The cobbles were hard beneath her feet, and the basket heavy in her cold arms. The waxing moon illuminated the crumbling arches she passed through, glinting off the gently moaning bodies of tramps, glowing on the exposed flesh of whores leaning in the doorways of the dilapidated buildings.  Without warning the walls ended and the world shone in moonlight as bright as day, yet lacking in its warmth, its frivolity - this was still lady night’s domain.  
     A cathedral  loomed before her, walls crumbling, faceless statues lamenting to the sky, the whole debacle testimony to ages past, and to beliefs and rituals long forgotten.  The sky behind it was scarred by the ever-present plumes of factory breath, the clouds twinkling with the thrusters of photon couriers.
     In the shadows glinted malicious little eyes.  Plague carriers and vermin, bearers of the Century Virus, harbingers of death and misery - their corpses lined the alleys of the city slums.  Sitting on the steps she ignored their chattering and shuffling and closed her eyes, the basket falling out of her hands. She ignored it.
     She felt a presence beside her, felt the pressure of feet upon her skirts.  She frowned, her eyes still closed.  She presumed they had used quantum teleportation but she had not heard the habitual hum and crackle of air, nor would anyone in the slums be able to afford a teleportation device.  The aristocrats never ventured out of their homes, let alone into the urban wasteland that she called home.  Her heartbeat quickened.
     Opening her eyes she looked up and inhaled in shock.  The figure next to her massive, taller even than most genetic modifications could make you if you had the money and the greed.  Cloaked entirely in black, the figure appeared to her like a black hole in the sky as she looked up from the ground, the moon like a parody of a halo around its head, the religious iconography lost on her.  Protruding from the darkness where one would expect a face, and what shocked her most, was a mask of ancient designs and purposes - empty holes gazed out upon the world, and below a long, thin, protrusion.  Had she known its name she would have called it a beak, but she had never seen a bird in all her young life, the skies devoid of anything other than metal and toxic smoke.
     It tilted its head downwards and appeared to look at her down the long mask, the empty eyeholes pinning her down.
     “I am the moonsong.  I am the whispers of dying leaves in autumn, the weeping of stars long since dead.  The earth moves below me and the heavens fly above me but I do not alter my path, I do not falter.  As reliable as the constellations, as unpredictable as the winds,  I am the butterfly whose wings caused the Apocalypse.”
     His words meant nothing to her and she tore her gaze away horrified.  And as soon as the harrowing figure had appeared, it was gone.  Standing she gathered her skirts in her hands and stumbled down the stairs as she tried to run, but she was too late.
     The rats left no part of her uneaten.