From clare_dragonfly‘s prompt: “Fae-apoc: the first planting.” Fae Apoc, clearly. Hob, I swear I got Dree from your name. (It’s actually Adriana Moreau, “dark one/little dark.” Um, she’s a bit dark. 😉

***

Dree surveyed the ruins of the city with a critical eye. Most of the people had left when the gods started fighting overhead. Of those who hadn’t, most had trucked out when the power plant had gone offline, or when the food stopped coming in. Dree and her small crew had lasted through that by building their fence up the moment trouble started, boarding up their windows when things got really bad, and moving into a nearby apartment building when the fires ruined their old neighborhood.

The winter had been hard, and they’d done their share of covert cheating to keep alive. The building hadn’t originally had a chimney, but who was left that knew that? A city of over a million now had maybe three hundred inhabitants, a good third of those refugees from larger nearby cities who hadn’t made it any further. They knew each other, their tiny conclave, only by what they chose to share, and, in Dree’s case, as in many others, that was precious little.

They’d made it through the winter on willpower, burnt furniture, and canned goods, but now the frost was gone, and something you could call spring was here. The yard near the apartment building had been a museum, once, and, inside, some art, mostly statues, still remained. But what mattered to them right now was the long stretch of ground which had been unplowed, mowed, fertilized, and well-tended for over a century.

They peeled off the sod, Dree and her crew and their team of fellow refugees, plowed up the lush, fertile soil, and planted scrounged seed after seed, watering with hoses and cans stolen from the houses of the dead and gone, muttering Workings when there were no humans to see.

Like the seeds, they had landed in a small corner of hospitable land in the midst of a burned-out wasteland. Like the seeds, they would grow and flourish. Like the seeds, they would live.

***

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