The World Of Sebastian

Since I´ve been able to think all the inhabitants of this village meet in the community center at the edge of town to have breakfast together. We´re living in a zoo, where my grandparents ended up as refugees 40 years ago. Taking along their little daughter, my mother, Christin, who was barely two years old back then. My grandfather has volunteered telling my a few stories from those times, as difficult as it was for him. The survivors had lost everything. Their families, their friends, their possessions, the roofs over their heads, simply life like they knew it before. All of this was swallowed up by the earth, drowned in floods, or burned. Some of them contracted injuries so bad, that they never recovered from them. All of this is just too much for me to imagine. The mere idea to never run, jump, or climb again invests me with fear. However, it also reminds me of how well I´m faring. I have a great family, a home that shelters me from the elements, and enough food to eat. When I´m thinking food I also think of Marie, our cook. I like her quite a lot, even if she has been serving us the same dishes every day for almost a week. I know, I´m being unfair, because it isn´t her fault. What else is she supposed to do when there are no more supplies than the things she can get hold of? During the winter our chicken hardly lay any eggs, and the fish in the river Far, that´s flowing nearby, only to disappear south into the woods, are hiding under a thick layer of ice. It isn´t always easy to coax them out of there. Around the zoo compounds we grow grain and vegetables throughout the year, but the harvest is pretty deficient, as the ground mostly consists of debris and sand. The soil, we plant our seeds in, is quite rocky. We´d have to look for other sources of food, but during the last four decades people have been too busy to survive and to build up new safe lives for themselves. There simply was no time for adventures and exploration. Especially, as nobody knew how the world outside might have changed. The danger of not returning alive was simply too great. And it still is.

The hunters of this village, my father among them, are the only ones who are allowed to leave the zoo´s perimeter for a couple of miles. Because we need the meat, not only for ourselves but also for Thera, our female leopard, and Pan, the black panther, who are both living in our zoo. In the spring the hunters have to drag firewood for heating our houses into the village with the help of our three horses, Grey, Lila, and Snow. The heating systems have quit a long time ago, and also the electricity generators don´t work any longer. Fortunately, my father has never met a dangerous accident during the hunt. Still, my mother can´t sleep, each time he ventures out again. The memories of an incident of 20 years ago, when a hunter strayed too far from his group, was attacked by a band of wolves, and suffered fatal injuries, is still ingrained in everyone´s minds. After this occurrence the inhabitants of the zoo knew one thing for sure: They weren´t the only survivors on this earth. To prevent a drop in population, a set of rules was established after this event.