The city howled with an icy wind. Two fig­ures hud­dled as they made their way along the cracked bitu­men. Being care­ful to step over the spots where green vibrant grass had pushed through.

The taller fig­ure, a man, walked with pur­pose. He knew where he was going. Sud­denly the smaller fig­ure, a young girl, broke off and ran to a vine cov­ered wall. She ran her hand over it and shot a con­fused look at the man.

“Why is the rock flat?”
The man laughed. “It’s con­crete.” The con­fused look remained. “Some­one made it.”
“Oh.”  She tugged at the green­ery, then went back to run­ning her hand over it.
“Come on.”

The man  picked her up and walked fur­ther along the street, they turned a cor­ner and it opened up on a court­yard. He dropped her on the ground and stared out over a thin, rusted rail­ing. He could see the grey ocean churn­ing in the dis­tance and he was lost in his head for a long time.

“Dad?” The lit­tle girl asked, ner­vously.
“Yeah, kiddo?”
“Where are all the peo­ple?”
“Long gone I think.”
“where’d they go?”
“I’m not sure.”
“So we’re safe?”
“Yeah.”

He felt her small hand grip his tightly. She didn’t like being here at all.

“You want to go?”
She nod­ded yes.

They turned around and began head­ing back the way they came.

“Where are the ani­mals?”
“They’ve been gone even longer than the peo­ple.”
“So no cows?”
He laughed again. “No, honey. No cows.” He looked down at his daugh­ter. “You like cows, huh?”
“Yeah. Rory doesn’t like cows though. He’s says they’re dumb and they smell.”

They were pick­ing their way through the grassy patches near the edge of the city again. The girl lifted her arms up. The man grabbed them and threw her up onto his shoulders.

“I wouldn’t want to live in a place with­out cows.”
“Me nei­ther, kiddo. Me neither.”

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