It would be until the next dusk that, with my claws sworn in, everybody here could go back to the planning quarters already lived in, and leave this boggy-scented camp for abandonment.

A few more hours. Plenty of time to plan...something. But what? Why did my mind see something in this? I wasn't usually a planner, unless somebody else was with me and could handle that sort of thing, in which I'd just follow their lead. No matter how much I paced or talked to the other cookies, my mind stayed on one thing, a thick black marsh threatening to drown me -- the city. The city's destruction was still fresh in my mind. Fresh as the smell of the salt-water it sat in, fresh as the fish on display in a market that came and go, fresh as the city's leader's dress that started some awful trend one year. It lingered like the sight of bright lights just below the surface, hoardes of jellyfish lighting the seas like the stars, and the yearly festival held around them -- to guide them back home.

Back home. I want to go back home.

The marsh had won my emotions over, and to sink or to swim, I was a metal weight. But I could bring the city back.

Just not by myself. It would take as many people had fled it to cull a city anew, to build upon an empire, one that would not be lost under clawed rule. I'm the savior. And all I needed was that city's population. An amount of people could fufill any dream.