Back stooped, legs bowed. Face weathered and scored with lines, each one telling a story of a long life.
She has lived through a pandemic, the third Great War, the rise of the machines. Still she walks on, unbowed.
Her family is long gone: her true love long ago when the disease caught him; her son in the war; her daughter succumbed to the lure of artificial intelligence and is now a stranger to her.
The incessant rain drives into her. She remembers a time when there were whole days, weeks even months, without rain. Not any longer. When she was a child they didn’t have hurricane season here. Now it beckons, and she will batten down the hatches once more.
With luck she will emerge again, surviving another year, another small piece of her eroded away by whatever history decides to throw at her.
Like the other survivors, she will endure. It is humanity’s final quality the refusal to submit: she is obdurate in her will to survive.
She walks the few worn steps to her door. She enters with her carrion and her picked leaves and berries – enough to keep her going if she eats sparingly.
The door closes, shutting out the world that cannot destroy her.
This is a response to the #writephoto Prompt: Worn curated over at Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo. Click on the link to read other stories inspired by the image.
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IAIN KELLY 
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