New voices, new flash-length fantasy.
1000 Years
By Kira Fahrenheit
I stand here, on the edge, and stare down into the ruins of all that was humanity. The sun dips in the sky, casts thickening shadows through the broken spires, runs like water through the dust of shattered, ageless dreams. A breeze feathers through my hair, cold and full of the whispers, the smell of ancient ghosts.
Some say the end came in fire and some in ice, but I know that it was neither which crumbled the great cities of eons past. Like a greedy maggot, humanity became corpulent, outgrew itself, and was crushed under its own weight.
There is less to work with now, less to go around. Much less. The sins of our fathers prowl the seas, insatiable, pushed on endlessly by the hand of one who lords with a skeletal hand from on high, one who the masses still sing about and revere as God. For those with power, belief is a tool, a divider and a hammer by which those who see light in our dismal future are set aside and doubly crucified.
I close my eyes. Green within green within green. Mark of the hated, the progressive, the wanderer. I will not languish in sin. I will not worship at the feet of false gods, false idols. The failures of the past are my workshop, the textbook from which I will learn to fly as the ancestors did. I will usher in the light and cast out the stagnant darkness which waxes sick and fat in the towers of belief. I will build upon the strongest of what has crumbled and carve my own temple to the elements and to the sky.
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Kira lives in the desert with her father and her brother. She loves fixing things, making things, and going for long walks with her cousin. She also loves airplanes, the bigger the better!
Labels: Kira Fahrenheit