Endings

Hope often reveals itself in small statements, spoken hesitantly in dark hours, through constricted throats.

Deep in The Alps a loop was formed. As man imitated God, the smallest components of life struck together and everything changed. The world became barren, dusty, dry. Not quickly. All of the warning signs willfully ignored. Perhaps that unkind, it’s possible that it was unwilful in some cases.

When the skies turned hazy and pink hope slowly died its death. Locked between the land and the sky people forgot how to laugh, cry, love, breathe. They forgot how to make love, and how to let things grow. They forgot wonder and mystery. Hope had no where to live.

All humanity had left were cold anecdotes, not worthy of the title of myth or lore, to describe how life had once begun. Living things died, at worst they survived.

Elise had been central to the evolution of The Second Fall. The great undoing. Searching for control and mastery of the essence of life she, and others, unlocked the key to the balance of all things. Then everything tumbled.

Now laying, looking at the pink dust, she curled her dry and cracked toes to stretch out her thirsty muscles. Hope hadn’t lived in her for years. Yet, as she stared at the sky, hand on belly and toes on the ground something, barely perceivable, was living in her. In the dark hours she whispered to the sky the hope she had, not louder than a breath.

Once she had recorded everything. Her thoughts, feeling, perceptions, opinions. They were all lost and obsolete now. That world she had created, the narrative, the power and intellect; all meaningless. Fake news, truth, lies all bundled into the pages she had frantically scribbled, convinced that these were the biggest things that could exist. Ideas. Concepts grasped and held hostage. Bent into the will of man, or woman.

It turned out that none of these were the biggest thing at all. In the pursuit of knowledge and power the biggest things were forfeited. The very nature of life, that is to say God, rejected.

Now only one hard remnant remained. Hanging from her neck. A locket, gold and weighty. A rare item without any utility. It reminded her of the times where such things were valuable. What it had meant to own and hold beautiful things. What it meant to manipulate them into shapes and designs. The futility of the reverence of the material.

She smiled wryly as she realized her body was doing something like that, but also something profoundly different. Taking something beautiful, precious, rare and molding it, inexplicably, into life. Something she could not control, except other than to snuff it out. How funny it was to be reminded in such a way of the impact she had once had on the macro.

Only to snuff it out. That was the control they had. Never to create; only to destroy.

Intertwining her fingers with the chains, her eyes became glazed, and the center of her chest ached. It wasn’t mourning, it was closer to shame. In surviving she faced the reality of the actions she had taken. Her brilliant brain, her tenacity. All contributing to the prison she had formed for her unborn child. Breathing out, the small light of hope faltered. There was nothing to offer any more. She owned nothing. Just the locket.

You could not eat a locket, or breath a locket. It did not make you laugh and didn’t grow. It had no use, other than to remind her of what once was, like a shadow.

The act itself had been perfunctory. Like lions in the desert, fast and fevered. She didn’t know who the father was, if that title was even valid anymore. It didn’t really matter. Elise of old would have had grand ideas that in her womb she carried the savior of the human race. Elise of now knew there was no such thing. It seemed that in fact her hope was that she would feel something close to the reverie that the necklace evoked. Something close to love. Just for herself, for the moment.

It would be easier, perhaps, to believe that she was once not selfish, that it had been the Fall that had caused an innate narcissism within her. But this wasn’t true. She had always been full of ambition, full of self obsession. In fact, it is likely that these very traits contributed heavily to The Fall itself.

Now, contemplating the word ‘mother’ she laughed dryly.

She did not know what it would mean to sacrifice. To give up something valuable in consideration of others. One other. As she explored the consequences of this little life her chest tightened further. She felt her back on the ground and imagined the softness of the grass that had once rolled over the hills. Her shoulders were tense, her neck held in an uncomfortable position. She corrected it as she realized. She was so hungry.

Remembering her own parents was hard, remembering anyone was hard. All of that life felt like part of the narrative she had created. The locket contained their images, but she hadn’t looked upon them for the longest time. All she could recall was a feeling. Something like cinnamon mixed with antiseptic. Her childhood was built on achievements and punishment. Expectations always met and never enough for the elusive warmth and kindness craved.

Now she pondered whether she was even capable of providing those things. She rested on the distant possibility that in a world devoid of expectation, perhaps warmth was the only thing available. The only promise left when everything had been scorched. She was thirsty.

She stretched out her legs and slowly sat up. Her lower back twisting. It was time for ceremony. The gathering when the sun seemed to be highest in the sky. Survivors came and sat, supposedly in remembrance, but really it was a way of seeing who had made it to the next day. Elise found it boring, unnecessary. It would be hot and uncomfortable, there was no longer a purpose to time and this was merely a pathetic attempt to pretend that there was such a concept as 'community' left.

Like all others she was shrouded in a cloth, protecting her skin from the worst of the elements. Maintaining some level of decorum, which was also laughable to her. If there was such a thing any more.

The heels of her feet pressed into the earth; both were cracked. Her hair, unevenly shorn, was once the crown to her atheistic. Now none of that mattered, nothing mattered. She stretched out her neck as she slowly made her way. The tension held there never really abating. The heaviness of the locket reminding her of the sensation.

Maybe hope had been the wrong word for the emotion she had been feeling. Connection may have been the better description. She felt the impression of a connection. Something seemingly impossible. A feeling that was unequivocally painful and dangerous.

As she turned towards the meeting place, she hid the locket beneath her cloth. Although it had no utility, she knew there would still be those hungry for it. For even the chance to own something that would make it easier to remember. Elise knew, that if she didn’t possess it, she would want to.

Her hips relaxed as she sat in her place. Everyone had a place. They no longer had names. Elise knew no one. She knew faces and some stories. But as they sank into the silence of the heat her mind continued to go over that word 'mother'. She began to plan. It felt good to strategize again, to use her brain, that brilliant brain. Once so revered and treasured.

She pulled in the air around her, into her mouth and down to her lungs. The dry air scratched everything. Her stomach empty for days, distended, gave the vague impression of the life deep inside her.

Repositioning her hands, she examined them. Old and lined now, the skin calloused and paper like. In her 35 years she had done much, her hands had pressed buttons that had welcomed the eternally pink sky and cracked land underfoot. They had scrambled up walls to get away from doom. They had dug through the ground in search of sustenance. Now, maybe, they could hold new life.

In the moment of this stunning revelation her head became light, swimming in the enormity and microscopic nature of all things. Her eyes rolled into the top of their sockets as she swayed a little, still trying to draw in breath. The world closed around her, that brilliant brain shutting down.

The locket rested on her breastbone and she struggled to stay upright. Her throat constricted. Quietly she breathed out the hope she had in the brightness of the light just as she was drawn into dark.

She hit the ground with a noise that spoke of the finality of the moment. The locket spilled from her cloth and rested awkwardly on a crack in the ground.

Not a short time later a hand reached down and gently lifted the necklace away. A hoarse whisper came:

“Another returning to the dust”

the locket suspended. Her hope gone.

Elise was remembered for a little while, no one really knew for how long. In time, the locket fell into the hands of those who caught it and eventually it lay still on the ground. Undisturbed by human hands. Soaking in the heat. A relict of a time before, telling its story to the uninterested pink and hazy sky.