Close To The Edge

The Prompt

Write a story inspired by a work of art. Make the artwork your featured image and give credit to the artist in the caption.

You can read about the challenge fully here.

Close To The Edge was created for the Yes album of the same title. Roger Dean, the creator, has his website here:

Closer To The Edge

We look down on the scene, it looks so peaceful and beautiful, a body of water on the crown of a large plateau.

This is what is left of our world. We look out and see the road to that final land mass and see the water flowing off it into the abyss.

There are islands but no creatures, no fish, no birds and no people, although there is a road and a bridge, we cannot see that ever being used again.

The water is flowing replenished by rain and springs but we don't know how long that will last.

It could be a day or a thousand years or ten thousand years, we don't know.

We sit and watch from our cave in the mount above the road, we think we are the last ones.

We have no way of communicating, electronic communication was destroyed by EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) bombs, so we sit and watch and eke out our meagre provisions.

The green we see is just grass and moss so we could eat it if there is absolutely nothing left, and we know that that day is coming closer.

There is no night and we never see the moon or the sun, just a blue sky. We lost track of time a long time ago. In a way time stopped but we can see the waters falling from the edge of this final plateau and they are still things of absolute beauty.

Sometimes we think we can hear shouts or animals far away, but we don't where. There is not much here anyway, though we couldn't defend ourselves from any show of force.

We see rainfall on the lake (or is it a sea) on the plateau but we never see any clouds, the climate is just non-existent. We sometimes feel a little wind but that is about it.

We just wait.

We don't know what for

No one is coming, unless it is scavengers who would probably kill us.

At least that would be an end.

We should leave the cave and explore, but we are too frightened to do that.

We don't want to go out.

So we watch the waters fall from the plateau.

For us, it is a living art gallery.

The nature of the planet is the only thing that does anything worth seeing.

Humanity is dead.

It destroyed itself, and finally, the planet is at peace.

It may be dying like us, but at least it is doing it peacefully and beautifully.

We will probably be the last ones here. When we die they will be no vermin or birds to pick our bones clean.

We will just rot, nothing more nothing less, and the world will be just a little quieter but potentially more beautiful.

There are no humans or animals to destroy the planet.

The sky will be forever blue and that water may flow from the plateau sea forever, who knows? Who cares?

The human race is saying goodbye to the beautiful earth that is tried it's best to destroy, but in the end, the earth was victorious.

The waters will flow until the very end, long after the last human has rotted in its cave.