“You’re well on your way, almost there. But you’ll never quite make it. Almost is good enough.” She always threw in a little grandma sass, just the right amount. She paused. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.” He turned from her and walked toward the truck. It was all he could manage right then, and although she couldn’t possibly understand, this was a victory. It was another beginning.

The next day, they came upon a river.

It was rare for him to dream these days. Usually, after a long day of marching beside Sadina, the Gentle Giant, and Letti, he collapsed into the pathetic excuse for a sleeping bag inside the pathetic excuse for a tent and fell asleep within seconds. A deep sleep. A blissful sleep where nothing happened, nothing at all. The only drawback to that was often it seemed that Letti was waking him up as soon as his head hit the pathetic excuse for a pillow—an old blanket wrapped with twine.

But tonight, he dreamed.

Nothing fancy. Just glimpses of his life on the island, when things had been good and happy. When his parents and sister had been alive and well. When his biggest worries were completing his chores in their yurt and convincing Captain Sparks to give him time in the Forge in the days before Isaac became an official apprentice. He dreamed of his mom, fixing a leak in their roof and swearing no less than forty times. His dad, arguing with a neighbor about the recent shift in ocean currents and what that meant for the weather and upcoming harvest.

And then, the day. The accident. The world twisting inside-out.

It had been raining. Raining hard. Sheets of it. Luckily it was several days before the planting that year or else a lot of it would’ve been washed away. Rain, rain, and then more rain.

He could hear it in his dreams.

Gushes of water. Cascades of water. Thousands of quarts of water rushing over other thousands of quarts of water. His eyes opened. The dream was over. And yet the sounds were still there, a roar of water upon water upon water. The simple word itself couldn’t explain the sheer magnificent volume of it.

The river.

He was only hearing the river.

He sat up, surprised that for once he’d awakened without Letti and her annoying, lilting voice singing “good morning” over and over, sounding like a pissed-off seagull. Weird that the same woman who did that had also told them about the “Evolution,” about how the Flare had mutated into several variants, and that some had the potential to create a human race far more advanced. Or kill every last person on earth. Whatever she said, it usually ended in a ramble that made little sense to Isaac.