For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “23) write a scene that takes place in a place that is war-torn”
From dailyprompt: “highway” and “that awkward moment when…”

Set in Faerie Apocalypse.  You can find Nila also in Hey you Kids get off my lawn!

*~*

The city lay in ruins. Nila didn’t know when, if ever, Michael was coming home. Power had gone out a week ago, and the looters had come through the neighborhood like locusts. She’d held them off when she could, hid with the children when she knew she couldn’t, but it was time to leave.

She settled Susan in her Kevlar sling and from there into her car seat, and made sure Allan’s backpack was balanced and light enough, taking the far heavier pack for herself. She checked all of her weapons and both of Allan’s, stared for a while at the note to Michael, and led her children out of their home.

The highways were buckled and bent, twisted like a ribbon in ways that would be unbelievable, if you didn’t know that god-monsters walked the earth now. Nila took the back roads near there, keeping an eye on the gas gauge. If she’d planned this right – yes. The car ran out of gas just as they reached the edge of the worst devastation, past the mobs and the crazy people, past the banks of less fuel-efficient cars and the toll-takers.

She settled Susan on her back and held Allan’s hand with her left, and sited a path south. South, she’d heard, the devastation was less complete. South, the winter would be warmer and more survivable.

She focused on the path in front of her, on her children, and tried to ignore the ruins around them that had been home.

~

They had been walking now for three days. They had to take it slow; Allan was sturdy for his age, but he still tired easily, and Nila couldn’t carry him, not and Susan, too. The kids were taking it like champs, but she could tell, as the sun began to inch downwards, that it was time to stop.

She was focused on the children, ignoring her training in a way that would have horrified her former Mentor, ignoring the surroundings, when they rounded a bend in the long country road and found it blocked.

There was a long awkward moment when she stared at the man-creature and he stared back at them. “Creature” because he was clearly not entirely human, “man,” because the part of him that was looked like a boy in his mid-twenties. “Awkward…” because the thing was clearly trying to decide if they were a threat. Them, a twenty-two year old girl and her two young children. She took a long look over him, cataloguing his injuries, noting that he wasn’t Masking the things that marked him as inhuman – or perhaps no longer had the energy to?

His doglike ears canted in her direction, and she dropped her own Mask, letting him see the flower-like patterns that swirled across her skin, and the blue “petals” of her ears. “We just want to pass,” she told him carefully.

He stepped out of the way awkwardly. “I won’t stop you.” From the way he was swaying, he couldn’t if he wanted to.

Nila sighed, and set her pack down. “Swear you mean me and mine no harm.”

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM. )LJ)
20) Write the end of the story ‘The Purple Bag. (LJ)
21) Roll a d20 twice. Combine the themes of the two previous stories for those numbers. (LJ)
22) Prompt: White Knight (LJ)
23) write a scene that takes place in a place that is war-torn