I am seeing what is looking like family, and little boy is hugging flying drone to his chest. There is being deadness in his eyes. Mother is holding his hand and they are walking behind father, who is carrying machete to be cutting through jungle where it is too thick to pass.

I am sitting on fallen tree trunk when they are seeing me, and small flecks of radiation, like flakes of snow, is hanging in the air and making parts of their bodies to be glowing. They are walking by me, but little boy is stopping and staring at me. My clothes are being ripped, and much of my body is showing, and it is the first time that I am wanting to be hiding my nakedness. Boy with broken drone is stopping and looking at me, then mother is stopping and looking at me, then father is stopping and noticing his family and then he is looking at me. And for a long time, they are all looking at me and saying nothing, and I am not moving.

Boy is taking step toward me, but mother is pulling him back, and I am thinking that they are thinking me dangerous. Then he is reaching into his pocket and pulling out fruit that is having black marks from radiation on it, and he is holding it out to me.

“No,” I am saying and shaking my head.

Mother is seeing her child, and softening is happening in her face. When she is looking at me, she is not seeing synth. She is not seeing child of war. She is seeing lost girl who is alone and without food or proper clothes. “We have a purifier,” she is telling me. “You can still eat it, child.”

But I am shaking my head again. “I am not needing to eat.”

Mother is frowning, then she is making boy to be putting fruit away.

“Where are you coming from?” I am asking, and I am hearing loneliness in my voice.

Father is stepping forward, and I am noticing that he is not putting his machete away. I am not wanting to be killing him, and I am wanting him to be putting his machete away. “The Redlands,” he is saying. “We are Hausa. When we lived in Lagos, we were attacked and our home was burned. Bandits chased us and the people we lived with wherever we went. Before the government began its memory program, we were chased into the wasteland. But we hear that things are safer now. People have forgotten the war.”

“The Redlands?” I am saying, because I am not knowing what he is meaning when he is saying this.

“It’s very dangerous there,” the mother is saying. “Please tell me that is not where you are going.”