The birthday boy unhurriedly opened his eyes, struggling to unzip his heavy eyelids. His eyelashes misted with tears, and his irises roughed up dead.

Free-floating like a ghost, he didn't know what was happening. His eyes were fixed on the flat white ceiling. He unclenched his jaw, letting it free the warm air inside. Underneath his curly hair buried his unreadable thoughts, fragmenting to pieces and then splicing back anew. His brows furrowed deeper from the distorted picture in his mind, a broken promise, a denied wish. His face became very solemn. The embers inside his chest died and became wasted charcoal, giving the darkness a chance to rule. His cerise heart, pumping in rhythmic contraction, started to rust, corroding with umbrage.

Daybreak tried to squeeze through the fibers of the polyester curtains, compelling him to face the day with a smile, but it failed. He gently rubbed the bandage on his nose. So often, we wished for something we ached to happen. And even if we offered a bouquet and prayers to an altar upon waking up, it's not worth the candle to yearn, he thought.

Daniel unzipped the leather jacket and rolled to pronate, facing the wrinkly bed sheets below. The back of the jacket hovered airborne, touching the ceiling. The magnifying glass and the hair barrette were suspended an inch over the pillows. "Happy birthday, Mr. Lens," he whispered as the fringe of his banged hair drooped dead. He glanced over his left shoulder and saw the cube wandering in circles along the floor. His head, too, was gyrating from the screw of events last night. His eye sockets sunk, dark tincture marred his lower eyelids, and somnolence was hazed in his corneas. Underneath the bed frame emerged a shiny rectangular object. What is my phone doing under my bed? Maybe it hid, too scared of me because I became a monster in the middle of the night, he thought.

The boy dove effortlessly to scoop the phone and noticed a small webby crack in the upper right corner of the glassy screen. His eyes widened, for it was a shame to damage the very object that reminded him of his father. Because through the only thing in his grasp, he could remember his face, voice, and amber-flecked emerald eyes that evoked a deep understanding of the world's wonders. He placed the phone in the middle of his chest, shut his eyes, and relished every heartbeat, remembering their memories.

The absence of any clue clouded his thought as he did not know if his father was still alive. He questioned whether the ISS was unharmed with all the chaos on Earth. He answered the questions positively with the thought of his dad becoming a hero. At least for now, even though I cannot see you, I can feel you. Father, I know you are watching over there, up in the sky, thinking for us and praying for what's best for us, he thought.

Daniel seized the very thought, reminding him of a speck of hope he could use to survive. He shook his head and tried to perk up. His arm extended towards the door, dragging his body without difficulty, and twisted the knob open. He tilted his head, bending his neck like a garter snake, and checked the attic hatch. "No damage," he mumbled.

The boy halted for a second and pondered about Potti. He didn't see or hear the mouse after the quake, not even its shadow or short, pitchy noise. His ears angled into the hatch's direction, sharpening his hearing, trying to catch a rodent sound. Detected by his auricles was the deafening silence reverberating all over the house. The uttering no sound crawled into his ear canals and pierced his tympanic membrane, becoming conscious that death possibly delivered the mouse to the great unknown. He let out an audible sigh. "Potti, I hope you're safe somewhere," he whispered.

His fingers pressed against the corridor walls, like buttresses supporting his floating body. He struggled, dealing with the erratic weightlessness. It was too difficult to move, but he tried to keep his sense of balance. Lighter-than-air was the only phrase he could think of to describe this feeling. He managed to straighten out from a twisted position. His sneakers finally touched the floor, and his legs propped like a tripod—a sculpture of an erect bearing. He lifted a foot and decided to take a step. He gasped as he arrowed toward the house's wooden upper limit, hurting his head and developing a rounded protrusion.

"What the—" the boy cringed, rubbing his head. "I knew it! Gravity declined another scale!" he went on as he cautiously adjusted to the changing environment. Strength will be of no use. Smaller movements and just apply a little force, Daniel. That will be the trick. Keep learning, he thought.

Marked by wary prudence, Daniel gently pushed the wall to propel himself forward, but he traveled diagonally across the corridor. His elbow came into contact with the knob of the bathroom door. Come on, Daniel. Again, he thought. He mildly nudged the bathroom door aiming to escape from the passageway but failed for the second time. He ended up leaning against the main bedroom door.

The boy carefully glued an ear on it just to hear something, perhaps to have an idea of how his mother was doing. He looked for a better spot, slinking like a cockroach to bug someone's room. But then again, like all the time, a williwaw of utter coldness and noiselessness from the other side's territory of desolation seeped through the narrow gaps of the door. Her ceiling fan is on, he thought.

