The next morning she awoke to the sun glinting off the windows of the huge, hollow shells looming over her home.

There was bird song today, from the small stretch of forest she had left, although there were no birds that she could see. The butter was dry of water again, but no emptier than yesterday, and she chose to fry the heel of the loaf today. Variety is the spice of life, and all that.

She only had two eggs today, the ones from the corner of the coop. Samantha was taking her weekly morning off and the others followed her example.

She hadn't yet found salt, or sugar, or cinnamon, or really anything of use in the cupboards, but she would make do. She had lived off of scrambled eggs and fried bread before, she could do it again.

She was a little worried about what would happen when the bread ran out, or the butter stopped refilling itself, or when the bucket of food scraps by the back door didn't replenish itself overnight, but it was a vague worry, something in the back of her mind that she couldn't quite grasp onto.

She could always feed the chickens their eggs back to them, and the birds could subsist for a time off what they scavenged from the earth, but it wouldn't be good for them.

She considered herself, and then reached over, petting Gertrude, who was shuffling around her feet.

Worrying wouldn't do her any good, so instead she may as well face the day.

Tucking her basket under her arm, she resolved to go explore the city, and properly this time.

-

Four days later, the butter ran out. It didn't worry her as much as it should of, but she would miss the comfort of that morning meal, the bread just wasn't as good on its own.

She explored each morning and dug her small garden each afternoon. She hoped that in time it would stop resetting itself, and that the changes she made would stick.

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She had loved gardening, she thought, maybe. It felt like it had been a meaningful activity in her life, and there was an urge to be outside, to dig, which she couldn't resist.

It had been autumn, when the world ended, and her garden, what was left of it, was bare, ravaged by the chickens in preparation for a spring yet to come. Each afternoon she had scraped it clear and planted the seed potatoes she had found in the back of the airing cupboard, and it was a start.

Eventually, it would stick, and then she would have potatoes for dinner.

-

Her hope that things might change was renewed upon the morning of the seventh.

The shop hadn't been there yesterday, she had been down this road many times, but now it filled the bottom of one of the cake tin buildings. There was a wooden sign outside, and glass and metal doors, which she half expected to open as she approached them, although why she would think that, she couldn't say.

It was a superstore, she decided as she entered, like the sort the town council had shut down the building of almost a decade previous. There had been whole petitions about it, she remembered. She hadn't cared much either way, it would have been all the way over on the other side of the village, but others had.

They'd have been up in arms if they'd seen what was going on now.

The inside of the store revealed shelves as far as the eye could see, and large advertisements for products she had no idea about nor care for. Shiflewease, Coat Polish, Night Extractor, and so on and so forth. It was a dizzying array of colours and nonsense.

That said, there was some logic, and some words she recognised. One rather alarming aisle was simply labelled BLADES, and she stayed far away from that one.

Near the back of the shop, for it wasn't actually endless, she found a section labelled PROJECTS, and there she filled her basket with things she hoped would still be food by the time she got them home.

There was a checkout stand back by the entrance, labelled UNTILL with two Ls, but there was no attendant present, nobody to squint over her goods and demand money, or to trade for her eggs and greens.

She left two eggs on the counter anyway, just in case. They weren't the ones from the corner of the coop, but fresh offerings from Jenny and Jeremy, and with only a slight hesitation she made her way out and back home.

She didn't think she'd ever stolen anything before, but there was a first time for everything. She thought she might even be starting to understand the thrill of shoplifting.

That night, as she tucked into her meal of BOKKEN and PI- things which, when she opened the paper packets, were revealed to be half an egg and cress sandwich and raw spinach- she decided that whatever being was putting the world back together, they weren't doing a very good job at it.