“What happened here?” the girl said. “Why are they dead?”

Silhouettes like stone. Cluttered and flat, eyes staring inwards.

The girl tugged on his sleeve. “Hey.”

He did not reply. Time passed. The girl stared long at him. Black streaks ran like rivers across the city, sweeping emptiness into the earth’s sullen heart.

“The children got away.” He said. He ran his eyes along the horizon. A turgid grey. The beginning of a storm. “Let’s go.”

The girl followed, gripped his sleeve. There, in the alcove above city square, a figure watched them leave.

---

Mist rose in galloping swirls, creeping and bloating and fading. Ferris in the distance. Rust and the dead breath of an age past.

A sinking feeling gripped the girl. An old friend. She began to cry. Small pitiful sobs that echoed across the field.

He bit his tongue and continued.

---

It ran through the crevices of the city, gathering oil and dirt. It ran black down the windows of hollowed houses. Arms reached in. Hallowed memories took them and danced. Fleeting joy erupting into longing. All across the city windows flashed amber, before descending back into austere blue.

The girl cried louder.

Blood dripped from his mouth.

---

Sometimes she would murmur in her sleep. Half-formed words. A soft stream, twined in the ether of dreams.

Sometimes he would remember. A still house, and an immense lack.

---

“This is where we lost,” he said. The girl gazed out. There were hundreds of domed roofs. White, cracked shells, hollowed rooms.

“We?” the girl asked. She picked up a piece of roofing. “We?”

He fingered his coat button.

The rain stung his skin.

---

The district was untouched. Warm amber trickled out of the shops like laughter. There was a joy here that was not ready to leave.

It had grown darker. The sky was suffocated in black pollution. Tears fell from their ankles, trailed lines across the shop floor.

Wooden figures lined the walls, flat eyes staring into nothingness. A thick dust lay upon their heads and shoulders.

The girl stopped in front of a small, child-like figure, palms facing one another, as if cradling a missing object. “This one’s me,” she said quietly.

“And this one’s me,” he replied, sinking to the ground. On the opposite wall lay a nutcracker, rifle pointed to the sky.

---

The streets were howling. Glass shook. Latches twisted and broke.

“It’s begun,” he said without emotion, flesh turned pale. The girl stared at her feet. Slowly, slowly, her legs were filling with stones.

“You did this?” she asked. “You?”

He began to shake. The edges of his body frayed, spun. Dust in a beam, twisted to an invisible tilt. He was falling between himself.

“Why?” she cried. “We were starving. We—”

Thunder bellowed above. Streaks of darkness ran from the sky to the ground. The dead city had nothing left to rot. An emptiness descended and drew the colour from its walls, the smell from its air, the song from their throats.

Unable to speak, she stared at him, horror burning a hole through her chest.

Bodies drifted past the shop window. Limbs, fingers, pointed to the earth, heads turned away. Street lights flickered. Each flash flattened the soldiers, lit their flesh paper white. The city folded inwards. Card-thin walls collapsed in sequence. She felt herself losing definition. Compressing into caricature, insubstance.

He gave a weak smile and held up the missing object.

Palms facing one another, she pulled it to her chest.

The city collapsed.