The Winter

Ballona Willow has spent her life learning how to survive in a world that is already falling apart.

Inside the bunker, where the air is stale and the walls feel like they are closing in, every day brings something worse than the last: hunger that never goes away, sickness that spreads quietly, fear that settles into every corner, and the slow realization that no one coming from above is ever going to save them.

As the people around her begin to break, Ballona clings to the one thing she still has left, a foolish wish for snow, for something beautiful, for proof that the world outside the bunker still exists.