Maysie's Galaxy ONC 2023

The World as it Became

In the month leading up to the revelation, earthquakes started up around the globe. Global tremors were not uncommon. The Earth did go through cycles with them. But this sinkhole was too much for the conspiracy theorists, and they began shouting, "The end is upon us all!" Those who believed themselves more rational thought it would only be the end of this or that nation—the same as it ever was.

By the day before, visible distortions began to form around the globe, such as the bulging at the equator became far more prominent. Tsunamis wiped out many coastal communities in a never-ending cycle.

Most of this news didn't fully reach the Midwest because there was just too much of it—and Americans were isolationist by nature. Maysie's parents went to work that morning, leaving her with the babysitter known as Florence.

She was playing outside and had been told to not go into the empty lot because a bad man had started to camp there when the Mother of All Earthquakes hit. Everything jumped a skyscraper height into the air.

As Maysie rotated, she caught sight of the hole. She watched the wall collapse as a beak far bigger than the hole took out a good 3rd of Nebraska.

Just as harshly, she fell. She hit the Loess Hills as they began writhing like a snake nest so hard that the breath knocked out of her right before she lost consciousness.

It was for the best that the child didn't witness what came next. That beak repeatedly attacked the hole it made and pushed its head through the crust of the Earth. Fragments of shell went hurdling through space—much it to never be seen again. The chunk with the small girl's parents on it? It hit the moon before the atmosphere broke up. And the remnants of the hills she had lived on slumped down the face of a bird that didn't even have its eyes opened.

The one who did find her—and witnessed everything—was the bad man, who prayed to a God he didn't believe in, promising to change his ways if God allowed him to save this one thing from the devastation going on.

Perhaps it was God's mercy that kept them both alive, to see if the man would live up to the promises he made as the bird thrashed around, fighting for its own life while hatching. Perhaps God was more worried about the bird than the parasites on it. Perhaps there was no God and the miraculous salvation of two people was a slap in the face against human preservation. There wasn't a right answer that anyone could be sure of.

One thing was certain: any proof of who or what God was had died with the cracking of the foundation of the world. That's what killed the man's full certainty of whom he had bargained with.

It took Maysie 3 days to wake up. She was bundled up in filthy blankets on the man's lap, as he tended to a fire on the edge of a scrape in the dirt. It was another endless moment of shoving lukewarm water down her throat in little tickles, trying to keep an all-but cadaver hydrated.

When she sat up and bawled, "I want my mama!", it made the man cry himself, as broken as that child.

Before they finished, the baby bird opened its eyes for the first time. It had been facing rump end towards the sun, struggling to gather the energy to feed, having the same fight with death as anyone who survived on its surface.

But its eyes opening gave the whole landscape a preternatural glow: a light sharper than the moon's, yet not near as harsh as the sun. It radiated a gentle warmth, and the man's shoulders sagged in relief as the odds of their survival increased with two ginormous eyes that filled the whole of his vision.

It took far longer for Maysie to calm down. Children don't forget their parents for anything, but they have such a strong leaning towards being in the here and now that they can sit there in awe of starlight within reach of their hands while waiting for their parents to show.

But it was a brief moment of awe. The bird began to forage. It moved towards the moon and attempted to swallow it with a fast jab. The moon got stuck halfway down, and the baby thrashed as it painfully swallowed its first meal. For Maysie and the bad man who was her savior, it was disorienting and made them lift off the ground a hair, holding on tighter because there was no security in the earth beneath their feet.

Once the thrashing stopped and the fire was rebuilt, the bad man told her to keep bundled and he went out to search for canned food. They were very lucky that one of the cellars that landed nearby had several years worth of rations that managed to survive the devastation.

Eventually, both the bad man and the child were used to their new world and they began to cling to each other less. Along with that shift came communication that went beyond survival.

"What's your name, child?"

The child was eating a can of warmed beef stew. "Susan May Hornsby. They called me Maysie-May. What's your name, Bad Man?"

"Alder Nahimana."

"Your name is pretty. Why are you the bad man?"

He sat with his legs crossed, knee upraised to brace his elbow, for this chin's sake. The thought of truly answering this question made him sit upright and choose his words carefully. "When I was young, I was angry and took my anger out on other people because I thought that life wasn't fair."

"Is it fair now?"

"No, child. It's wholly unfair. But worse, I thought the world favored others in its unfairness. It turns out that we're all handed misery and strive to live through it. So, I have no more anger at other people. The rich and poor met their end together."

"Why aren't you angry?"

"Because I want you to grow up not fearing me. We live in enough danger from this bird."

Maysie might not have understood his answers, but these were questions she asked that grew with her, over time. Alder was an extremely patient teacher, having had the fire knocked out of him by their strange new world.

But he never told her exactly what he had done to be the bad man.