Reading · glorified notepad

July 12, 2026

I was such a naive fool to think I was alone. To be fair, I can't explain how there are still living creatures out here. I'm no biologist, but half the human beings in my bunker died of cancer and that was behind lead lined walls. How the hell did wolves manage to survive?

I heard them just as I was falling asleep, next to a pathetic little campfire. A chorus of howls, from far enough away that I couldn't tell how far away they were, shook me from my sleep-descent and set my heart racing. I gathered my belongings as quickly as I could, which I had left scattered around the impromptu campsite without much regard for security. After all, I don't imagine there's anybody out there to steal it. But I won't make the same mistake again. Getting everything together took far too long. I could hear the howls getting nearer while I did. My heart was pounding in my throat as I tried to jam things into my rucksack. Nothing fit, not the way it did, there's no time to arrange it, just shove it down harder.

As time went on, I got more and more frustrated with myself. Stupid, stupid. I have the survival instincts of a newborn giraffe. I should have had my stuff packed and ready to move at a moment's notice. I should have assumed there were dangers out there even if I didn't know what they were. The wolves were still getting closer. What if they had my scent? What if they pursued me the entire night? I was tired when I had made camp. Now I was as awake as I could be, but even as the adrenaline shocked my system into high gear, I was worried that the ensuing crash would come too soon, and that I'd be at the mercy of the wolves and the wilds.

Once I got my things together, I started running. I left the campfire going, threw the rest of my gathered branches on it actually, on the off chance that the smoke would mask my scent, or that the firelight would slow them down just a bit while I fled. Along that same line of thought, I wasn't shy about using my flashlight to light the ground in front of me. I don't know a lot about wolves, but I have to imagine they're not going to track the light of a flashlight.

Now that I'm safely away from them, with the power of hindsight, it's entirely possible they weren't following me at all. There's a sort of ingrained, innate fear of wolves that everyone has... had... but I'd heard that they don't actually attack people. Not easy enough prey. All of the hatred of wolves in the cultural zeitgeist was just propaganda made by ranchers and cattlemen who wanted to kill off all the wolves to keep their herds intact.

But I'd rather not take the risk. I ran/walked/jogged/stumbled for several hours, until I stopped hearing the pack's hunting song. I stopped, leaning my back against a pine, breathing hard, begging my body to slow down so I could quiet my breath and hear the sound better over the cold night air. Despite my bunker training regiment, my legs were trembling, reduced to quivering jelly. If I had had to, I could have kept running, but as I waited there, eyes squeezed tightly shut (because somehow that would make my hearing better) I only heard blessed, glorious, life-giving silence. I slumped down to the base of that pine tree, rucksack still on my back, and fell asleep in less than a minute.

I had a dream. I dreamt that I was flying in my plane, the one I always wanted to buy in my retirement. I was flying over the ocean at night, and I looked out over the wing and down to the water and saw a billion billion stars reflected in its waves. Each star in the sky multiplied ten fold in the water. And I looked back up and the plane was gone and I was flying on my own, and as soon as I realized the plane was gone I panicked, and I was terrified, and plunging, straight down, so fast, and I hit the water and I hit the stars and I crashed through to the other side where there was no water and there were no stars. I was still falling, faster and faster into a sky devoid of stars, falling away from the surface of the water that reflected nothing at all. And the farther I went, the less light there was, until there was no light at all, I couldn't see anything, not even myself, and I stopped existing.

I don't know how I know it, but I know I slept for some time after that nightmare ended, and the rest of my sleep was dreamless.

When I woke up, I cried. Maybe I was overreacting to all of this, but it was only my first night out of the bunker and I already felt so out of my element. I had a good cry and unpacked my rucksack, rearranging everything in a way that made some amount of sense.

That's when I realized I had left my Geiger counter behind. It was tied up around a tree branch that I had been sleeping under before the wolves started howling, and in my panic, I forgot about it. Of all the damn things I would rather have left behind! I don't know what I'm heading into. I don't know if radiation is still an issue, but if it is, I may be stumbling straight into a quick death without it. I'll have to keep my eyes open for a replacement, once I make it back to where civilization used to be.

This journey has left an awful first impression on me.

That's actual session one of Endling in the bag!

For this first round, I decided to Move, obviously - no sense in staying where I was. I rolled against my Food (3) and Fuel (3), rolling a 3 and a 2 respectively, which means my Food reduces to 2 and my Fuel remains the same. I moved into a Tundra hex, which was the most likely outcome.

For the Journalling step of this round, I drew the Four of Pentacles and The Star from the Tarot deck. The Four of Pentacles, compared with the entries in the Wilderness oracle, gave me the entry related to the wolves, and that I left behind something valuable in running to safety. The Major Arcana card, The Star, is meant to inspire and guide your writing given the prompt, which is how I came up with the Geiger counter being the valuable object left behind (stars and radiation and all that) as well as, of course, the exhausted dream.

So far, so good! See you next time.

Endling III - Dances with Wolves

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