Spring
The line stretched almost from horizon to horizon, more an elongated mass than a line really, always growing as people joined from every direction. People from all walks of life, jackets and sweaters bundling the clustered bodies from the wind that pushed at their backs, even as the sun stretched its warmth to touch the earth. The only belongings in sight were the bags and luggage that people had been able to fit on the last plane. Wheels bumped against the uneven ground of young grass while backpacks, briefcases, and purses weighed down weary shoulders as they struggled onward. The only thing behind was a fight that was no longer worth the effort, and ahead, some vague rumor of refuge.
Many wandered in groups of friends, family, acquaintances they’d met on the different legs of their journey. But for all this there was little talk. Just the endless hiss of wind and the dull thump of a long and weary march. What could anyone possibly say?
One young man, a boy really, traveled alone, dragging one end of a battered old green trunk behind him, struggling at every bump. The problem was only made worse by his oversized coat making it hard for him to grip the handle. And then a girl about his age, bundled in layers of shirts and wrapped in an old blanket appeared and lifted the other end of the trunk. He smiled and nodded gratefully, and she smiled back.
“You were ahead of me on the last plane,” the girl said half a mile later. “People didn’t like that your trunk was too big for the overhead compartments.”
The boy smiled sheepishly, noting that all she had was a small backpack and satchel. They switched sides after a few miles to let their arms rest. No one even bothered to glance at the two young people.
Eventually the light faded and groups began to break off from the main column. Tents appeared. Fires flared up. The smell of smoke and cooking food filled the air. The boy and girl broke off as well, letting the heavy trunk fall with a heavy thud. The boy opened the lid and pulled out a sleeping bag and ground cover. By the time he had everything set up the girl had a small fire going. He grinned at the flames, impressed. The girl shrugged and pulled two granola bars from an invisible pocket and handed him one.
“I’ll take first watch,” she announced, sitting on the lid of the trunk. “I’ll wake you up when I get tired.”
The boy nodded happily and crawled into the sleeping bag, never giving her a second glance.
“There’s water in the trunk if you get thirsty,” he told her as he curled up for the night. “And a flashlight on top.” He paused, and the girl glanced away to stare out at the scattered fires. “Thanks for today.”
She shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s hard being alone out here.”
 
Summer
Nothing moved in the baking streets except the old newspapers lining the gutters that rose and fell with each light puff of wind, seeming almost to breathe themselves. In bold black print were the words EVACUATION NOTICE! and COMING CRISIS! The people sitting or laying in whatever scant shade could be found ignored the warnings. There was nothing there that they hadn’t known for many months now. Besides, it was too hot to get up and read the papers. Easier to just sit and wait for evening.
The boy and girl sat back to back in the scant shadow of the trunk, sipping water and picking at the blistering paint of an old mural of rainbows and flowers. Runnels of sweat streaked their bare skin and plastered their hair to their heads and faces. 
“How long till dark?” the girl asked quietly – the day was much too hot for loud noises.
“Not a clue,” the boy replied at equal volume. “My watch ran out of batteries.”
The girl sighed. “Go figure, right?”
The boy made a noise like he wanted to laugh, but it was just too damn hot.
Across the street was a brown and brittle soccer field, with a small cluster of picnic benches nearby under a stand of trees. Every patch of space in that bit of shade was taken, with people lying in the dirt, on top of the tables, or leaning limply against a tree trunk. The smells of cooking food came drifting from the lone barbeque pit over the field and across the street, making the boy and girl’s mouths water and stomachs moan.
“Got anything to eat?” the boy murmured. The girl just sighed.
Only then did they notice a movement in the dead soccer field. One of the young men from the group under the trees was coming their way, almost trotting to get out of the blistering sun. They watched wearily as he came up panting and wiping sweat from his face. His eyes skipped dismissively over the boy, detoured briefly to the large trunk, and finally settled on the girl, who sat fingering the knife shaped lump in her sock.
“Hi,” the man said, much too loudly. “Some of my friends and I over there,” he gestured vaguely in the direction of the trees, “we decided we had a bit of extra food today, and we thought we’d see if you cared to join.” He pasted a winning smile on his face, and fell silent.
The girl and boy waited, till it was clear there was nothing else to say except yes or no. The boy tried to look at her over his shoulder, but he could not see her face.
After a long moment, the girl slowly nodded.
“Great,” the young man cried, causing both the younger two to cringe at his loudness. The man’s face fell, then turned bright red. “I mean, good. That’s great. I mean…ah crap. Let’s just go, shall we?” He spun on his heals and hurried away, the back of his neck beet red.
The girl got up slowly, pealing herself away from the boy with much difficulty before she was finally standing on her own.
“Wait,” the boy murmured, reaching limply for her hand. She paused and looked at him. “Will you come back?”
She glanced at the man already walking across the field, then the shade and the food and thirty or so other people, then back to him sitting alone in the sun. With a tired shrug, she turned and walked away.
The boy watched her go and sit with the others, eat their food, make small talk, lay down for a nap. He scowled to himself and turned away. But he found himself glancing back over his shoulder as the day wore on.

