This is a continuation of a piece chosen by random-date-choice.

It follows Mourning Lost Gods.

February, 2012

We thought the fights had died down.

There were twelve of us, now, refugees every one of us from a world that simply did not exist anymore. We had found a building near the river that still had walls, still had a roof, still had doors that shut and locked, and we had turned it into what we could of a home.

There hadn’t been any GodFights in weeks, not since the last major brawl, but it was February in the Mid-West; maybe even those that would call themselves gods didn’t want to be out in the cold.

From what we could gather – from the radio, from the one tv station that still came through, from the refugees that came and stayed, or came and left – it was the same everywhere. The fights had died down.

They said someone had nuked a god; someone else said they had nuked the doorways. We didn’t care, not as much as we should have. I know I, at least, felt like all my caring had been seared off like burned nerve endings, somewhere in the collapse of everything I’d ever known.

We were like trauma victims, like refugees, like unwilling colonists starting over in the ruins of a civilization. If we thought about the gods at all, we thought to be glad that they had stopped, be glad that, maybe, this building might stand, be glad that we could breathe, and be warm, and move on.

We had found a way to make a proper chimney, and we had pulled together a wood-burning stove. We had found food – you don’t want to know some of what we ate, but there was enough that what we were eating wasn’t each other – and we were beginning to find community.

And then a half-dead god limped into our little haven, muttering words of magic and bleeding on our doorstep.

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