i think it starts with an apocalypse. by sheer luck and circumstance, you survive. you seem to be the only one.
everything seems barren, eerily still, nothing but grass and trees and water. you survive, but there is nothing here. the only sign that anyone was ever here is pyramids of solid red brick, stacked up in a uniformly triangular shape. they don’t seem to do anything. you are alone.
your first night finds you tormented by the dead. they groan and creak and seem to be desperate to infect you. they are all dead by morning.
there’s only a few resilient species that seem to have survived along with you. they’re your only chance right now. the sheep provide companionship. you learn not to get attached to the pigs.
you build a home for yourself. it’s modest, nothing fancy, but it protects you from the elements. you still have hope. your footsteps echo through the empty house in the mornings. you are alone.
it takes years, but ever so slowly, the second hominid re-emerges. they build villages and farmland and are happy to barter with you. they have their own language. you seem to have forgotten yours.
you find the remains of wild animals you haven’t killed. you learn to be patient, and watchful, and you see the wolves that hunt in the forests. it takes a long time, but you gain the trust of one of them. she never leaves your side again.
you explore a little more. you find ancient temples in the deserts, booby trapped and filled with forgotten riches from millennia ago. you don’t know who built this. whoever it was disappeared a long time ago.
jungles flourish and bring with them tropical fruit and colourful birds and skittish cats that seem to love fish. you take home as many as will follow you. the world isn’t quite so quiet anymore.
the oceans come alive again. it’s no longer an empty, unforgiving void that you just so happen to be lucky enough to float on. schools of fish flicker away into vast kelp forests when you cast your lure into the water. the tropical shallows fill with a myriad of fish and coral in every colour you can think of. you find an old boat, much bigger than anything you could ever construct, laying dormant at the bottom of the sea. the writing on the maps you find there is familiar.
there is a temple in the middle of the ocean. you don’t know who built it, but it’s been reclaimed by the fish. you don’t dare go there anymore.
bees buzz softly through the air. you learn to keep them, and learn to harvest their honey, and your crops grow better than they ever have. your livestock keep you busy. your livestock keep you distracted.
even the lost dimension that connection to was severed so long ago returns to its former glory. you explore forests of mycelium and dunes of sticky sand and basalt spires and with them they bring the lost intelligent hominid. you learn quickly not to touch their temples, no matter how run down they seem to be. they are holy.
and even in the most hostile, barren places, deep underground, the place where only you seem to have ever been, life flourishes. glowing lichen lights your way and bears you fruit. massive caverns and underground freshwater pools are home to unique plants and unseen amphibians.
and even after so much growth, and so much recovery, you are still alone.
you search. you search for months that turn into years that turn into decades. what was once a humble homestead has grown into a fortress. you are safe there. you are alone. on every expedition, you leave markers and statues, anything to say i was here. i am alive. you set up beacons to signal to anyone who might be out there. no one ever responds. you are alone.
you follow forgotten maps to the ends of the earth to find anyone that might have survived alongside you. you cannot give up. you cannot be alone.
you experiment. you’ve found a way to cure infected villagers, to return them home, but have had no such luck with the remains of your own species. you think they’re your own species. they’re the closest thing to you that you’ve seen. you grow desperate.
the humanoids that walk freely between their realm and yours used to frighten you, but you’ve been alone for so long you find yourself talking back to them. you begin to hear greetings in the noises they make. you know they aren’t talking to you. you wish you could talk to them. you don’t try to make eye contact.
you follow every clue you find in forgotten ruins. they always lead to nowhere. you piece together portals to other worlds, and find nothing but hostile hellscapes and misery. you have travelled across the world. you’ve gone from blistering deserts and over unforgiving mountains and through freezing tundras and across oceans to find someone, anyone. there is never a new signal, a new clue. there is never anything to indicate that there are any survivors.
you are alone.
your bones creak. it’s been so long. you don’t want to die. you don’t want to take your species with you.
so what do you think, when you turn to see someone standing in a doorway in your fortress that you spent decades building? someone so unmistakably human, someone you’ve spent your entire life searching for to no avail, someone you’ve been constantly lying to yourself about, convincing yourself they were out there somewhere, all the while knowing they weren’t?
you don’t know if you’re hallucinating, if you’ve finally slipped into madness. if this is just a stroke of bizarre luck, that the other survivor has found you before you could find them. if this is another malevolent entity in a world full of strange magic and power, something that was once human, or is only somewhat, or is just appearing to be, and is simply better than the others at pretending.
only one way to find out.
