I woke up to the sound of machines buzzing and low murmurs around me. My head felt foggy, like I was waking from a dream I couldn't quite remember. The darkness in my surroundings told me I wasn't dead yet, and I let out a soft sigh of relief. My eyes slowly adjusted, and I realized I was in a hospital room. The sterile, cold smell hit my senses as I turned my head, noticing a man asleep beside my bed.
He looked oddly familiar, but I couldn't place it. His features were just like my dad's. His posture, his face—it was eerie. I stared at him for a moment, my mind trying to catch up. And then it clicked.
My uncle.
Why was he here? I'd only seen him once before, on my dad's birthday. My heart skipped a beat. My thoughts started racing. Where were my parents? Was this some sort of sick joke? I wanted to feel something, anything, but nothing seemed to make sense.
Then, my uncle stirred. His eyes fluttered open, and he sat up straight, noticing I was awake. He rubbed his face, wiping sleep away, then looked at me with a mixture of relief and uncertainty.
"Hey, Samuel..." He spoke softly, his voice cracking a little. "I know this is a lot... but I'm your father's older brother. I've seen you once, on his birthday."
I looked at him, already knowing what was coming. And then it hit me—the tears started to well up in my eyes.
One week later…
Apparently, I was going to live with my uncle now. He was my legal guardian, and it felt like a twisted kind of fate. He was just as broken up about my parents' deaths as I was, and he didn't know how to comfort me—much like I didn't know how to comfort myself. We both just existed in this strange limbo.
After all, we barely knew each other.
Over the week, we started talking more about family. He told me about his life in LA. He worked as an aerial firefighter, controlling helicopters in forest fires. As we talked, I couldn't help but think back to how much I hated LA in my past life. The fake people, the weirdness of it all, it always felt like a city built on propaganda. Now, I was moving there with my uncle, and I didn't have much say in the matter.
After what felt like forever, but was really just three days of driving with all the stuff from my parents' house packed in the back, we finally arrived. On the drive, Michael and I started getting to know each other. He asked me about what I liked to do, and I told him I loved nature. He looked at me as though I had said the weirdest thing a child could say.
"Nature, huh?" he muttered, like I was speaking a foreign language.
I didn't care. I was used to people looking at me strangely.
He told me he lived near the Angeles National Forest in LA and had spent the past 15 years living there alone, making sure nature wasn't disturbed. He didn't mind living on his own; he didn't need company.
When we finally arrived at his place, I was struck by how simple it was. It wasn't anything fancy. Just a practical house on the edge of the forest. Michael had a quad out front, parked there like it belonged. He started showing me around, pointing out the different things. It wasn't much, but it felt like a new start, even though the thought of living there wasn't exactly exciting to me.
When I got to my room, Michael left me alone to settle in. I looked around at the sparsely decorated space—just a bed, a desk, and a dresser. It felt more like a temporary place than a home, but I tried not to focus on that. I thanked Michael for everything, even though I didn't feel completely grateful. I didn't know him well, and he didn't know me.
It had been almost two weeks, and I still felt that emptiness. Before, I never really cared much about my parents. It wasn't that I didn't like them, but I had always felt like it was a 24/7 acting job—pretending to care when I didn't. Now that they were gone, I found myself missing them. My mom, who always tried to pull me out of my shell, and my dad, who just accepted me as I was, never pushing too hard.
My uncle noticed. He could see my sadness. He tried to help, offered words of comfort, but honestly, there wasn't much he could do. He wasn't great with kids. He wasn't bad—he just wasn't used to dealing with a child's grief.
The next morning, when I woke up, Michael was already at the table, his coffee cup sitting in front of him. He looked up when I walked in, his tired eyes studying me for a moment. "You're coming with me today," he said, his voice steady. "We're going to look around the forest."
I was a little surprised. "Look around?"
"Yep," he said with a nod. "You've been stuck inside long enough. Time to get out and see the place."
I wasn't exactly eager to go, but I didn't have anything else to do. I figured it would be a change of pace, so I agreed.
And just like that, my uncle and I stepped into the forest together. It was quiet here, the kind of quiet that felt like it could swallow you whole if you weren't careful. But for once, the silence didn't bother me. It felt peaceful. I realized that maybe, just maybe, I could make it here.
(I'm letting Samuel grow a bit before he fully enters the real world, and I don't want him to just make a lot of money by remaking things while he's still a child)