Twilight of a Rescuer

Things had actually started to calm down. In the larger scheme of things, it was twilight. The twilight of everything I’d assumed would last forever. For all the material things people held so dear.

Destiny held me: how she had found me in all the chaos was inconceivable, and yet I’d always known she’d be here now. I felt her toned stomach muscles heaving against my chest as her arms held me in a strong embrace and she sobbed. My mana was starting to get used up. People could smell it when there was an excess, and they’d come and hover like humming birds at a nectar feeding station. Many of them were not going to be around much longer. She said in a low voice how she was looking forward to the end of this, and a fresh start even though we both knew the price would be so very high, and the chaos unimaginable.

Whatever. By the time I or any of my friends get around to producing a grandchild (or even a child, come to think of it), we might as well have to explain what computers had been. And frozen dinners. And celebrity clairvoyants and airplanes and New York and America and even cities, and heaven only knows what else.

— An excerpt from the draft of the book Saving Katy by Rex Latchford