It was not the finest city. That was the Windmerre, where you could see through the translucent ice under your feet to the city’s twin underneath, a perfect mirror hanging underneath in the freezing sea and every bit as beautiful.
It was not the grandest city. That was Arktar Tiir, atop the pole, thick-spired and aglow at all hours of dark and light.
It was not the oldest city. That was Riir, nestled in the heart of the big bay and shielded by craggy hills, like it was afraid to leave the grasp of the land too far behind.
Dirredew was none of those cities. It was barely a city at all.
But it was the only city they had left.
***
Several hundred years ago, someone had found a lovely wide crevasse in the ice. Then they’d told their friends, who’d told their friends, who’d told their friends, and so on.
Now instead of a lovely wide crevasse in the ice there was Dirredew, which was a lovely wide crevasse in the ice that was filled with pockets holding families, storage-halls, freezing-galleries, carverooms, meltchambers, and so on and so forth.
It also held all that was left of them after the funny little warm people had come with their machines. Machinery was not a common thing, since it needed walking on the land and ripping of the dirt and the stone. But the funny little warm people had loved the land, and so had all kinds of ingenious machines like the little tubular ones that they would stick into you and warm you from the inside out until you collapsed into dead grey slush, or the huge war-radiators that would shred a city’s walls in a few days, or the cunning sorter-sluices that would sift through the melt and rubble for whatever it was they were killing everybody for.
Maybe it was people’s hearts. The funny little warm people did like shiny things, or seemed to, as long as they weren’t made of ice. Ice they didn’t like at all.
So now there they were, all of them that were left, waiting down in Dirredew’s depths. Barricades over the causeways; camouflage over the barricades, quiet down in the arcades. Everyone shushing each other, nobody breathing too loudly, not even one chisel ringing down in the carvehalls where otherwise new lives would be made every day.
But there were hot shots from funny little warm people up above anyways, and then the low great grinding sounds of the machines being pulled up. So everyone could relax and start talking again, because their doom had come.
***
Their doom took some time to start up. The funny little warm people’s machines didn’t like the cold much – maybe that was why they were so effective at ruining it – and they always took a good few hours of grumbling, rumbling, crumbling, and mumbling before they would really begin to steam and hiss and growl.
So there was time to say goodbye and so on. Final wishes, final kisses, final tears, final plans, all the things people did with each other.
One of the final plans was a bit of a surprise, even to the person who had it. But it was a big surprise, so other people noticed, and it surprised them too,, and so on and so forth until at last everyone had heard it and seized it and taken it up as something to do, which is always the best and most comforting thing you can have at times of incredible and inevitable doom.
A plan to-do is a weight of eternal suffering, but a plan enacted is friendly and cheerful and one to treasure. And since there was no more time left for to-do, all that was left was the happy ending.
***
The little warm people broke through the last of the barricades some time later, melt-tubes in hand, violence ready. Dirredew’s many winding ramps were well-built; ridged for a proper grip that let even the biggest of their war-radiators roll downhill without a single slip, and their travel through the city was headlong and ferocious, each street taken at textbook speed.
The family-pockets were empty, and that made sense because the people liked to spend their final moments in as much company as possible. The funny little warm people ignored them save for a few cursory scouts.
The storage-halls were empty, and that was a little odd because they were some of the biggest places for public assembly, if you liked that sort of thing. Many of the funny little warm people stayed here to plunder the vaults for valuables anyways. They did so love things that shone.
The freezing-galleries were empty, and that was very very puzzling because they were large and spacious AND they were the last places that would boil and fry under the weight of even the mightiest war-radiators, so carefully sculpted for chill and cold they were. The funny little warm people set up some of them to begin the process and shuddered at the chill and pressed onwards.
The carverooms were empty. Half-carved people sitting there, not yet alive, abandoned by their parents. The funny little warm people stopped for a moment to torch some of the more complete ones, but none of them were finished enough to be alive and so it wasn’t satisfying at all.
The meltchambers were last, and here the funny little warm people were at the apex of their confusion because everywhere the people could be hiding was empty. Was the city abandoned?
So since they were so confused they fell back on the textbook thing to do, which was open up the meltchambers so their warmth would help their machines melt the rest of the city, and that was when all the people came pouring out at once in a great flood.
***
The little warm people made meltwater. It was what they did. It was what their machines did. Nothing made a little warm person smile like seeing blue liquid lap where ice mountains had stood.
But they didn’t swim in it. They especially didn’t swim in it when they were weighted down with the little grey tubes and the armoured coats and the heavy boots that they wore to go out and melt the people.
Then the flood of the people reached the war-radiators and turned red-hot, and it also became clear that the funny little warm people, for all their use and abuse of heat, didn’t like too much of that either. The flood steamed and hissed and roared and some of the funny little warm people tried to run but the heat outran them, raced upwards, ate the ramps and the floors of Dirredew out front underneath their feet and left them with nothing to save them but empty damp air.
If any of the people had still been there, they would have been greatly surprised to see the funny little warm people scream for cold, for cold, for cold. A wish for ice of all things.
But they wouldn’t have been surprised for long, for then the machine-scalded water bored through the bottom of Dirredew’s crevasse and the little warm people found something bigger and colder than they could’ve ever imagined, but they didn’t have to worry about that for very long.
***
Time passed. The other armies of the funny little warm people completed their missions and returned home. Throngs welcomed them, children worshipped them, leaders adorned them with shiny things that they loved so very much.
No more cold, no more cold, no more cold.
And at the ends of the world where there was no more cold or ice the ocean turned and turned upon itself and the currents changed, inch by inch.
Snow fell in odd places the next year, which puzzled the funny little warm people.
They would be very puzzled for a very long time.