Feathered Endings

Blinking in the brilliant light, my eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden light. I struggled to adjust to the fresh air and the sounds of everything around me. Things I had heard long ago such as birds and their whistles, have since existed only in my dreams. Now exposed to the real thing and I am overwhelmed to say the least. I took some sunglasses I had folded in my shirt and put them on to help with my sight. My eyes are watering so bad from the light that I stop trying to see with them and instead close them completely and listen to the birds speak to each other. I can also hear some sort of clopping. As time goes on and my eyes grow more accustomed to the light, I start to steak small peaks at the world through quivering eyelids.

A flash of green so bright, I immediately have to close them again, another peak and I can see leaves- trees, another thing I haven’t seen in years either. Another peak reveals the crisp blue of the sky above. The sky, yes I remember the sky, I thought I'd never see it again. I’d allowed my memories to comfort me in the night as I stared up at the steel ceiling buried under several leagues of dirt. None of my memories were the real thing and over the years they had become dulled with the edges of time. I felt as I tilted my head upwards and sneaked a longer peak, since my eyes were adjusting to the sunlight pretty well, at the sky again and its sun.

The sky is so blue and empty of clouds, and after going so long with a ceiling in my miserable existence, I felt that I may float away in the nothingness of the sky above. The vastness was so great and overwhelming, I can’t help the hiccup of air catching in my throat. Magnificent, truly magnificent to have survived and returned to this. The clopping got louder and I turned from the never ending blue to look among the green. Ooh I had not noticed the beauty in the glade either. Pure and innocent flowers litter the glade in which the bunker door finally released me. Flowers swayed and danced to the breeze now kissing my brow. Another thing I forgot among the dirt and ruin below, fresh non recycled air.

Tears of redemption and pure unfiltered happiness stream down my face to water the dirt below my feet. Dirt that has no grass, I notice. The grass and flower life growth stops just short of three feet around the bunker door, as if they too know of the plague that bunker was to me. More memories at the sight, threaten to surface and I blink a few more times to banish them and turn from the hell I'd experienced down there.

My eyes have pretty much adjusted to the light and I whirl around, I just noticed something the clopping had stopped. I see why.. A horse blackened under the sun stands proudly at the edge of the glade and upon his back sits an even prouder rider. His eyes, like his mount, are darkened with kohl- war paint. Many many things flit through my head at the sight. The most important of those thoughts is that this man, this horse, even the birds...they are supposed to be dead.

Many years ago a great plague ran through the land killing without discrimination. Our government thought we were done for. No one is really sure where the plague originated from, nor how to cure it. It was just here one day and then within a few months, billions of people died. I remember the time of that too, dulled with time of course, but I still remember the screams of the dying and the birds as they too were affected and killed a lot faster upon contracting the disease. They fell from the skies like rain drops. Streets were quickly abandoned as were cities, the bodies were quickly filling the roads and hospitals. Many thought it smarter to get away from the rest of the population...well those left alive.

It was a smart plan, only the virus eventually found them too. I am..the president’s daughter. That is why I survived, I had my father’s influence and resources available to him. He and his family went into the bunker, in addition to other higher influenced families..only I walked out. The horse shifted afoot and the rider gracefully slid off. I noticed he rides bareback and feathers and small animal skulls are woven into the elaborate braids in the gelding’s mane.