The shadows began to lengthen into evening, and the boy tried to drag his trunk off somewhere were it would be safe for the night while he slept. But the size was too much for him, and eventually he threw it down with a noise of disgust.
A sudden shadow caught his attention, and he turned to see the girl standing here with a sandwich in hand and a bashful smile. She sat quiet while he ate. When he finished, she took one end of the trunk, and watched him expectantly.
“What’re you doing back?” the boy asked as he picked up the other end.
“The whole thing wasn’t as good as the man made it out to be,” the girl answered. “Besides, I might have heard of a place a bit nicer than this.”
So they walked down the street and across parking lots turned to ovens and jogging trails long abandoned and covered in weeds till the ground fell away and the two looked down to see a tiny valley of cool green divided by clear water running fast and silent over round stones. The boy glanced over at the girl, a huge grin splitting his face nearly in two. She smiled back for a moment before both dropped the trunk and went racing down into the beautiful cool of the stream.
 
Autumn
A soft breeze drifted through the failing leaves that rustled dry and harsh against each other. The trees stood thick and infallible, receding only where the small stream lost itself in a small marsh formed by an ancient beaver dam, where the cattails and other such reeds grew in impassible stands. Around this marsh came the two travelers with the trunk balanced on their shoulders (the better to watch where they put their feet in the thick mud). Their frayed shoes were caked with the thick mud, as were their ankles where their pants no longer reached as far as they once did. The man had a long smudge smeared into the beginnings of a beard, while the woman had mud all the way up to the knee where she’d stepped in a sinkhole earlier.
“I think we should stop soon,” the man said.
“Not in this marsh,” the woman replied. So they continued.
The man found a narrow track that seemed to lead away from the wetland, so he followed it and the woman followed him. The track wound on and on till at last the trees ended and there was a clearing with a jog in the little stream skirting the edge. In the center was a cabin made of wood. The door hung open and slightly crooked, and the roof sagged in the center, but the window was still unbroken, and the chimney stood straight.
The pair set down their load and walked wearily into the long abandoned cabin. A chipmunk scampered out between their legs, and they both jumped before smiling at their fear and taking a long look around. Whoever had been there last had left most of their heavy things behind – table, chairs, shelving, bed, all were still as they had been left, albeit with a thick layer of dirt.
“There’s water damage on the ceiling,” the woman noted, glancing upward.
“And mice in the walls,” the man added, pointing out the pile of junk in one corner. They stood there some more, looking over this and that till everything had been examined. The woman took a seat in one of the chairs, listening to it creak before committing her full weight.
“Are you ok?” the man asked. The woman nodded and laid a hand on her belly.
“Just the baby kicking is all. I think it’s alright if we spend the night here. If need be we can patch up that roof. At least we can keep the wind out if a storm picks up.”
The man nodded and left to bring in the trunk. The woman, after a few moments, pulled herself back to her feet and busied herself with turning the abandoned cabin into a place that they could live in for a while.
 
Winter
The snow piled up under the windows as flakes drift down steadily on an indifferent breeze. The chimney smoke hung in an uncertain fog near the ground before sullenly slinking off among the bare tree trunks. Inside there was little to see in the dim grey light, just a fireplace with more ashes than fire, a pile of wood, bare table and chairs, pot of warm water, empty shelves, a battered and mud stained old green trunk, a bed. Two people slept there, a couple that in another life would have been young and carefree, sneaking kisses and carving their initials into trees on warm spring afternoons. But such was not the case, and as the light slowly strengthened it revealed the deep lines etched by worry, and the harsh angles brought on by too long a winter.
The husband gets up first, waking his wife and revealing the third, much smaller body that cried awkwardly as it wakes. The mother tried to quiet her newborn while the father tried to coax the dull embers into something that could drive out some of the chill. He took the lukewarm pot of water out of the fire and added a packet of powdered broth to make a weak soup. His wife got up slowly, still limping slightly as she made her way to the table.
“Do we have any more of that stuff?” she asked, nodding to the now empty packet. Her husband checked the trunk, rummaging through the layers of stuff that had accumulated in the past few years. He stood up again with two soup packets, an ancient energy bar, and tiny bag of old rice.
“This is it.”
The mother gave a weary shrug and started pulling the layers of blankets off her infant. It seemed so much smaller without them, its delicately stenciled features seeming too fine in contrast to the boniness of the mother’s arms as she nursed him. The father looked from his little family to the littler pile of foodstuffs before turning sharply to the window. He raised a hand to his eyes, making as though to wipe away lingering sleep, but his hand came away wet.
“It’s still snowing,” he noted dully. His wife nodded, confirming some private thought of hers before wrapping her baby up again to keep it warm. Her husband came over again, and together they sipped at the thin soup.
“There’s still the town back down the river,” the wife mentioned at length. The husband bowed his head.
“There’s no way we can make it,” he said. “We’re too hungry, there’s too much snow, it’s too cold.”
“The two of us couldn’t make it,” she agreed. “But maybe one of us could.”
The young man reached for her hand with a small choking sound. “You know I couldn’t do that. Please…don’t make me do that.”
His wife gently pulled her hand away.
“I’ll have to go,” she told him. “The baby has to stay with me.”
Her husband opened his mouth to argue, but he stopped and hung his head. He nodded.
His wife moved closer, put an arm around his shoulders.
“I’ll be back when spring comes,” she murmured, a bright sheen in her eyes. The husband nodded. There was a blast of cold, and when he looked up again, his wife and child were gone.