The bakery flooded in the sixth day of rains and left Marjon without a living. When the levee on the fifth district broke, the water came flooding in through the basement windows fast enough that it knocked over the bread racks, inundated the ovens, and sank the cashbox.
She grabbed two of the two loaves she had made with her own hands and held them above her head as she fled. She kept them dry there even when she crossed water so deep she had to hold up her chin to keep from drowning, past fleeing rats and debris so wet and dark it was impossible to tell what it was.
Marjon finally made it to the higher ground of the sixth district and sold the two loaves to a man who paid a fair price with soaked currency. He gave her one loaf back and gestured for her to eat, and the two sat on what was now the embankment of the district, watching the detritus of their lives and the lives of their neighbors float away.
Chewing methodically, the man patted himself down in the way people do when they have forgotten something. When Marjon looked at him questioningly he said, “I lost my keys.”
Both he and Marjon laughed.
See the author’s published work here.
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