Forlorn Hope

Epilogue

Willow surveyed the scene before her. The abandoned town of Gardiner, Montana sprawled to the Yellowstone River. Pausing, she turned north and witnessed the caravan spreading across the vast snowfield. The knit scarf she wore flapped in the strong wind before it loosed and sailed northward. Sheets of wispy snow lazily drifted along the path they carved out of the pristine field.

With their village powerless, The People became vagabonds. They needed a new place to live - a place with heat, food and electricity. The American Union promised them the small town at the northern border of Yellowstone National Park.

She prayed it wasn't their fate to face persecution for the nearly hundred-year ice age or the deaths of the humans. She doubted the American Union would record the events of the last week in their history books.

Rising temperatures were already being reported in Texas and Arizona. Flora and fauna were already venturing north of the thirty-seventh parallel - humans wouldn't be far behind. It would still be years before the Earth returned to the way it was before The People arrived, but the planet would heal and life would return to whatever nature crafted this area into.

She turned her attention south again. The People had endured hardships before she was born – they would persevere once again. A new page in the history books started today and it started at the only year-round entrance to Yellowstone National Park.