On a ship to Wonderland. A short story of fiction

It was cold. A winter. We decided that the world was not meant for us. It was the water that spoke to me and her. Our leader. So we bought a ship. An old tanker meant to break the ice. The only thing that could survive in our frozen world. Today, we glide over the ice rivers. We started with nothing but life gave us everything.

Our ship had one of those fancy self-sustain mechanisms built into it. The ones that were developed right before the world went to shit. Into the ice age. No man-powered rooms or engines. Just us. Two of us. And at first, we were happy. Best friends and sisters doing our trade. We had been born right when the cold spell hit. Not in the world that had been warm but not yet in the worst of it either. I guess we were lucky.

With us, some thirty-year-olds, all we did were thinking business. You see, there was no beauty in the world. The trees had a thick layer of ice on them. They had died. All of them. The buildings were collapsing on themselves as the ice took them the bricks. Humans came out of their caves underground only for traders. For us. People running ships. Our merchandise was not food. Or drink. Or anything that you would consider important in different circumstances. My grandmother had told me stories. What we sold now, for small fortunes and only to the richest, had once been a common and overseen thing. Tulips. The only flowers that survived the apocalypse.

From pictures and drawings in my old family album, I knew that those that we grew were no ordinary flowers. They were big. A meter long at least. We packed them in wooden boxes from the old word. Enclosed by the low temperature-resistant glass. They lay there, for weeks. And they lived beautifully, in dark red and yellow colors. The only other colors in the world next to tones of gray.

Our buyers cherished them. They were art. They were hope. They were passion and love in a frozen world. At first, they were the same for me. The seeds that we had once bought from a farmer for an incredibly low price. Just a hundred dollars per piece. We did not expect flowers to come out of the seeds as tulips are not usually born from them. But in the warm engine room, very low below deck, still above the level of ice, where windows let the light in. There was born beauty that someone noticed from the outside world. They gave us a fortune just to get the flower. We would not give the onion from the flower that had formed. It held hope for us, too.

A fortune for something that would wilt. So easily. Just to have relief for your eyes. Just to see beauty. I got it. Back then we longed for the same. But with years in business, our needs for aesthetic wonders got satisfied and we turned to look for other things. We noticed the gory. How frozen were our hearts. Not only nature but us. We had become it, looking for colorful flowers but ignoring a child outside. On the street, almost out of his life. We turned our backs on each other.

Our business brought us profits unimaginable. For a tulip, we could buy food that would sustain us for a month. And we had hundreds of those golden flowers. But it did not corrupt her. My sister. Never her. The second she saw the half-dead boy, she reacted. We had given soup for others before. But we never accepted strangers upon our door. This time it was different. He was little and fragile. I took him in my arms, from my sister, and decided to make him my child. We rushed down below the deck. In the room that was our home. In our praying space. I put him down and covered him with blankets. I did not touch him as any tiny movement brought him pain. I sat next to him as he lay there. I thought he was dead far too many times but I waited day and night. I never slept during that time. It was one week before he started eating. It was three more until his fewer stopped. We got him clothes, we brought him into our tulip field. He smiled the most beautiful smile in the world that day.

I looked at her and she had the same thoughts. There were more than him and not just kids. We had been getting lonely. Our hearts had started melting. From the winter of forever. That little boy made us open our eyes. Made us love with our hearts and expand our minds. We welcomed people on our ship soon after. The tanker that was never meant for just two. We broke ice all our lives. We created a floating city. A beauty of tulips and all men fed, warm, and loved.

And in this event of finding love in ourselves, I had the pleasure to meet the third love of my life. I am a sister, a mother, a lover. I just want the world to unfreeze once more. I will live to see it no matter how long it takes. If not through my own body and soul then through my child's eyes.

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This turned in such beauty! I wasn't expecting it. You have no idea how surreal I feel writing this story. I think this is one of my favorite pieces that I have written in a long time! My dream was gray and grim but I was happy in it. I had people around me and we loved each other. We reached out to each other and we cared. And that little boy, with his hole-full mittens and feet frozen, it just made me want to give the world to everyone.

Thank you endlessly for the read.
Have a great day! Today, tomorrow, and forever.
Linda