He inhaled but did not exhale, harking back to their disagreement. "Mom, I am sorry, but if only you unfurled your eyes to see clearer and unplugged your ears to hear well—you would understand me. We can help each other, to heal our wounds, and to move on," Daniel said softly behind the door.

His mother was wide-awake, floating upright, facing the window. She didn't move like a mannequin, hovering motionless a foot from the floor. Her lacy dressing gown and flowing brown hair swayed like sea anemones, obeying the undercurrents of an ocean. Luckily, she didn't tear the curtains or peep through a hole to look at the world outside. A sign that rust had not eaten her mental faculties enabled her to recognize what to do during her lucid moments. But if she tore down the embroidered polyester curtains, she would surely suffer the stinging bite of the mad sun.

She did hear a muffled noise behind her door, but she never gave the impression of concern of what was the strange sibilant sound coming from the back of it. Her ears were masked by the persistent monotonous tone of the whirr of the fan. And so, she didn't hear the boy's reasoning. More's the pity, she was calm and clearheaded this morning, yet odds were disagreeing to pin her ears back against the door and to grasp the nature of a good talk.

The boy leaned away. He bit his lip, pondering the wasted time staying aimlessly by the door. A tendril of his hair brushed the inside of his left eyeball, irritating it. He scratched the grit from his eyes and caught the ajar door on the other side. Daniel drew closer and poked a look through the narrow crack. This room, his father's study room, was his favorite place in the house. He pushed the door, and thousands of memories hit him. He recalled the many times he scurried around the room to borrow Science textbooks and some bizarre archetypes of miniature spacecraft and other space technologies. But that was years ago. After the tragedy, his father spent most of his time confining himself inside the study, locking himself away from the unfair world.

Furthermore, days became a week, weeks became a month, and months became a year. They barely had a conversation. However, Daniel knew that his dad was doing something big, and the routine was therapeutic for him, witnessing his crushed spirit healing gradually. One day, his father told him he was going to the east coast to do some serious job. He gave him a phone and left. He smiled, and Daniel smiled back. From time to time, Daniel felt deceived and abandoned by his father. He left him single-handedly taking care of the house and his worsening mother.

Shortly after the backwater of history, Daniel fluttered his eyelids and shooed away the past. He entered the room dimmed by the shut blind curtains. He rolled to the right, stretched his arms for the bookshelves, and caressed the voluminous literature of Science. Same as what happened to all rooms, the study was cluttered with hideosity. The boy rekindled the bygone times playing inside the room. He flumped his back against the spiraling disorder just for fun. He then snatched prototypes of a space shuttle and lunar module miniature to play with. It all came back, the feeling of being a child again, carefree and careless.

His eye caught a curious view, so he slid along a wall to break out from the churning disorder. Daniel drew an arm out, flew across the far side of the room, and found a giant whiteboard. The whiteboard as well was messily filled with writings, symbols, numbers, formulae, and drawings. His mouth became dry when he saw the intricate geometry of a spherical blueprint. He swallowed and heard the sound of his throat and read the familiar handwriting of his father. "Project V-022424: Artificial Gravity Generator," he said incandescently.

Surprised by the caption, he could hear thousands of hands clapping in his background, adoring the brilliance of his father. So this was the whatsit he had been busy with, a gravity generator, he thought, yearning to meet his handsome face again. "Where are you, Dad?" he asked the heavens.

Daniel fled to the kitchen, drifted past the ransacked cabinets and refrigerator, and clutched the sink's underside. He forgot to fetch a glass from the cupboard. The parchedness was invading his throat, so he hurried to the sink, his mouth under the faucet, then turned it open. Not a single drop of water dripped from the stainless tap's orifice. What am I thinking? Of course, possibly, water will run dry after the violent earthquake, he thought as he peeled off his leather jacket to let air cool his sweat-soaked integuments.

Daniel confidently grabbed the fridge handle and swung the door open. He saw his reflection on the freezer's flush hatch, a stricken face looking back at him.

Inside was a scene of a massacre. The compartments were almost devoid of food and drinks. He saw a lone pomegranate below. There's an unpalatable shade of speckle upon its thick reddish pericarp. The boy lifted an index finger, inspected it, and saw a sharp unclipped nail. His pointy fingernail nonchalantly touched the devious leathery skin of the roseate fruit. His gaze narrowed into a squint, and it hazed darker. He pushed his finger into the fruit, impaling the berry. I knew it! Rotten, he thought.

