Our mothers told us of The Endling. They would perch on the ends of our beds with their faces threaded with a suspense so taut we were sure they believed in her too. With little claw-like fingers they would enact her prowling on the city’s edges. At sleepovers, we collated our findings.

                “My mum told me she has black stripes across her ribs,” said Sweetums.

                “Nu-uh,” disagreed Honeybear, “my mum said she has a fat arse,” she dropped her fingertips to the floor in front of her, sticking her bottom high in the air, to a chorus of high-pitched shrieks and giggles, “with thick, black feathers like smoke sprouting from it.” She stepped around the bunker like this, wiggling her bottom high in the air. We heard snorts from the corner and we whipped our heads round and glared at the mums huddled in the shadows, cups of tea steaming from one hand and the other tucked over the chest. “Sorry, sorry,” they waved their tea-free hands.

                “Well my mum,” Darling leaned forward to bring the attention back to the centre, “says The Endling has tusks as heavy as time itself,” she held her arms out in front of her, shoulders hunched close to her face. She swung them near Sweetums, and Sweetums fell back onto her sleeping mat with a crinkled face and the usual: “Stop iiiiiiiit!”

                “How can time be heavy?” asked Honeybear. “We can’t even see it. It’s just there—” she spread her fingers out wide in front of her, palms up, “—and then it’s gone!” She clapped her hands together.

                “I think Darling means the unbearable dragging of days, which The Endling feels so much keener because she’s the last of her kind; all alone,” said Dear in her voice like stone. We all went quiet. “Totally unique, she is the most precious, and yet, without another, she is worthless. She wanders the ashes searching for her mate, unaware that she’s the only one left. Her solitude is what creates her and destroys her each day.”

Us girls had grown so silent we could hear the mums shuffling and whispering in their corner, but we just ignored them. They promised we could carry on having sleepovers like before, and them huddling quietly in the corner was the best we could do, now that all of us Females were stuck down in this bunker together. Sweetums started to cry.

I reached out a hand and took Dear’s cold one, and with my other hand wrangled Honeybear’s still. We formed a seated circle. “Well,” I began, “my mum told me The Endling’s loneliness means that she has crossed eyes, which have turned to each other for company,” (Honeybear pulled a face for Sweetums beside her and Sweetums giggled through her tears) “and her voice has retreated inside her head, and she tells herself stories, of finding girls in bunkers—” Darling stiffened, but I met her fearful eyes, “—and bringing them news of what she has seen out there.”