The world shuddered. Not with an earthquake, but with the footfall of a god or a goddess. From my vantage point on what was once the roof of a parking garage, I watched as she stepped over the skyline, her form blotting out the midday sun. She was impossibly tall, her legs like smoothly polished marble pillars supporting a torso that scraped the clouds. This was sky. A shadow colder than any night fell over me, and the air grew still and heavy. I could see the individual scuffs on the sole of her bare foot as it descended towards the city block adjacent to mine. There was no malice in the movement, only casual, cataclysmic indifference. The foot landed with a sound that was less a crash and more a deep, grinding thud of finality. Brick, glass, and steel compacted into a cloud of dust that billowed outwards, peppering my skin with fine grit. Car alarms, tinny and frantic from this distance, wailed a chorus of protest that she seemed utterly deaf to from how ginormous she was. Then, her hand descended like a cover. Fingers, each longer than a city bus, curled through the dust cloud. They bypassed the ruins, […]