Maya, the older by fourteen minutes, carried responsibility like a second spine. Lily carried a notebook. Between them, they had a strange kind of balance: Maya did what had to be done; Lily imagined what could be done if the world ever stopped demanding survival long enough to let them dream.
When the grid failed, survival and dreaming collided.
It started on a Tuesday morning when the temperature dropped hard and fast, like someone slammed a freezer door over the county. Maya woke to a house that felt hollowed out. The woodstove had gone cold in the night, ash gray and lifeless. Lily slept curled on the couch under a quilt their mother had stitched, her breath barely visible in the dim light.
Maya padded into the kitchen, barefoot because socks were a luxury she kept forgetting to buy, and twisted the stove knob. Nothing.
She tried the faucet. A cough of air. No water.
