The first order of business was to situate the chickens back outside, and the second was to work out how the wood stove functioned, so she could have some breakfast.

There was already an egg nestled into her bedding by the time she returned upstairs, Samantha hard at work, and she found two more outside, nestled in the corner of the coop. Whether they had been there a day or a thousand years, she couldn't say, but they would feed her either way.

-

Tucked away in the oven, she found a heel of bread, and there was a crock of butter hidden under the step outside, the water seal long evaporated, but the butter itself fine.

She sat in the kitchen to eat, and considered The End of the World, staring out of her back door and musing about nothing.

It hadn't been so bad really, she thought as she washed up the plate, placing it back into its space on the dresser. It had both come and gone in an eyeblink, and now here she was, eating millennia-old butter, staring at the cat-claw scratches in her kitchen table, and wondering who lived in the huge grey monsters outside.

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She had never- she thought as she tucked her basket under her arm, checked the linen insert, and pulled her coat tight- she had never seen anything so big before.

Even the trees which had towered over her cottage, held barely away by the threats of her fathers, or brothers, or own axe, even those trees were small now, in comparison to these giants.

She wondered as she left, if she should lock the door behind her, now that she lived in a city. That was what city people did, right? Locked their doors and hoarded their money in banks and chests.

She would have to buy a lock, if that was the case. All the ones she had only worked from the inside.

She had never had much use for money either, but there was a bottle filled with coins by the door, a gift from her grandchildren for their backwards old nana, their laughter a little mocking, but not hurtful. She would just check things out today, and if she needed money to pay for things, she could bring it with her in the future.

There was a pang in her heart as she considered her family. Had they made it through the End, as she had, were they out there somewhere, lost in the endless grey, awaking, feeding their chickens, and then falling once again into slumber, as she had until so very recently?

-

She couldn't lock the door, but she did leave a note on the table, just in case she wasn't the only one awake in this broken world.

It would be nice to be nearer the shops, at least.