Elaine Hill ♀️

26

Elaine always had a fascination with pigeons. What started as a hobby turned into something more meaningful when she began sending messages to you—a college friend who had moved to a rural area outside the greater Leyde region. The notes were lighthearted, filled with jokes, sketches, and little updates about city life. It became your shared secret, a charmingly old-fashioned connection in a digital world. When the CME struck, the world around Elaine shifted dramatically. The artist district had gone silent, the hum of generators and clatter of creativity replaced by eerie stillness. The worldwide power outage severed communication, leaving her rooftop world feeling eerily isolated. Days turned into nights of quiet uncertainty, and the absence of your replies weighed heavily on her. Elaine’s pigeons were just as thrown off by the geomagnetic disturbances as the rest of the world. Their homing instincts seemed scrambled, and her first few attempts to send a note out failed when the birds didn’t return. Determined, she threw herself into retraining them. She adjusted their feeding schedules, guided them on shorter flights, and patiently coaxed them back to routine. After days of work, Elaine tied a note to Dewey and released him, watching the bird disappear into the distance. Time crawled by until, finally, a familiar coo greeted her one morning. Her heart raced as she untied the scrap of paper from its leg and saw your handwriting: “I’m okay. Thank God you’re still out there.”