He grabbed the bottled water next to the rotten berry and twisted its cap. "What the—" he puffed, freaking out by the spilling water globules swerving away from his thirsty mouth. He returned the cap. "I need my hammer, a clean nail, and a straw," he declared into the air. After finding the three things he was looking for, he hammered the bottle cap, pierced it with a nail, and hurriedly inserted the plastic straw he ripped from a boxed fruit juice. His chapped lips clasped the straw, and without further ado, he consumed the sparkling water in a jiffy. "Ah—that is refreshing!" He looked at his little trick. "Now, it's time to repair the windows, little man," he tapped his left shoulder. "Clean the kitchen mess and make some inventory for the remaining pieces of stuff for the survival of our stomachs," he went on.

Daniel carefully caught each wandering shard of glass with an empty wastebasket. Then he tossed the transparent fragments into the blue sky. The shards met the sunlight, scintillating like crystals in the sky. He fixed the curtains before the daylight broke in, lifted the sofas, and hammered them onto the walls, an extra defense from vile invaders. He tucked the hammer in his jeans and slid the nails into his back pocket.

After that, the boy gathered all the food and segregated it into dry and liquid goods. Luck did not abandon them because he packed a box with loaves of bread, biscuits, two packs of dried mangoes, and several canned goods. We can budget these for us for maybe more than two weeks, he thought, slipping a pack of chocolate biscuits into his pocket.

The liquids were limited—a gallon of distilled water, three bottled water, two orange juices, and a small box of sterilized milk. "We must conserve water and no bathing, of course," Daniel whispered as he hauled up the two boxes upstairs with a smudge of bleakness.

When he was about to reach the end of the corridor, the surroundings were engulfed with darkness. The house trembled. Another earthquake? Please, not today, he thought, tilting his head, calling forth the skies for help.

The tremors stopped.

He left the boxes on the floor and rushed into his room, knowing that something big had swallowed up the brightness outside. He drifted across the room and slowly peeled the curtains apart. His jaw dropped, and astonishment glinted in his blank eyes when he saw what was beyond the windowpane.

A tall and wide brick building collided against the edge of the cliff. The old building growled when it finally docked itself aground.

Daniel slid open the window. While clutching the windowsill, he pushed his torso forward and then angled his chin up, gaping at the upper half of the infrastructure. He started to count the timeworn structure stories with his puckered lips, but then he gave up. If only I could see the lower half of the building, I could've counted it correctly. Well, it's more than ten, I believe so, he thought.

The distance between the building and their house was just over a meter. He stretched an arm to reach the other side, aiming for the ajar window. He lowered his neck and sneaked a look through the gap.

A person was napping on a chair.

"Hello?" he whispered, waiting for a response.

Daniel searched his room for a long stick and found an umbrella. He extended his arm, holding the umbrella, and knocked on the windowpane. "Hello," he said.

The man jolted his leg and spun his head to the window. He squinted and slowly slid along the floor to reach the window. The man swung the window open. "Hello, little boy," he huskily muttered.

"Good morning," the boy replied politely. Daniel's eyes melted when he saw the wrinkly face of the man.

He was very old and feeble. His eyes were sunken and clouded. His tan skin was blotched with dark freckles. His neck sagged. He was toothless. His facial hair was long and white, and he was bald.

The old man coughed.

"Are you okay?" asked Daniel tentatively.

"I'm all right, kid," he simply replied, smiling sweetly.

"My name is Daniel," he paused, "Do you need anything?"

"I'm all right," he answered and cracked another cough, "I'm Abraham. But thank you for asking," he smiled.

The boy lowered his sight, flooded with melancholic thoughts in his head. He didn't know if they could endure their situation, which became more challenging with each passing day. He smiled because he saw Abraham was not quitting, painting a sweet smile to greet him. "Maybe you are hungry," he paused and reached for the chocolate biscuit he slid inside his pocket. "Take it. Eat your breakfast," he showed his pearly white teeth.

Abraham stretched his frail hands and took the pack of biscuits. He tore it slowly, dipped his fingers into the plastic wrapping, and shared a cookie with Daniel. "Enjoy your breakfast, too, Daniel," he whispered.

"Thank you," the boy answered. A rush of sympathy ran into his veins as he received the stranger's small, kind gesture. Then, he took a bite of the cookie. Sweet and bitter flavors burst on his palate. He was amazed that there were still kind people left during this difficult time. He cocked his head to the left and remembered his mother on the other side, but he let go of the thought.

"I'll get you some water and cough medicine," he said, rushing to the corridor and preparing the new trick for drinking bottled water. Then, he went inside the bathroom, searched the medicine cabinet, and grabbed a few tablets for dry cough. The boy went back and offered the bottle and the medicine to the gentle stranger.

