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Her name is Lola. She is named that because she is a good laugher. She is now a young woman, but, she is now alone. She doesn’t know how old she is. But, she knows that her mother died of fever when Lola was five years old.
And after her mother’s death, Lola hasn’t seen a single human being, anywhere.
She is now living on the foothills of a huge snowy mountain. There is still snow, but snowfall has dramatically reduced a long time ago.
There is a lake near her wooden house, which is now a small ditch having little water. All the water for Lola’s needs is obtained from that ditch.
The thing is, there has been no rain for many years. In fact, for her entire lifetime, she hasn’t witnessed the thing called rain, ever. She learned about rain when she was a kid, when always hanging on her mother’s skirt, shyly.
Even though she is alone for a long time, she doesn’t feel anything peculiar about that. But, she does think that she is now a little cracked in her head. In her free time, she talks alone, to no one in particular.
She rarely goes out. Nearby her house, there is a small potato field where she cultivates potatoes for her use.
Everything she now knows is given to her by her mother. But, now, she barely remembers her mother. She doesn’t know who her father was. But she knows that her father died long before her mother went to heaven.
The fact is, Lola is a naive young woman, without proper knowledge about the world. Her house and the surroundings are her world. And since there are hungry wild animals outside, she won’t wander away far from her house.
Some god may be looking at her all the time; otherwise, her water source would have become dry long ago. And her potato field still has the necessary moisture.
The sunlight is always very hot, but, usually, a cool wind would cycle through her house twice a day. The land is actually pretty dry. And far away, on the other side of the mountain, there are wastelands. Nothing grows there anymore. There are leafless dead trees all over the wasteland.
The only green growth in nearby land is on her house’s perimeter and on the potato field. What is left out of that lake is nurturing the potato field and nearby trees well. There aren’t many green trees nearby. But, there are a lot of dead trees. And she gets a lot of firewood for her use.
Even though it is very hot during the day, the night usually is very cold. And what's worse is, she has run out of matchsticks. She now uses two stones to light a fire by colliding them together in a special fashion.
And in all this hell, she actually made a small heaven in her house’s perimeter.
* * *
LOLA WAKES UP HEARING a series of bangs. She sits up on the small bed and she looks up. The metal sheets are very old, and in the wind, they are flapping, making bangs. A usual thing.
Lola takes a deep sigh. She stands up and goes near the window and she peers outside. Outside is still plunged in darkness. And a cold wind blows inside her house through the doorless window.
She wraps her hands across her chest and she slowly goes near the bed. She lies down on the bed and she covers her body with the blanket.
And she slowly closes her eyes.
* * *
AS MORNING SUNLIGHT begins to seep inside through the window, she removes the blanket and stands up. Then, she bends her body and takes a long yawn. And that marks the beginning of her day.
She goes outside with a bucket and a cup, and she walks towards the nearby ditch, where the legacy of the mighty lake remains. She crouches down on the sandy ground and she quickly fills the bucket with water, using the cup.
With the water, she enters the house. She places the bucket full of water on top of the kitchen counter and she goes inside the nearby storage room.
