A/N: This story is categorized as "Spiritual," which means that religious themes play a pretty important role throughout. I'm not one to beat people over the head with my beliefs, but if that bothers you in any way, you probably won't enjoy reading this.

This is meant to be a multi-chaptered companion to "While I Was Yet Lost," a Wolfwood-centric one-shot. (You do not have to read that story in order to understand this one.) I've been mulling over the possible aftermath of Lost July for years now, but was unable to come up with a concrete storyline until now. Based on the anime version of events, obviously, because if it followed the manga, um... well... everyone would be dead, and that wouldn't make for much of a story, now would it? :O

"If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish." – Matthew 18:12-14

Why this happened, I cannot explain.

Why write the script with such heartache and pain?

Could there not have been an easier way? – Mercy Me, "My Heart Will Fly"

Lost and Found

Prologue

Stardate: July 21, 104 AF

Miriam Shepherd was an early riser. Part of this was due to the fact that she often had trouble sleeping – even ten years after the Bad Days, she still woke up to drenched bedsheets on most nights – and part of it was because it gave her extra time to devote to prayers before setting about her business for the day. Once she had completed three repetitions of the wooden rosary that hung around her neck, she put on coffee. Extra sugar, no cream.

Today looked to be especially promising, she thought. It was Sunday, and in a few hours she'd finally get to meet with the kids she would be teaching during the sermons, as well as get in some on-the-job training for her upcoming position as a church secretary. Twenty-six years old and fresh out of the monastery, Miriam wasn't sure what to expect when she first boarded the sand steamer for July City. She'd been fighting for two years now to remain within the shelter of those cloistered walls, but Sister Anna had been adamant that it was time for Miriam to go out and get reacquainted with the world – that the Lord, in fact, was calling her to it. Miriam thought it had less to do with the Lord and more to do with Anna's desire to keep Miriam from rising to any position of prominence among the other nuns, but she kept her mouth shut on that point. And now here she was.

Some concessions had to be made, of course. In exchange for agreeing to teach the children and field phone calls at the July Church of Discipleship, the clergy had had to convert the church's spacious basement into a dwelling place for her. Miriam didn't suffer from agoraphobia, exactly, but she needed to be able to retreat somewhere if memories of the Bad Days began resurfacing. Places without windows were a good first step towards recreating the feelings of security that the monastery's impressively high walls had afforded her. Also, they introduced her to coffee, which left her wondering if she hadn't perhaps misjudged this whole business after all.

She had to confess that she was excited to see the children. No children had been permitted to visit the monastery during the ten years that she'd lived there; as a result, she'd almost forgotten what they were like. She hoped her positive memories weren't just a matter of her being forgetful or sentimental. She hoped she'd be good to them, full of patience and understanding. She hoped, she hoped –

Miriam Shepherd didn't know it yet, but what she hoped didn't matter. In less than two hours, her entire world would end.

She felt it before she saw it: a feeling like her soul was being dragged out of her body, punctuated by minute tremors of her arms and legs, and a smell that reminded her of electricity, strangely enough. She had been standing outside, enjoying the breeze and open air that she'd – admittedly – been avoiding for far too long, when these bizarre feelings suddenly surfaced. At first she thought she was subconsciously evoking memories of the Bad Days, but was proven utterly wrong a few seconds later, when the chapel roof was suddenly ripped from its foundations as rudely and violently as if it had fallen into the hands of a petulant giant.

The July Church of Discipleship stood on a moderately high outcropping of rock, which had moments ago given her a pleasant view of the open sky and the tops of buildings too numerous to count. Miriam watched, horror-stricken, as it transformed into a scene from a nightmare: the buildings began crumbling away into dust and nothingness, and from somewhere within the flying mountains of debris that now concealed the city, an enormous beam of light shot straight up towards the suns. In the same instant, the sky assumed a blood-red tint – a color that she would soon find to be permanent over the weeks of tribulation that awaited her.

Miriam stood there, too stunned even to move or try to get away, before a raw wind swept up towards the chapel, cutting her to the bone. The next moment, she found herself pinned against the side of the chapel by the forceful gusts, forced to watch as a giant sheet of white light spread out from the beam, bathing the entire city in an otherworldly glow, in –

Heaven's light, she thought. Is this the Rapture? She didn't believe in such things, but moments ago she hadn't believed that July would be brought to its knees by such an unidentifiable force as this, either. Then all thought ceased as the light fell upon her trembling form, and she instantly fell unconscious.

It wasn't the light of Heaven. No force from the Lord's realm could have produced the hell she was living in now.

Miriam awoke several hours later, bloody and bruised, but alive. She arose slowly, looked down at her torn clothes in trepidation. Despite the terrible memories they were beginning to inspire her to recall in vivid detail, she wasn't hysterical. Instead, she just felt numb.

