Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 2

the marble floor of the abandoned hotel lobby, draping about himself bedclothes from one of the rooms and hoping with all his heart for the opportunity to be face-to-mask with the stranger without the need to be in danger.
    The founders had brought myths saying a rabbit's foot was a good luck charm, maybe Alaric's good luck charm would be a gas mask at the end.
    ****
    Blessed be the Universe for I was able to help him again.
    ~ Sule Sarong's Personal Log - Standard date 5772.03.12
     
    When Sule discovered the handsome lad, it had been raining. Sule had rounded a corner and by pure chance looked up. The vision was there, naked and pale in the filtered light of the morning. The green, weathered double doors behind him and the ochre and pink façade of the two-story building did nothing but enhance his lean frame. The contours of his long arms ended in manly hands firmly grasping the wrought-iron balcony. With his body tilted a little forward, as if to catch the blessing of the rain more easily, the naked dream had his eyes closed and a line of happiness curved the plump lips on a square masculine face.
    Struck by something more powerful than lightning, Sule staggered out of sight, just in case the young man looked down. Sule stood there frozen, until he tasted the rain and realized he was gaping in idyllic awe.
    Nova Gaia architecture had been designed after Earth's Belle Époque, before the Great War, and the ornate building had two statues not far from the vision's balcony. Those representations of beauty were mere children's doodles compared to the willowy godling enjoying the rain.
    The place wasn't far from his own; ergo it amazed him how it was possible he hadn't seen this man before. Sule floated— enthralled— on the street until the lad became bored or cold and moved inside without even looking down at the street once.
    The first time Sule helped the handsome lad, he was wearing his gas mask. It had been a particularly dusty day, and he'd had it on as a precaution. Now, he kept using it so the lad would know it was the same stranger helping him every time because it had a distinctive blue mark. However, Sule had never had the courage to introduce himself.
    Nova Gaia recovered quicker than the humans who thought they had conquered her. A lustrum after the dust plague, Nova Gaia was lush again, while the sparse human population had reverted to an age long before the colonization of this planet. The devices running on extended-life batteries still worked, but those that needed constant renewal had been abandoned since there weren't enough skilled survivors to keep things in working condition.
    Hundreds of years of human civilization in Nova Gaia had been destroyed in less than six standard months by a plague with no rational or scientific explanation. Powerful furnaces, wielders of the metallurgy-based industry of the planet, had been used to incinerate the insane amount of bodies left by the plague in its wake and to avoid a second tide of disease originated by the indiscriminate decomposition. Ironic since during the Second Industrial Revolution and France's Belle Époque on Earth the theory to eradicate diseases had been developed.
    Large industries were inconsequential; there were no masses to consume. Cattle and poultry roamed freely in the mountains far from the outskirts of the one-time prosperous colonies. People survived mostly from the animals that were never truly for human consumption: rabbits, dogs, doves, cats. All former pets and therefore stuck within the cities.
    Sule hadn't eaten a dog or a cat yet, he tried to stick to rabbits and doves. Occasionally, a hunting party would go to the mountains and come back with meats. Meats, they would exchange for sexual favors.
    As long as the man was clean, Sule hadn't had problems with it, and his stomach had always thanked him greatly afterward. Now, after the vision at the balcony had entered his life, the thought of another man joining him felt somewhat on the verge of disloyalty. So invested was his mind in the lad, it was only appropriate for his body to follow suit.
    The plague had left the survivors so melancholic that there weren't even the usual hoarders trying to keep goods for themselves and profit. Anyone could go to the stores and get clothing and footwear. Scarves and hoods were the most popular articles since many survivors presented facial abrasions.
    Perhaps the lad thinks I'm disfigured because of the gas mask.
    Saddened but grateful to