Twilight Tundra's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Twilight Tundra walked past the field hospital and away from the center of town. She needed bigger pots. More of them. The kind that could feed fourteen people at once instead of two. Her eyes tracked the buildings as she passed, looking for anywhere that might have what she needed. The shed sat at the edge of a frozen field, door hanging crooked on rusted hinges. She pushed it open and stepped inside. Dust covered everything. Cobwebs stretched across the corners. But against the back wall, stacked on shelves of weathered wood, she found them: row after row of soup pots, each one large enough to feed a crowd. A scrap of paper lay on the bottom shelf, curled and yellowed with age. The date printed at the top said 2024. Someone had used these pots once. Someone had left them behind. Twilight carried the pots outside, six trips back and forth until they sat in a pile near the double sink counter behind the old grill station. She turned on the water and watched brown rust swirl down the drain. Her hands worked the scrub brush in circles, pushing away years of neglect. The first pot took twenty minutes. The second took fifteen. By the sixth, her fingers ached and her shoulders burned, but the metal gleamed in the winter light. She lined them up on the counter, each one clean and ready. She stood back and looked at the row of pots. They would feed everyone in the field hospital. She could make enough soup now. But her hands throbbed, and the work had taken hours. The sick were still waiting. She picked up the largest pot and started back toward town. The solution was here. The cost was time she didn't have.