Golden Rose

The sun was rising.
Since I'd left the Vault, every little thing was so amazing. Sunrises and sunsets were so much more special to me than to most other people- people who'd been living in this place for their entire lives, or most of it, anyways.
It was our second day of traveling east. Vanessa and Melissa were tired by the continuous 'hike', as they put it. Fire didn't seem to mind- after all, he had been living on his own when Vanessa and Melissa found him. We had stopped because Melissa had tripped over a rock and ripped her already slightly shredded sneakers in half. I mentally smacked myself for not getting her hiking boots.
I tore my gaze away from the sun and concentrated on the shoes in my hands. Though the left one was hanging together by threads, the right one only had minute tears in it, if you didn't count the toe of it hanging off. I rummaged around in my backpack and found some packaging tape, a needle, and a tiny spool of dark green thread. I had never learned how to sew. It took me about five minutes to even thread the needle. I tried sticking it into the worn material. It worked. I added some messy, lopsided stitches to the shoe and reinforced my work with the tape.
After fixing the other shoe, I handed them back to Melissa, woke Fire, and started off.
"Hey, Nicole," Vanessa said.
"What is it?" I asked.
"You wanna know why Firecracker's named Firecracker?" she asked.
I turned to look at the dog loping at my side, and then at Vanessa's mischievous grin. "Okay," I said, giving in. "Tell me."