2.

The sun was warm, too warm. It felt almost unnatural upon her skin. This must have been what had caused her to wake up. She opened one eye slowly, trying to avoid the sunlight assaulting her senses. Green, she noted. Upon opening her other eye, she observed that she had, in fact, been lying on a fluffy patch of dew-wet green grass. She felt groggy, and her head was throbbing as though a baby elephant has mistakenly been trapped inside and was now trying to get out. She attempted to push herself up onto her arms. They faltered and she felt back to the sea of almost-phosphorescently-glowing green blades. Rolling onto her back seemed to work substantially better, and she allowed herself to take in her surroundings. 

There really was a lot of green. There seemed to be plant-life everywhere, it had taken over everything in sight. Every wall, banister and stair was covered in a layer of moss, ivy and vines. In fact, she was sure she’d never seen so many shades of green in one place before. It was clear, however, that she wasn’t in any kind of jungle or forest, these walls and banisters and stairs were certainly the remnants of a large human dwelling, a city. Thora remembered cities - huge, loud environments, full of movement and people, cars and pollution and an astoundingly bustling energy. But now the city stood silent. There were no cars, no voices, no planes flying overhead. Thora heard none of the sounds of everyday human living and it made her feel quite strange, like she was asleep with her eyes open.

 Thora let her vision wander along a ledge, taking in the vines that twisted themselves through the concrete and around pillars, forging openings in the decrepit, decaying materials. It seemed, ironically, as though the vines were choking the life out of the city.

After a long while, and a lot of stretching, she managed to pick herself up and walk slowly across her small patch of downy, overgrown grass to a hard, cold, concrete staircase, hidden from the sun by a large piece of wall that no longer supported what it had been built for. The chill of the hard stone-like surface under her legs was welcome after the dry heat of the sun. 

“Where AM I?” she wondered aloud, her voice croaky from an apparent lack of use. She coughed a little to try and clear it. It stung. For the first time she tried to think of where she had come from in the hopes it might give her an idea of where she could be. Nothing. Not a memory came back to her, and it dawned on her she had no idea who, or where, she was.

Looking down she could see most of what she was wearing: a dirty pair of what looked to once be vibrant-orange pants, a white singlet with some numbers on the front, which she made out to be 56213 and a grubby pair of plain black boots. The boots looked sturdy but worn. Unfortunately, this didn’t help her very much. She shoved her hands in the dirty pockets of the orange pants and was shocked to feel something crumble under her touch. It was a small, folded piece of paper. She unfolded it carefully.

Subject: 56213

Name: Duncan, Thora

Hair: Medium length, Brown

Eyes: Blue

Height: 156 cm

Location: Seattle.

It all seemed very convenient. She stared down at the note, reading it again, especially the name. It was written in a messy scrawl, and looked to have been recorded in a rush. So she had been in Seattle. She didn’t know where that was; and she didn’t know how to get there from where she was now. Wherever it was that she had ended up, however, had certainly been abandoned for quite some time. There were no signs of anyone having lived here, of even visited in what was most likely years. The silence alone could tell her that much.

Thora stretched her legs some more, and walked toward what resembled a street through the large, gaping hole that was once the side of the building. As she stepped out onto the black asphalt, she gasped as she took in the image of the huge, looming skyscrapers which had become captive to the smothering greenery.