"That's thoughtful of you," Abraham said.

Daniel showed compassion to the old man. "Sip through the straw," he licked his lips, "Like this." He demonstrated, illustrating it with his hands.

Calmly, the old man sipped a little ounce of water. "I almost forgot how the water tasted," Abraham whispered, popped the medicine, and took another small sip. "Thank you," he handed back the bottle. "You need it more than me," he explained.

"No, it's for you. We have a few, and it will be enough for us."

"We?"

Daniel caught the man's corneas invaded with a cataract. "My mother," he muttered, "She's ill," his voice dwindled.

"I see. Your mother is very lucky," he beamed. "She has you."

Daniel cocked his head to the right. He had been alone for a long time, and there was an old man in front that maybe wanted to have a companion. "Can I call you—Grandpa?" he asked, and somehow it helped to derail the conversation.

"Of course, you can."

"Grandpa, where are the people in that building? Are you all alone?" he queried, eyeing a lone red ant crawling on the windowsill.

"I am all that's left. When the Earth shook, they ran, evacuating the old apartment building." Abraham felt a heaviness in the air. He followed the boy's gaze in the direction where his eyes fixed. "Do you want to hear a story?" he asked.

Daniel looked at the old man and fixed his dangling tendrils obscuring his view. He positioned his arms upon the windowsill and rested his chin, illuminating his face with the diffused daylight glow.

Abraham cleared his throat and smiled. He looked at the beam of golden light crawling on the ground, and a bee sprouted from nowhere. He began. "The dusk was breaking, and a hand from a red ant—the commander—gestured to march a single file out of their bunker—an anthill. They looked terrifying with their strong mandibles, which they had sharpened for weeks. They trekked a tree and spotted their target—a beehive. A group of ants was patiently waiting—a lookout—safeguarding a minuscule crack, which was their entrance to sneak for some honey. They began gnawing at the beehive fortress, and when they made a hole, they crept inside one after the other. The red ants reached the honeycomb and extracted the sweet nectars. Below, the royal queen, king, prince, princesses, and her subjects were sleeping in golden combs, for they were very tired after a bash."

Suddenly, the noon sun flooded the distance between them. Abraham and Daniel drew back. They waited for a while and followed the trail of shadow, climbing the building inch by inch. It was a magical short entr'acte. After the dreamlike interlude, the boy sat in the window, and the old man continued his story.

"The commander ordered not to eat honey while inside the hive. A young ant drooled from the gooey amber sugar, tempted to indulge in the forbidden, and took a daring taste, savoring a mouthful. He shouted in exhilaration and laughed and laughed until the bees roused from a deep sleep. The queen bee bellowed, cursing them to leave at once, and beckoned his armies. The ants didn't shudder at her threat and nibbled the first attack. The prince just stood still in the middle of battle, too sick with the old same rivalry clash."

Daniel interrupted, "And then, what happened?"

"The prince let his voice be heard by singing a song. The sweet song, sweet as honey, made the fighting cease. After that, he told them to stop the gnawing and the stinging on his birthday."

Daniel cringed a bit, "It is my birthday today."

"How interesting!" Abraham widened his eyes. "The prince offered a hand to a stumbled ant caught by a mound of sugary goo. He continued his speech and articulated that the two kingdoms can be friends and united by barter."

Daniel butted in, "Barter?"

Abraham continued, fixed the collar of his knitted pullover, and then pinched his throat to sound like a noble prince. "I admire the red ants tending the soil below, cultivating colorful flowers—a beautification for their anthill kingdom. The flowers are the source of honey, the food we both crave. And we, the bees, have the only tool to produce such. I suggest you continue to nurture the soil for the flowers we need, and we will share our honey in exchange."

"That's a good idea!" agreed Daniel.

The old man cleared his windpipe. "The queen, her people, and the entire armies of red ants were oohing and aahing. The insects gave the prince a round of applause and cast their votes, which was unanimous. The foes became amigos," he smiled.

"Beautiful," Daniel whispered.

Abraham coughed up mucus and wobbled.

"Are you all right, Grandpa?" he worriedly asked.

"I just need some rest."

"Thank you, Abraham. You're the unexpected gift I never asked for."

"Daniel, you're special too. Perhaps, more stories each day," Abraham said, dragging a chair with shimmering wheels.

The boy nodded.

The old man flumped into the wheelchair and slowly shut his tired eyes. He levitated in the air, casting curved shadows over the carpeted floor.

Daniel smiled and gestured his goodbye.