Episode Ten: The Sisterhood, #10 by Tali Inlow

Author:Tali Inlow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dystopian post apocalyptic fiction, lesbian dystopian romance, f/f dystopian, f/f dystopian high school, f/f dystopian serial romance, post apocalypse dystopia f/f serial magic, f/f supernatural dystopian
Publisher: Two Is Enough Publishing, LLC
Published: 2021-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

AUTUMN BLINKS HERSELF back to the present, wondering at herself.

Why this memory? Why, when asked about happiness, did Autumn’s mind take her there?

The truth is obvious enough, even if Autumn would prefer not to see it: some people, it doesn’t matter how long exactly they share another person’s orbit.

Some people, they become the sun.

“Autumn?” September asks from beside her. “Wow, I really lost you there, huh?”

With a shake of her head, Autumn directs what she hopes is an easy-looking grin at the other woman.

“I was just thinking about my answer,” Autumn replies.

“And?”

“Well. Happiness, it was... It was thunderstorms in the mountains. A feeling of safety that you didn’t have to fight for. And easy sleep, if I’m honest with you.”

September chuckles lightly in response. “I don’t remember much of Before, but what I miss of home are mostly the things that I did with my dad. Getting the little storefront he ran ready each morning. Taking care of the few animals we had—mostly some scrawny chickens and goats we were able to raise up. And hearing stories about him and my uncle when they were kids, getting in trouble at school together, things like that.”

She doesn’t need to tell Autumn the name of the school because Autumn remembers it just as well as she remembers the name James Quincy Archer III. He went to the Lincoln Academy, a breeding ground for fine young men and potential connections for Whitmore Girls, to be sure. The academy was not on the same level as Whitmore—what school could ever be that? But it was an elitist institution that provided a high quality education, for those who could afford it.

Not so different from Whitmore after all. Autumn was lucky to have been a legacy and to have received a scholarship.

“Well. There’s a new sort of ‘happy’ nowadays, isn’t there?”

September smiles at this, tilting her head towards Autumn in an all too familiar way.

“I guess you could say that, huh?”

Those huhs added at the end of questions—a Norwood trait, even if September may never know as much. High southern society never did knock them fully out of her mother’s vocabulary, and Autumn supposes it was embedded somewhere in September’s DNA, passed down from a mother who was as full of contradictions as anyone Autumn had ever met in her life.

They’ve covered nearly twenty miles by the time the sun is nearing the horizon, a gruelling day. But Autumn has been driven forward by the familiarity that she began feeling in her bones just a few miles back. The terrain, the remnants of roads, the winding paths through hills—they’re more than close, they may have managed to arrive.

And a day early at that.

“Come on, kid, we’re in the home stretch now!”

And Autumn, more exuberant than she’s felt in days or even weeks, takes off at a jog, her pack bouncing rhythmically against her back.

“Holy shit,” September says with a laugh, watching Autumn take off towards one last bend in the road. “All right!”

And then she hollers,

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