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FLASH. And then darkness came. Darkness, but not nothingness. It also became a little lighter, when stars and moon came out. This place felt familiar, but Fundy was sure, that he never was there. It was a beach. Very peaceful one. No sound is heard, except for wind's howl and waves' quite splashing. This place feels uninhabited, but at the side he sees two bridges across the sea. A pair of abandoned trains just stay on those bridges with no movement and no light. He turns back. A forest, full of oaks. And... A little graveyard nearby. There is a few graves there, about ten or so. He don't want to know, who's in them. He can also partly see big ruins in forest.
"Where am I?" Fundy said quietly, not expecting any answers. He was alone here, after all. But he got one
"Limbo", a soft voice answered. He turned around and saw a majestic woman in black dress and kind expression on her face. He can swear she wasn't there a minute ago. "The world of dead. My world"
Fundy almost panicked after that. And almost started to deny it. He can't be dead. His son needs him. And he still had one life left. This woman was lying... But the aura of divine figure, the very much essence of eternal peace of death all around calmed him. It's hard to worry, when goddess said not to
"Let's take a walk, shall we?" and so the woman slowly went to forest. Fundy followed her
"But how? What happened?" he asked broken. He can't believe Yogurt will be orphan.
"Oh. Well... It was something massive. Explosion, that affected all lands and nations with heat, that vaporized netherite and shock wave that destroyed everything, but bedrock. The only way to hide from it was to run to other dimensions" she answered a little ruefully. Fundy was shocked and his body was paralized
"You're lying. It *is* impossible" his voice was broken. "There is nothing that can do such a thing" he was quite. Quite, just as everything else here. He couldn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it. He could come in term with his own death, but not everyone else's.
"I wouldn't mess with my grandson, Fundy! But if this belief makes you feel better, than we can pretend, that it didn't happen" she took his hand to help moving forward. "Now, maybe we should change topic?"
"What do you mean, *grandson*?"
"That you are my grandson? Oh, right, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Kristine, goddess of death and Philza's wife. Didn't he tell you about me?"
Fundy was surprised, to say the least. *He didn't even know gods were real*
"We... We didn't talk much, actually"
A soft laugh with the shade of pity
"I understand. Life is hard and complicated. Eternal flow of events and changes can destroy all connections one had once..." they entered ruins. They looked like weird amalgamation of L'manburg and The Town That Never Was(Fundy completely forgot about it... Until he saw the central pedestal). Now that he thinks about it, they were kind of similar(Did Karl know how L'manburg would end from the beginning?). Burning flag can be seen from far away. *Regret*. "So... How was your day?"
Fundy tried not to look at any of destroyed buildings. His eyes looked at the ground instead. The question brought a little smile to his face though
"It just started! I woke up a few hours before sunrise because..." a little pause and his voice was a little nervous "... Because I wanted to bake some cookies and it takes a lot of time. It would worth it, tho, we didn't have them in a long time. But yesterday was great for a little exception, I think. Peaceful, at least. There was no work to do, everything was finished a few day ago. So after little breakfast I wanted to go to..." once again a little pause. Shame was well-hidden, but nothing that Kristin wouldn't notice. "... Unimportant. I didn't got to get there anyway. Yogurt showed an interest in a book about some fictional future. Mainly because of a cover, obviously. And so..."
"You read it to him?" Kristin guessed for the purpose of showing that she listens
"Better! I teached him how to. Well, I tried. I quickly realised that I am a bad teacher and Yogurt being a quick-learner doesn't compensate it. We spended half of day on it with little progress. It was... Exhausting. We really needed a break and I needed some fresh air. I decided to take a little walk in the nearby forest after lunch and Yogurt didn't want to stay home alone, so he came along. It was quite outside, ignoring ambient sounds of bugs and birds, of course. Forest smelled nice. A perfect place and time to relax. Or run around and collect mushrooms and berries, as Yogurt did, but I'm to old for it" the last part of the sentence was obviously humorous
"You're just twenty-three! You're a little kid yourself!" half-jokingly said Kristin with a soft laugh. Fundy had no energy left for laughing, but his smile became a little brighter
"Well MAYBE if it wasn't for..." he wanted to continue the series of half-jokes, but disturbing thoughts started to overflow his brain the very second his mind started to think about those events. He needed to mentally come back to that forest. "... Anyway. Where was I..."
"Your son collected berries"
"And mushrooms, right, thank you. He said that he would make a salad for dinner and, spoiler alert, it tasted terrible. It was a nice first try and he put so much effort into it... But I really need to teach him how to cook too. He did a good job in collecting ingridient, tho. I think I could make mushroom soup with them..." and then he remembered where are they. "... Or maybe not... Well, as I said, it was a nice stroll. We even found a wolf. It would be better if we didn't tho. It was hungry and we were the almost only thing it could eat in miles. It roared and was obviously angry, but Yogurt TRIED TO PET IT. Holy fuck, do kids have at least some self-defence instincts?? Good thing I had few pieces of meat in my inventory from lunch and I don't want to think about what would happen if I didn't. But... Yes, this is how we got a dog. Yogurt was excited, but honestly, it was fucking terrifying... And then all three of us went home, because rain was coming. All the way back Yogurt tried to come up with the name for our new dog and he did picked one. Really weird one. Like, what kind of name is Fluff. It's stupid!"
"Dumb name, you say..." a sarcastic tone was obvious. Fundy quickly understood what she meant.
"... Fair. Anyway, it was already pretty late when we came back. We had time only for a dinner and then it was time to sleep. I came up with a short fairy-tale for Yogurt and..."
"He fell asleep, lying on his right side, facing new friend, which slept nearby" Kristin finished the sentence, looking and a white-haired boy and big gray wolf, peacefuly sleeping on a pile of rocks. For the first time Fundy lifted his eyes. Tears came through at this very second.
"Well, welcome to new home. If you'll need a help in restoring any of those houses, just say my name" Kristin said before turning into murder of crows