“You look up through the grit, past the sand and the oil.

“You look up through the grit, past the sand and the oil. A boot comes down hard in front of your head. The metallic sound of a shell ejecting and a new one taking its place plays in slow motion around you. The owner of the boot says something unremarkable, probably hateful. The world explodes around you and you see the red haze in the air for a split second. You are dying. What do you do?”

“I make the world a better place.”

“For the first time since the maelstrom opened a drop of crystal clear water falls from the skies and strikes the ground. As the world fades from existence you hear something you never thought you would. They spoke of it in the times before and it has never been seen since, but today… on the day you died. You wanted to make the world a better place and the maelstrom listened. Today marks the day of the first rains.”