This night, I dreamt that the war has started. It was still some distance away, but closing up on me. My phone was inundated with the news: breaking news breaking in the middle of the broadcast with more breaking news. I felt panic. I was trying to decide, whether to run or stay put or rush to get more supplies. My children were getting scared, they begged for entertainment and I snapped at them. I woke up at 4:30 and didn’t want to go back to sleep. I was laying in the very quiet, dark night of a small Canadian town, in the warmth of my bed, in the enormity of winter, in the steady rhythm of my son’s feathery breaths and thought, how heartbreaking, I am one of those lucky few who can escape from bad dreams into reality.

And I felt that I understood, for the first time, why the ancients, the ones who were fortunate enough to survive the saline and be left unscarred by the wars, had such urge to make a bloody sacrifice upon bloody sacrifice to appease fickle gods and beg them not to take the good fortune away.