The Aftermath

Rava Thorn pulls down the brim of her hat to shield her eyes as the sixth wall of dust in as many hours blows past the ruins of what used to be her home.

Even calling it ruins seems inappropriate, really. There's no remembrance here of the lovingly-built house, no scraps or splinters left of the table around which her family once enjoyed her Aunt's cooking and her Grandma's dessert. The old laser-scarred tin cans her aunt's wife used to teach her to shoot at are gone, too, presumably processed for the raw metal by sKeth.

The very concept of 'landscape' is all but destroyed. Hills used for cover and shot out by massed artillery, rivers drained dry until the dirt of their beds joins the world-wide dustbowl. There is no sound now, save for the whistling in the wind and the quiet compacting of dust beneath Rava's footsteps.

She takes to her knees, dust pressed into her tattered trousers. Water wets the dust, holding just this little portion of it from being blown away by the winds. A sprinkling of plant food replaces the drained nutrients of the soil, and a small seed is slotted into its new home.

That little seed might not last. If it doesn't, Rava will try again. If it does, it will return to the soil a little of what it took, and grow roots that hold the dirt ever more firmly, making life just that little bit easier for the plant alongside it.

Rava shuffles back a bit. She is going to invite Lightning for dinner in her home, on Oasis, once again, and she is going to do so under happier circumstances.