If there had been any psychic in the city, he might have noticed the ripple of awareness that ran through the rocks on the edge of some greater wave. It’s highly doubtful, however, that our theoretical psychic would have realized what that awareness meant before he died.

It’s a moot point, anyway. There were no psychics in the city that New Year’s. There were, however, a lot of other people.

The operative word in that sentence is “were”.

Sometime after sunrise, the earthquake struck – and kept quaking. The ground tore open. Huge sinkholes swallowed whole neighborhoods. Spurs of rock shot up from the earth to tear through homes and public buildings. The city, being built largely of brittle stones from upriver, collapsed as the walls began to rip themselves apart.

Around midmorning, the wind picked up, ripping through the still-quaking city, catching up anything loose – stones, livestock, people – and dashing them into the ground. Pitch-black clouds formed spontaneously over the city, releasing torrents of rain that seeped into collapsed buildings and drowned any survivors trapped inside. Wild lightning tore through the air, clinging to every corner, crackling and hissing but never dying, picking off those unlucky enough to have survived.

By the time the sandstorm tore through the area at noon, no one was left alive in the city. The howling sand twisted in on itself, drawing away from the sinkhole it had emerged from. It flowed throughout the ruined city, flinching back from every quake of the earth, curling away from every snaking bolt of lightning.

The man who arrived in the city that evening was no psychic, but he’d known enough of them to have acquired something of a sensitivity. He staggered across the broken ground, ignoring its half-hearted quakes, to sit on a fairly stable boulder near the sand, which had by now pulled itself into something of a twister. The stranger ducked as a stray lightning bolt flashed over his head, then straighened up and looked at the sand twister.

“You can calm down now,” he said.

The twister hunched over. The wind howled, raged, and died.

The man braced himself against the boulder as the earth gave one last lurch, then settled. “That’s a bit better,” he said, eyeing the dancing lightning warily. “Can you do something about the sparks?”

This time, the man did fall, trying vainly to cover his ears as the loudest thunderclap on earth boomed through the city. The lightning all struck the twister, which seemed to be trying to force itself into a shape.

Cautiously, the man raised his head. His ears were ringing something fierce, and he could barely hear, but he didn’t think the damage was permanent. He stood up again and slowly approached the twister.

“Your mother’s waiting for you,” he said, and the twister collapsed into a thin man with haunted eyes. Gently, the other man caught him and led him away from the ravaged land.

There was now one psychic in the city, but only for a bit.