They reached the Last Border before dawn, sweaty, tired but determined. They were faced with a questionable fate, one that their elders had spun versions of tales around it and for decades, their people were yet to know the truth.
Every generation produced dreamers who questioned the tales. Beneath stern lectures, fear and threats of isolation, the dreams were quashed. The button that controlled the ancient steel door rested under a cracked glass cover lodged inside the wall beside the door.
Cortney and her friends stood in a semicircle, staring at the button. Dust coated the enormous steel door while vines with ashy leaves had somehow rooted themselves through cracks in the ceiling.
Pryce broke the nervous silence first. “Let's do this.” With a single strike from the wrench he pulled from his backpack, he shattered the glass covering the button. The sound was so loud they had to cover their ears for a moment.
Nobody moved for a long while, breathing and waiting to see if anything had changed. Cortney sighed and gripped the edge of the button, her knuckles pale. “If this is the end, at least we'll meet it walking instead of hiding,” she whispered. The others nodded in response, their eyes glued to the button.
“I'm going to push the button,” she said with a finality borne of courage.
Cortney placed both palms on the buttons and Pryce immediately placed his on hers. The others joined in succession and they pushed the button down.
A deep metallic groan reverberated through the Last Border like a loud thunder threatening to tear the sky apart. They heard gears inside the walls shrieking in protest as they ground against each other, releasing the locks one after the other. Then there was a moment of silence before the door hissed and slowly slid open.
There was a rush of fresh air that smelled not of chemicals or destruction, but rain and wild plants. Cortney and her friends watched, mouths open, tears welling up in their eyes at the sight before them. The scent of blooming flowers and dewy grass were unfamiliar to them but it called to their DNA, releasing the innate knowledge that the scene before them was natural and right, the very environment where they should be.
They saw a valley ahead glittering beneath the morning sun while houses built of wood and stone nestled peacefully among the fields surrounded by golden grains. Children chased one another, laughing heartily while a few adults walked around. Some of them turned to stare at the young strangers.
“What have you done?!” Two of the elders screamed from a distance within the Last Border. Cortney and her friends turned around in shock. The elders were not alone. Other people stood behind them, their eyes wide in fear and shock at the sight of the opened steel door.
“You finally opened it,” a man in the thriving city who had drawn close to the door said with a smile. Cortney ignored the elders behind her and walked through the door with her friends into the warm sunlight.
“You knew we were here?” Cortney asked the man. The woman beside him answered. “We always knew and kept repairing the mechanism on our side, waiting for the day you would finally come through.”
More people began stepping out through the steel door, murmuring and smiling for the first time in many years, realising they had been in prison for so long.
I hope you enjoyed reading this short piece. It's inspired by the Freewrite #dailyprompt phrase "I'm going to push the button".
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