Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [2115]

Later, after dark, we could see the fire eating its way toward us. There were dogs running along the road with us, but they paid no attention to us. Cats and deer ran past us, and a skunk scuttled by. It was live and let live. Neither humans nor animals were foolish enough to waste time attacking one another. Behind us and to the north, the fire began to roar. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 2115

Note

Apocalypse rendered as a truce — the skunk and the cats are the strangest, funniest, most human detail in the chapter, and the narrator’s dry summation (‘It was live and let live’) makes a moral observation without moralizing. The paragraph ends by dropping the animals and returning to the roar, so the truce reads as an interval inside an ongoing threat.