About what is important

My current WIP is a dystopian trilogy. Asked about what it was called, I struggled and came up with nothing better than ‚Trilogy about the end of the World‘. The title stuck and so now, I have the three parts: Part 1: About what is important, Part 2: The Feast of 2000 Days. The title for Part 3 is still a mystery to me, so I cannot share it here. Yet.

What is the Trilogy about? Part 1 is about a journey.

Just imagine you wake up one fine morning, and you find you are the only person left in the world (or so it seems). You are stuck in a hostile part of the world (hostile through nature, not people) and you feel the need to go home. What do you take? What are your assumptions about what you may need – on the journey and once you get there? I mean, think about it: you go on a trip, you move house from one country to another. Your luggage is restricted: what do you take?

When I moved to the UAE for the first time, I took ten suitcases. TEN suitcases- imagine! There were clothes, there were books, there were the things I needed for work. There were things that were related to ‚home‘. Did I need all this stuff once I got there? I ended up using most of it, but needing it? Probably not.

So now think about going home, traveling for about 7000 km, on a journey where you do not know what you will find. And then you are home, and there is nobody there.

When starting to write the Trilogy, I spent a long time thinking about what is and what is not important. The heroine of my story, Karen (who turns into Elle, but that is for another day), starts her journey in an old school bus. There is plenty of space. So, she takes things like food and water, paperwork (passports, visa, copies of her diplomas which she needed when she first left home on business). She takes clothes for all sorts of weathers, even some fancy clothes. Because she can. She takes a big knife, just in case.

Just to make her life a little more difficult, she will have to give up on the bus and continue on foot. What will she take? What should she have on her, apart from enough food and water to sustain herself?

What is really important?

In the story, I picked on her toothbrush. At the end of the day, Karen has to look after herself – not only while on this journey, but also during the time after. And without a dentist anywhere near, she should make sure to keep her teeth workable for as long as she can. Remember that scene in Castaway, where Chuck used a skate to remove his hurting tooth? Karen does not want to end like that (and has no skate to hand as it is).

What is important to you? What would you take on a journey that changes your life?