If she’d had to pick, she’d say the worst things about this new world were the rats.
The rats under consideration weren’t the of late frighteningly scarce normal ones, though those had caused quite a bit of trouble in the beginning. No, the rats she’d have meant were Beast-rats, ones that could seem normal until you were close enough for them to strike, and then dropped that guise in favor of some demonic form straight from the deepest pits.
Their cat had saved her five or six times over from those things, earning increasingly better treatment from all of them, which, being a cat, it graciously accepted as its due. But the cat was getting old; as with all flesh, the day would come when they lost its protection, but none of them wanted to think about that yet.
Sometimes, when she was just waking up, she’d look at her husband’s face, relaxed in sleep so close to her own, and think the whole thing had been some crazy nightmare; that she needed to hurry off to her job in the bustling city among all the other people; that the world was circling on as it had all the earlier days of her life, with Mankind ruling with a sometimes clumsy but always firm hand. Then reality would come crashing back to her, and she’d have to choke back her tears so he wouldn’t wake and be crushed by them.
He was her rock, the one without whom she would truly have despaired, and he could face beast, troll or giant without flinching, but her tears always felled him. There had been many tears, of course, especially early on, and not just from her. You could say you were ready for the collapse of civilization, play at preparing for the loss of everything you’d ever known, and even believe it to your core, but when it actually came about, you couldn’t watch the world shatter around you without being sliced open by one piece or another.
Tuuli Hollola shook off her despondent mood and put on her “I’m a happy crazy lady!” smile before going back to join the others topside. After all, life went on, even after the world ended.