She surveyed the church with lifeless eyes. The essential structure remained unchanged – in fact, the entire face was still there, the large cross perfectly preserved upon its crown like a tiara – but the roof had vanished entirely. Walking down the pews, she found that the wooden floors and walls had held up well, as had the grand piano and altar. Her home was still there, intact but for the overturned books and furniture.

If God had caused this, she reasoned, He sure had been capricious. Still, she grasped the tiny wooden cross around her neck even tighter as she continued to investigate the extent of the damage.

The electricity still worked, but that was to be expected; being located up on a rock, the church had to rely on a fuel-based generator for power, which was also located underneath the building. If she didn't use the lights and only cooked and bathed when she absolutely had to, she could probably get by for two weeks. Actually, she probably didn't need to cook at all; she had plenty of canned food stored down here.

It frightened Miriam a bit to realize how pragmatic she was becoming in such a short time. Still, she couldn't dwell on that. She tried the radio next. It worked – that is, it turned on – but all she got was static. Whatever had destroyed the city must have also taken out the satellite that had been floating above the desert planet for more than a century now. She grabbed her satchel, stuffing it full to bursting with food and bottled water, then went upstairs.

She walked out of the church, looked down at the city. She almost couldn't comprehend what she seeing: so great had been the destruction. Smashed buildings littered the landscape in no diminutive number, smoke rising from the few buildings that remained standing. She tried to see if there were any people down there, but the smoke was too thick. Still, she thought, that light hadn't disintegrated her, so it stood to reason that there were plenty of survivors down there.

She picked her way down the rock, taking care to avoid the trading stalls that now lay in splintered ruins here and there. The destruction had occurred early enough in the morning that nobody had been manning them. At length, she found herself near the sand steamer station that she herself had arrived at only a week ago. A cacophony of voices – some screaming, some crying, and some lobbing furious curses – accosted her hearing. Her first instinct was to turn around, run back the way she came, but then she would be no good to anyone at all. Miriam pressed on, wishing she'd remembered to take a gun with her.

The sight of an enormous crowd greeted her as she turned a corner; they were gathered in front of a recently arrived sand steamer, and they packed the area so tightly that there were people inside undoubtedly being suffocated to death. Miriam screamed and drew back – she couldn't help it, it was so much like Then! – but she was soon swept up into the sea of humanity. The arms and legs of hundreds of nameless, faceless people jostled her, bruising her already injured body, as she was alternately dragged and pushed closer to where the massive steamer was situated. Through her rapidly blurring vision, she could see the captain of the steamer calling out to the mob in a terrified voice, trying to restore order among them.

"Please, listen to me! We don't have the room to board all of you. If the women and children could just file inside in an orderly manner, we'll take them on the first trip back. Then – "

Someone lobbed a rock at him. It struck him in the head, drawing blood, and he fell from his perch on the steamer, disappeared into the mob. Some of the people detached themselves and began shoving their way through the steamer's only open entrance. Miriam called out to them, trying to make herself heard over the howling voices.

"Stop this, all of you! If you'd just stop and think for a minute, we could resolve this peacefully. I've brought food and water. If anyone has a need, anyone at all – "

It was she tried to say, what she so desperately wanted to say, but she just kept screaming instead. Someone ripped the bag of food from her shoulder, but she took no notice of it. She could hear bones crunching as people were trampled underfoot, could hear children crying as they were forcibly cut off from their parents. For a split second she came face-to-face with the pastor of the July Church of Discipleship, waving a gun and screaming furiously with the best of them. Suddenly it didn't matter to her that these people were desperate and afraid, that they were only bringing about their own destruction by fighting to board the steamer. She was experiencing two traumas at once, and if she didn't escape, that hideous strength would destroy her –

She continued to be buffeted about like a rag doll, until finally, mercifully, she found herself slammed into a small opening on the side of the steamer's waiting station. Curling herself into a ball – or into as much of one as she could manage – the nun gripped her rosary, the edges pushing into her palm and growing damp with her sweat. Closing her eyes tightly, she feverishly muttered the prayer that had seen her through previous panic attacks. It was a simple prayer, nothing like the elaborate rosary prayers she chanted each morning, but it had always been enough to sustain her during those terrible times of misery and need.

"The Lord is my shepherd – I shall not want – He makes me lie down in green pastures – "

She finished the Psalm, then started all over again – and again, and again, and again, until finally she passed out, slumped inside the nook that was barely big enough to contain her body, as the inhabitants of July City continued to tear each other apart.

A/N: So, uh... yeah. My female OC is a nun with post-traumatic stress disorder. That's not a Mary Sue, right? Not to mention that there's zero romance in this story, anyway.

Also, I'm aware of the distinction between sisters and nuns, but kept them one and the same in this story for the purposes of simplicity, and because that's what most people are used to. Gunsmoke seems to have adopted a sort of religious mish-mash, anyway (see: Nicholas D. Wolfwood, the priest who can't decide if he's Catholic or Episcopalian).