Amy awoke with a frown and a sigh.

The morning passed about as eventfully as her mornings usually did, which was to say, not at all. She forced some breakfast down her throat - she was reaching the end of her stored food provisions - and spent the rest of the morning tending her garden, which was struggling to survive.

Just like her.

There had originally been 100 other humans left on Earth when everyone else evacuated. The humans who remained on Earth had willingly chosen to do so. They wanted to attempt to rebuild their soiled planet. Sure, a couple of them had died from lack of medicine, old age, or chronic disease, but most of them had stayed strong.

And then the strange disease had spread, as rapidly as wildfire, and within weeks, Amy was left alone, the sole survivor of a ravaged world.

It didn't help that at least in her area of the planet, all of the animals were gone or dead. Humans had truly ruined everything, and then turned tail and fled when they finally realized that in doing so, they were killing themselves. By then, it was far too late. Many amazing, rare species were gone forever, and the animals that had survived knew to fly into the deepest forests, swim to the most isolated islands, do anything to get away from any territory where humans had once reigned.

Amy hadn't seen another living thing in three weeks, and she was slowly losing her mind.

Pulling on her boots, she began her daily walk around her tiny hometown. She wasn't even sure what she was looking for on these scheduled strolls, but whatever it was, she hadn't found it yet.

She paused in front of the coffee shop in the town square, now boarded up.

"What do you want, Amy?" her mother asked, giving her tiny, chubby hand a gentle squeeze as they entered the cafe.

"A scone!" the child piped up readily.

Her mother laughed, shaking her head slightly. "Are you sure you don't want anything else?"

Amy nodded decisively. She always ordered the same thing - a cinnamon blueberry scone - since it was her absolute favorite food.

"I'm sure."

Amy licked her lips, feeling tears sparking her eyes. She could practically taste the crumbling icing on those scones, the hot, flaky bread dissolving on her tongue...

She was about to continue onward, choking on her own tears, when she heard a small whimper from the alleyway next to the store. She paused, staring into the shadows.

The sound came again,  very obviously belonging to a living thing.

Amy hurried into the alley, searching for the source of the noise.

She gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth when she found it.

There were three puppies, maybe around five or six months old, huddled around a larger dog. The larger dog was breathing heavily, and one of its paws was pulled close to its body, surely wounded somehow.

"Hey," Amy whispered soothingly, bending over the family. The puppies scuttled away from her uncertainly and the mother dog growled irately, but her paw was hurting her so badly that Amy didn't think she could concentrate on fending off attackers at the moment.

She was unsure of what to do, having only ever had one dog years ago. Finally, she thought of a temporary solution, stood, and hurried out of the alley in search of the local pet store.

It was only a few streets down from town square. Amy noticed a wagon sitting outside of one of the stores and grabbed it, sure she would find it useful.

She smashed her foot through the thin glass of the pet store's front window, using her hands to shield her neck and face from the raining shards. Then, she carefully stepped inside and glanced around.

She grabbed a collapsible dog carrier first. Popping it up, she placed it carefully in the bed of the wagon. Then, she took a couple of bags of various sorts of dog treats and returned to the animals.

Whatever breed they were, they were relatively small, thankfully. They were also skinny - the mother's ribs showed prominent through her fur. Carefully, Amy slid her hands underneath the dog, who whimpered and snarled magnificently but was too weakened to try anything.

She lifted her into the wagon, placing her in the carrier. She hoped that the darkened, enclosed interior would calm the creature until she could truly help it. In doing so, she saw what was wrong - there was some sort of infection in the dog's paw from a nasty cut. It was so diseased that it was turning green. She gagged, turning hastily to the puppies, who were now howling pitifully for their mother. Grabbing them by the scruffs of their necks, she placed them in the carrier as well. Then she emptied one of the treat bags into the space, zipped it up, and began the walk home with the wagon bumping along behind her.

*

A week had passed, and things were going wonderfully.

While the dogs couldn't talk, Amy chattered to them about anything and everything. It was as if a dam had opened within her that she just couldn't close - the words kept pouring out now that they had ears other than her own to fall on.

She had been tending the adult dog's wounds nearly constantly, as well as making frequent trips to the pet store for food and supplies. The animal was finally beginning to trust her, and the puppies had easily settled into life with Amy.

The infection in their mother's paw was going down and the cut was slowly but surely healing. One day, there would be little more than a scar to show that anything had been there at all.

Someday, Amy's emotional wound from her three weeks of solitude would scar over as well.

Because now she had friends. Creatures to keep her company. And if these four dogs were so close to her town, that meant that animals, in general, were moving back.

Amy sensed that she wouldn't be alone for much longer.