“If you’ve ever been on a river in the Everglades late at night and have a flashlight shine it on the shoreline, any reflection of glass is quite possibly crocodile eyes reflecting back at you. They survived when the dinosaurs didn’t, and they seem to be thriving when humanity is faltering.”
He said it matter of fact but to June, who didn’t know where the Everglades were and had never seen a Crocodile, Alligator , or any other large reptile for that matter she heard the words with syrup and imagination.
“Do they swim fast daddy?”
He smiled and shook her. “So fast baby girl”. His hands making a snatching motion as he snapped at her arms.
The nights were filled with these stories, his attempt at some small form of education. They would laugh, they would talk about places far far away, and sometimes memories so distant he would struggle to remember the details. These nights would come after long hard days on the road searching for food, avoiding other humans. Not safe to trust anyone but Kin he would tell June again and again but the girl only knew him, and he intended to keep it that way. He did his best to protect her, and to try to leave her with enough survival skills to make it in the world when he was gone. But the days came hard, and these small nights of respite only paused the terror of what life had become for a brief moment.
To June she was just on the road with her father. Life wasn’t hard to her, it was just life. She didn’t hold any nostalgia for a world she never knew, but she still loved hearing about it. She didn’t remember her mother at all, and her father never spoke about her. But she knew where he kept her picture, in the left corner pocket on his brown leather jacket. Sometimes she’d sneak a look at the picture once her father had fallen asleep.
If the moonlight hit the fading celluoid just right, the picture would reflect almost metallic like, her mother staring back at her.

With crocodile eyes.