There was low droning overhead a week or so after the Detonations; time was hard to track. The skies were buckling with dark banks of blackened cloud, the air thick with ash and dust. If it was a plane or an airship of some sort, we never knew because the sky was so clotted. But I might have seen a metal underbelly, some dull shine of a hull dipping down for a moment, then gone. We couldn't yet see the Dome either. Now bright on the hill, it was only a dusky glow in the distance. It seemed to hover over the earth, orb-like, a lit bobble, unattached.

The droning was some kind of air mission, and we wondered if there would be more bombs. But what would be the point? Everything was gone, obliterated or swept up by the fires; there were dark puddles from black rain. Some drank the water and died from it. Our scars were fresh, our wounds and warpings raw. The survivors hobbled and limped, a procession of death, hoping to find a place that had been spared. We gave up. We were slack. We didn't take cover. Maybe some were hoping it was a relief effort.

Those who could still stagger up from the rubble did. They were quick. They climbed up on top of some rubble to get closer to the sound, drawn to it because it was commanding and coming from the sky.

That was when the air took shape, a billowing of shifting, fluttering motion- a sky of singular, bodiless wings.

Slips of paper.

They touched down, settling around us like giant snowflakes, the kind kids used to cut from folded paper and tape to classroom windows, but already grayed by the ashen air and wind.

You picked one up, as did the others who could, until they were all gone.

'We know you are here, our brothers and sisters. We will, one day, emerge from the Dome to join you in peace. For now, we watch from afar, benevolently.'
Like God, I whispered,they‟re watching over us like the benevolent eye of God. I
wasn’t alone in this thought. Some were awed. Others raged. We were all still stunned, dazed. Would they ask some of us to enter the gates of the Dome? Would they deny us?

Years would come to pass. They would forget us.

But at first, the slips of paper became precious-a form of currency. That didn’t
last. The suffering was too great.

It was like this for a long time.


The people of the dome- the only safe haven left- have destroyed the world, releasing strange nuclear bombs which caused many to die on impact. The few who survived became wretches, fused with objects that had been nearby during the detonations (eg: holding a doll=doll head fist, birds behind you=birds in your back, dirt-biking with your brother=eternal piggy back ride, fell down=fused to the earth=dead). The only ones who escaped this fate are the pures, the people who hide in the dome, the same ones who destroyed us. There is no known way in or out of the dome.

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