I jolted awake, "Dad?!" my face was wet with tears, and I hugged my knees to my chest... "It was just a bad dream.. b-breathe... I-It's all over now..."

"Hello?" I heard someone call out... I must've been too loud... then, a young woman with dark skin turned the corner... "oh... what are you doing here?... don't you know everyone's evacuating?... Come along, Little One... Let's get you to your family before Hela finds us..."

I sighed, wiping a few tears from my cheeks... "Okay..."

We went outside... There was a huge battle being fought, and in the chaos, I snuck off to watch from a safe distance as a horned figure emerged from the fog... he loudly announced, "Your savior is here!" ...I smiled.

I took out a tempad, and went to a different timeline... I've missed him... but I can't stay... I walked through the glassy void of the unknown to go to my next hideaway of death, and destruction...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

2093, Midgard. The virus known as COVID-19 adapted into a parasitic zombie virus, or whatever... Maybe, if the humans in charge acknowledged the increasing global warming crisis, they'd realize that the wildfires had killed off most of the possible cures...

It's a pity... absolutely shameful... that humanity had fallen so low... the human population that had remained either fled Midgard, or burrowed underground.

This wasn't an ideal place to be... but, if you're careful, you can survive. For nearly a year, I've hid in places like this... but don't worry, I still have 10 more years of running, and hiding before I go back to the Time Variance Authority.

As I walked through the glassy unknown, the smell of decaying, burning flesh filled my little lungs... I looked up at the sky... the rare times you could see through the smoke, and ash in the air, you could see the aggressive orange-yellow that was burnt into the once blue sky...

I walked through the overgrown, yet ever so lifeless, city of New York... keeping my guard up. A stampede of animals ran down the street a few blocks down, like a raging river. They had escaped the zoo when the world went to Hel.

The holographic screens on the buildings flickered things from ages ago, like, "Elon Musk for president!", "M. Stark funds search for a cure!", "Simpsons; season 136 predicts the sun coming up this morning!", "Man with unibrow, and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle still at large!", "Family obsessed with bats stops a crime spree caused by a clown!", "Peter Stark confirmed Spiderman?!?!", and "Teen girl, Luz Noceda, rumored to become a witch in the demon realm, now her mother has 6 children: fact, or hoax?!"

...don't worry... humanity was doomed far before all of this...

I walked into an odd, abandoned bar that should've been shut down years before the disasters... I pressed a button behind the counter, then the metal shudders covered the windows, and doors like a protective shell, and the lights shut off as the black lights illuminated the whole floor.

I took out a little notepad, and noticed it had been 363 days since I had started living like this... I was also turning 6 on that day... I put the notepad away, climbed up onto the counter, and just laid there... staring at the ceiling that was covered in graffiti that glowed in the blacklights.

"Happy Birthday to me... Happy Birthday to me..." I lightly sang to myself... "Happy Birthday, dear Melanie... Happy Birthday to me"

Tears were escaping my eyes, and running down the sides of my face... but my tears only clattered onto the surface of the counter... they were frozen into little ice crystals.....

It must have been over a hundred degrees outside, but that didn't matter. I could feel the air around me chill as every surface in the room froze over... sheets of ice spreading over everything quicker than fire...

I looked over to a mirror, and saw that my skin had turned an icy blue... but I didn't feel cold... This was me. Melanie Lokisdottir, age six. Just a weak, pathetic little girl who misses her father... her home...