The Blaze

The first generation after the Blaze had more life skills than a boy scout with all his badges. Their geographical knowledge put Google Maps to shame. They could give you turn by turn directions on how to get from the sunny beaches of Siberia to the tundra of India or from the snow covered Morocco to the prairies in Hong Kong. Everyone living spoke seven languages with perfected fluency, but there was one word they didn't know in any language: drought. The children had no knowledge of the world their parents lived in or of the event that killed ninety-five percent of humanity. They had not a single clue as to what happened during the decade rain didn't come. None of the survivors could ever bring themselves to relive and envision the smell of the burnt terrain or the stench of faceless bodies decomposing on dry land, or about how every single day they learned of another death and another uncontainable fire.

None of the children questioned their parent's pasts, and it was definitely never a topic of conversation. They had never even seen a fire so there was no reason for them to ever think the earth itself was on fire just 30 years prior. It wasn't until thirteen year old Skyler was helping move baby turtles to the ocean with his friend Jae in their hometown of Copenhagen that this time period ever came to question. As the waves gently flowed over their feet and they scooped the small turtles out from under the sand, Skyler scooped out an object with a similar weight and feel as another turtle. Skyler's eyes widened causing Jae to stop dead in his tracts.

Skyler, holding the object carefully in both hands, ran to dry land and sat on his towel. Jae came running after him and used his own towel to help clean it off. It was a burnt and charred heart-shaped locket.

Burnt.

Two children who didnt know even know what a 'fire' was couldn't imagine how an item, which they had also never seen, could be as charred as it was. Their imaginations ran wild. Was there a sea creature they didn't know about that could have swallowed in on accident, causing their stomach acid to do this? Without the perception of fire, there was no logical explanation to how an obviously quite antique heart-shaped locket could be damaged in such a way.

Skyler and Jae ran home to where their parents were chatting away under brightly colored umbrellas.

Both kids screamed simultaneously, "Look!"

The sheer sight of it made Skyler's parents recoil, and Jae's mother start having a panic attack. Jae was too alarmed to move and Skyler pressed them further, "...Do you know how this got its marks?"

Jae's father helped his wife up and walked away with her, leaving Skyler's parents and Jae standing in an eerie silence.

Skyler's mother spoke up first. "Its..." she choked, "I had just turned 8 the day the..." She stopped mid sentence to inhale deeply.

"The day the Blaze began."

Jae grabbed Skyler's arm. He was clearly very afraid.

Skyler's mother began again, "there's a reason there are so few elders, and there's a reason why Copenhagen is now an oceanside paradise."

Both Skyler's mother and father began telling them a very redacted version of the decade of drought, touching only briefly on the concept of fire.

The kids now knew of the misery their parents endured, just not quite the extent of it, as Skyler's parents spared them the gory details of watching their loved ones dying from heat exhaustion and catching flame in the hostile terrain.

Skyler chimed in, "so these marks.. They were caused by flame?"

Jae's parents who had been hidden from view approached the group, and his mother seemed to have calmed down. Fittingly, she was the one to answer her son, "Those marks were cause by the Blaze... No, by the ten year drought brought on by the negligence of our own species, and the apathy of those in power. That is why your generation can speak seven languages and can live sustainably off the land. There were signs and warnings and we didn't listen. We did it to ourselves and we can not let history can repeat itself."