Every Hopeless Thing
ShortStory 6,910 words Recommended by 2 award/anthology sources
"Elodie finds a pair of old opera glasses in the empty husk of an abandoned silo. The gleam of the metal catches her flashlight beam and throws it back, and Elodie squats and fishes out the glasses with tentative fingers. The silo is huge and dark around her, so quiet her footsteps echoing sounds like trespass, but the glasses are proof it was once inhabited."
Quasar links out; the story lives on Clarkesworld, where the author gets the click.