DAN
Unbroken

Everything was gone. In the course of only one afternoon.

Gone.

Dan Flyheight stood on the banks of one of the three rivers that met and combined here. His home, Seasta, was ordinarily a lively, heavily-forested trading town. Perhaps in some other existence it still was, but what faced Dan now from where he stood, on the western edge of the village, was a ruin.

Sturdy wooden buildings that had once been homes or businesses had been toppled.

All three rivers ran black with the dirt and ash swirling through the air.

Everyone was dead.

And the incomprehensibly vast hickory forest - from whence had come food, shelter, and an almost magical type of wood renowned for its ability to bend but not break - was completely engulfed in bright, angry flames, lost forever.

Dan still unthinkingly clenched the grip of his hickory bow in his left hand. He hadn't even had the opportunity to use it. Miraculously, after everything, it, and he, were still in one piece.

He had left the house earlier that afternoon to go hunting. His father, a doctor, had a busy practice, and his mother, a historian, was wheelchair-bound. His sister Dahlia was still only a child, and afflicted with some mental burden that left her often aloof and difficult to understand, besides. Dan had had to grow up quickly as a result of these facts, often taking on responsibilities in number and difficulty that far exceeded what were normal for his age. Hunting was one of these responsibilities.

It did not feel like one, however. Dan prided himself on being able to contribute to the health and nourishment of his family, and his skills with a bow were superlative. He did not enjoy killing any living, feeling creature - and aimed first and always for the fastest kill possible so as not to cause any more suffering than was necessary - but to see his parents' faces light up when he brought home a meal that would last them several days was indescribably gratifying. Others might have chafed at the obligations of being something of a third adult in the family, but Dan had never viewed it that way.

Besides, he had always enjoyed the "company," such as it was, of the forest. Its ancient trees, many living for hundreds of years and countless generations, had quietly carried on over the years through fire, disease, dust storms, overlogging, and even a flood long before Dan had been born, when the unusually snowy winter in the nearby mountains had been followed by an unusually warm spring in the valley, and the banks of Seasta's three rivers had simply been overrun.

No, to step into the forest's verdant embrace, to steal soundlessly through the dirt and leaves on its floor in soft-soled boots, to experience deep shade and a delicious silence: these things were not drudgery, but a gift.

Dan had not known what was happening far beyond Zi's atmosphere as he had set out from his house for the forest that afternoon, bow in hand and a quiver of arrows slung over his back. It had been a cloudy day, and it wasn't until those clouds had scuttled aside just as he reached the forest's edge, like curtains opening on a devastating final act, that anything at all of what they were all about to face had become clear.

The very first thing he had done was run back to the village, yelling at the top of his lungs. It was amazing how few people, in the course of their ordinary, everyday existences, ever bothered to look up. Perhaps some lives could have been spared had anyone seen the apocalypse about to envelop the planet before Dan had.

But then, perhaps not, because the people who heard Dan yelling and pointing at the sky had looked up, seen the danger themselves, and begun gathering everyone to head for the forest, where Seasta's mighty hickories, who had lived through everything and still stood tall, would protect them.

Hickory wood had always bent, but not broken.

Until today.

The burning meteorites, most no larger than a pea, had fallen down on Seasta's beautiful, ancient hickories in an unforgiving hellrain, punching through the trees' hardy trunks as though they were made of jelly. All it took was one tree going up in flames, although it was probably many more besides, before the entire forest was ablaze.

Everyone had gone into the forest for protection.

No one who had entered the forest had survived.

And the only reason Dan was still alive, standing here beside the river instead of being another charred corpse among the burning hickories, was that a neighbor had told him Dahlia wasn't at home, had last been seen playing by the stone bridge, and he had gone to find her so she could be ushered to safety in the forest.

And next to the stone bridge, beside the banks of the river, playing with the smooth river stones she loved so much, was where he had found her, just as his neighbor had said. She had looked up upon hearing his approach, and begun flapping her hands excitedly, as she so often did. There was always so much she seemed to want to tell him on any given day, and though she was mostly non-verbal, he sometimes was able to understand her, anyway, by asking simple questions or pointing to things and seeing how she reacted. Today she might have wished to tell him, perhaps, about a beautiful new rock she had found, or how she had stacked ten of them up high, one atop the next, without a single one falling.

He had been almost to her, reaching his hand out to grab hers the more quickly, when one tiny little piece of hellfire had hit her, shooting through her chest like a bullet, cutting her down right where she stood. He only just managed to avoid grievous injury himself by throwing himself to the ground before any of the dirt and rocks the meteorite had sent flying could hit him.

Dan wondered idly now what it was that she had been so excited to tell him.

He heard a series of cracks and then a great thundering crash emanating from the forest, followed by the roar of a yet stronger inferno. Another old soul gone. The flames engulfing the pride of Seasta, not content to have their fill from the numberless hickories, licked out of the trees, seeking dry grasses, timber-lined wagon roads, a path to enter and feed greedily upon the town itself. To the north, one cottage was already burning. It was only a matter of time before the rest of Seasta was, too.

There was nothing left now.

The next village was three long days' walk west. Dan touched his left cheek, brushing away the tear sliding over the red marking there that many in Seasta had worn. He was the only one left alive who still bore it.

What did this mean, when even the mightiest he had ever known had fallen?

Who was he, to still be alive, breathing in the ashes of the dead instead of burning among them?

The hickories had bent, and bent, and bent, and it wasn't until the apocalypse that they had finally broken.

Beside him, the river's gentle current murmured to itself as it worked its way around brand new obstacles that had not been there mere hours ago - branches, rocks, splintered timber - as it pressed onward, still and forever enduring. Dan turned and began to walk, to the west, towards the molten sun, still just visible through a haze of ash as it seeped below the horizon.