flash fiction friday, just in time...

once again, i'm cutting it close, but thanks to time zone differences, posting my flash fiction friday just before deadline.
as always, big up jj for his special consideration of me in this week's setup, this story's for him: i.e. a little odd but in (i hope) an enjoyable way. and grims, i hope that now this story makes more sense- i'm trying to convey something that might require more than flash-length fiction, but i'm sure you'll let me know...

Night falls over the Land of OZ. There are ten thousand stories in the Emerald City, this is one…
the most important one.
it started when the pigs came over the hill. we never knew how close they were to the fringes of our mind until they strolled on down, like it was their sunday afternoon constitutional. it quickly became apparent that they were not of us. they were not recognised within the consciousness.
we don’t know who gave them permission to saunter over to the emerald city- we thought there was an agreement. they stayed on their side and we stayed on ours. and as far as we knew, emerald city was ours.
it had been so long since the agreement had been breached that when we saw the pigs coming, we didn’t understand. we couldn’t remember the last time our paths had crossed, and initially thought our group had been somehow broken and we needed to resynch.
we tried to close our mind before they could penetrate but there was some sort of interference and we couldn’t successfully keep them out of oz.
there was a huge noise. we couldn’t hear each other, couldn’t feel each other, couldn’t function. all we could do was watch the pigs run rampant through oz, burning and looting, until they got far enough away that we could regroup. we asked ourself why they had attacked, and came up with no answer. but reasons are often out of our reach. we exist at the mercy of the others, and always have.
it wasn’t until we put our mind together that we saw the full damage.
there was exactly a third of everything left. one third of each building left as the remaining third of it’s neighbourhood. one third of the sustenance of the remaining third of the providers. one third of oz…emerald city remained but diamond mine and rubytown just weren’t…yes, they really did exist before…we remember the time before…
now there’s nothing where there should be something.
we should’ve been able to see the empty hole where the other two thirds of oz had been, but there was truly nothing there. no vacant space. just nothing. we accept it. we always exist at the mercy of the others. and we know that through our history, the pigs had come before, and may still come again.
but that was the first of these long nights. we don’t know if the pigs have that kind of power, or if it was the others, but that night was a third longer, and each night since then has been a third longer than the one that passed before it. but we can be prepared for this existence, at the mercy of the others. by the time our nights grew to what had previously been considered months, we had a system. as our nights get longer, we know the best thing is to sleep until the sun finds us again. take the pill and take a nap, and when the sensors wake us it should be warm.
if it’s not warm, we press this reset button here, the red one, and the system will snooze and wait for the next signal of life.
enough story. now we must sleep.

walk good.