Three decades Ry and Erin wandered the forests, the vast sentries of hickory-oak trees that gave way to even vaster grasslands, walls of ice in the distance. The ambient sounds of the old world forgotten. At first, they considered this world silent. But now, they could hear the life around them.

This world was filled with life. Abundant with fish and game, with monstrous animals and predators that put grizzlies to shame. Lions, saber-toothed cats and bears, but also wolves and massive armadillos. Two great birds, massive condor-like creatures, that haunted the groups of people wandering the forests and fields.

Their old world was a place of death, a world with a sun setting on existence. They knew death would visit this place, they'd seen the fossils in museums, but for now they scraped and starved and lived. Goddamn, how they lived.

Even now, all these years later, they would stare into these spaces, watching the mammoth herds drift through the grasses. They still laughed at their first encounter with a giant beaver, which horrified them, a massive creature climbing from the river onto the bank, larger than any animal they had seen in person outside of elephants in a zoo. A source of true terror, that beaver.

They spent the morning gathering seeds and nuts, the winter would be here soon. The aches in Ry's bones were a giveaway. They made a good haul fishing in the afternoon, and again fantasized about the two of them taking down a mammoth. They'd seen the others do it, but it was not a two-man task. But for now, there were deer and small furry things scampering around.

Erin and Ry avoided the other people, fearing the spread of disease, but they watched them and learned how to tailor their pelts into clothing and shoes, how to fish, how to hunt. How killing an ox gave you more than just meat, the undigested stomach contents were a meal themselves. They did well. They survived. They avoided the devils, who seemed to know they didn't belong. Maybe the devils didn't either. Maybe the creatures climbed in from elsewhere too, and hated another interloper.

"You know what I miss?" Erin said, sitting on a grassy knoll.

"What?"

"Ibuprofen."

"Good one. Me? I miss hearing songs we don't sing ourselves. I can't keep making up lyrics."

"I prefer your lyrics."

"Even after all this time?"

"Paradise. The price of admission is monsters, though."

"No regrets, my love," Ry said.

A wave of heat, the light near them dimmed. They could see it. The portal opening, in the future and in their past. The smell from their time wafted to them, even supposedly clean air carried a caustic hint of chemical.

"That's it," Ry said.

Erin stood up. "Head on back, Ry. I gotta drop off a message."