The Setting of a Future Race

                         Yesterday, I posted the mythology of a race from a science fiction setting I've been working out in my head.  Since no one commented with ideas about what the setting might be, I'm going to assume that either I didn't drop enough hints (very likely) and/or people were too busy to particularly care (also very likely).  So today, I'm going to explain the background for that post, both for anyone who was curious and for my own record.
                         The setting I have in mind is our own world, but it is at least a couple hundred years from now.  Somewhere in the first hundred years, humanity entered World War III, and a biological weapon was deployed.  Consisting of a water-borne virus with a long incubation period, it was designed to go unnoticed until an entire population was infected, before inducing hallucinations and ultimately a state of coma-like brain death.  However, it was accidentally released into the atmosphere, and within weeks had infected all open water sources.  Within a year, every human in the world had been exposed to it.  Within eighteen months, humanity was effectively extinct.
                         But the world went on.  Most mammals were unaffected by the virus, occasionally serving as immune carriers, but little else.  There was, however, one notable exception to this rule: dogs.  Domesticated dogs, starving and with few other sources of food, started eating the human bodies that were literally lying everywhere around them, ingesting the virus in the process.  In them, the virus interacted differently (perhaps mutating in the process) to form a symbiotic relationship with the canine brain.  Over the course of a few generations, this resulted in the species becoming dramatically more intelligent, to the point of sentience.  The newly evolved Canis sapiens quickly became the dominant species on the planet, forming unique cultures, technologies, and at least one religion.
                         The mythology that I posted yesterday was the creation story of that religion - based on tales passed down from ancestors who's memories and understanding of the human part of history were blurred, at best.

The Mythology of a Future Race

                      In the beginning, there were the gods.  And the gods were many as the hairs of the coat, and covered the whole world.  Yet still the gods were lonely, so they said to one another, "Let us make companions for ourselves, who shall be as Children to us, and we shall love them."

                      So it was that the gods took Beasts of the land, and raised them up to be Children of the gods.  And the Children of the gods flourished and spread across all the land, until they numbered more than even the gods.  Many of the gods loved them, but certain of the gods were Corrupt, and began to fear and to hate them, for the Children were many, but they were innocent, and in their innocence showed the Corrupt their own evils.
                      And the Corrupt began to mistreat the Children, saying, "They are only wild Beasts."
                      And the Pure gods admonished the Corrupt, saying, "They are our Children, do them no harm."
                      But the Corrupt would not cease, and soon there was a Great War over all the world, as the Pure and the Corrupt fought for the fate of the Children.  And the Great War was as a Beast which devoured the land for many generations.  Then the First of the Pure looked at the world and wept, for the Children suffered by the Great War, even where the Pure reigned.  So the First gathered the Pure and said "We must combine our power, and take the Corrupt out of this world, so that the Great War will plague our Children no longer.  But such a miracle will require a Sacrifice, for we too will go out of this world."
                      And the Pure answered with one voice, "We will Sacrifice for the good of the Children, and our Bodies shall sustain them."
                      So the Pure joined their power, and they abandoned their Bodies.  And they hunted the Corrupt, and took them out from their Bodies, so that in all the world the gods were no more.  Then they created a new world, where the Pure could dwell in peace.  But the Corrupt also created a new world, and they began a Second Great War between the worlds.
                      Then the Children ate of the Bodies the gods had left in Sacrifice, and they grew wise as the gods were wise, and knew good from evil.

The Fairy Tale Storeroom

                 The door to the storeroom is nothing special: just a rough wooden door, the wide boards ill-joined and ill-fitted to the frame.  It might be the entrance to any random broom closet.  Yet, when opened, a golden radiance streams out, one that ought to have been impossible to miss through the gaps and cracks in the door.
                 Should an observer, eyes watering in the sudden glare, summon the courage to step inside, he would see an assortment of priceless items tumbled in careless heaps under the magical light.  A pair of glass slippers, one with a broken heel, perch precariously upon an enormous mound of braided blonde hair.  A red woolen riding cloak, sized for a child, hangs from the spindle of a large spinning wheel.  The spinning wheel, in turn, balances atop a large stone bearing an inscription, the words half-hidden by a large black cauldron with three clawed feet.
                 This is where the discarded odds and ends of fairy tales ultimately come to rest.  Forgotten and abandoned by the heroes that relied upon them, they make their way here, waiting to be needed once again.