt on the soft earth, her fingers moving clumsily at first, then more assured. Her childhood had been spent in the city. She had no business being here. But she let the silence seep into her thoughts.
This isn't for right now, she told herself. This is so I don't touch the emergency stock.
Ration logic. Future-proofing.
The kind of thinking that had kept her alive.
By late afternoon, her fingers ached, and her back throbbed. But she did not complain.
Instead, she went to the kitchen.
Cooking had always been her safe place. Before the fall. Before the villa. Before the sky turned mad. Julyah was a homebody by nature, so she never minded staying in. She baked cookies during storms. Roasted chicken during blackouts. Learned to make broth when the internet went down.
Here, in the heart of the villa, in the cozy stainless steel of the kitchen, she chopped vegetables in perfect silence, the knife's rhythm lulling her.
She made stew.
Thick and hot and savory, simmering in a ceramic pot, while she hummed a forgotten melody.
Let the world burn, she thought. I will still eat like a queen.
After dinner, Julyah washed her dish, dried her hands, and walked to the abandoned armory at the far end of the property. A place she'd avoided for days. A place she had no business being, but now, it beckoned to her.
Inside: guns. Knives. Old compound bows. Leftovers from whoever built this place. Weapons. Dozens of them.
She took a rifle.
Long and polished. Heavy in her hands.
She remembered it.
Not from real life, from the dream.
Adrian's hands over hers.
"Breathe. Don't blink. Feel the weight. Let the silence do half the work."
Julyah could still feel the warmth of his breath on her neck when she closed her eyes.
Back then, she'd laughed at him. "You want me to be a sniper?"
And he'd smirked. Moonlight dancing in his eyes. "You want to survive, don't you?"
That night, Julyah stood on the roof, rifle slung over her shoulder, eyes sweeping over the woods below.
She was not a sniper yet.
But she would be.
If the meteors didn't kill her, the loneliness wouldn't either.