The Burning Horizon

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. The miniature fire-breathing beasts were a recent development, a red herring to a season that was infinitely more terrifying than the fires the dragons lit. Truthfully, nobody quite recognized when they first manifested. Every late spring, when summer was hovering over the horizon, tiny beasts appeared like apparitions, wreaking havoc until cities were burnt to a crisp, leaving them in a state of famine, and the population dwindled once again. Each was no larger than a small dandelion, but they congregated in large swarms, the little puffs of fire catching onto one another’s until a roaring inferno remained of cities that once stood tall. All at once, they fled. When the leaves of the trees began to change, they began returning to wherever they came from, flying too far for any of the already scarce population of researchers to follow.

Aristocrats, nobles, and those with claims to the throne arose from this turmoil with wicked, opportunistic grins, preaching promises they could never keep. Some of them claimed it was a punishment from God. Those politicians were the ones who gathered the support of evangelists and extremists of society.

Others used the pretext of scientific theory to appeal to those not so easily swayed by religious fervor. Long, promising speeches were thrown to an exhausted and dying population that did not have the energy to dispute them. These spinster’s speeches were just surface level enough to be understood, but contained enough complex theory in them to sound more scholarly than they truly were.

We are being purged from the land as a form of population reduction. The theory of evolution states that successful species will increase over time, whereas those unfit to live are left to a fate like ours. A burning pyre of our whole species.

It doesn’t have to be this way, they promised, Homo Sapiens’ capacity for abstract reasoning and creativity beyond banging rocks together is hardly what nature expected. We have a team of highly educated scholars utilising this unique ability to save us. All I ask for is your trust.

Thus, civil conflict began in the land from these opposing ideologies. One side shouted that humans needed to pour resources into repenting if humanity ever hoped to survive. The other insisted that human ingenuity would break through, and listening to the evangelists was as good as suicide. Desperation, famine, and religious zealotry reached its natural conclusion-civil war. Atrocities were perpetrated on a large scale, and skepticism and mistrust ran unchecked.

With every summer season, humans no longer celebrated harvest and the warm summer sun. The dragons in the valley would come again, teeth bared and mouths blazing. And humans would charge each other, swords bared and catapults blazing.

We yearn for the age of brilliant summer sun. Fire used to be our beast to tame. He was summoned through the rubbing of our sticks and simmered out as we feasted on the meal he provided. We thought him a gorgeous being. Now we cower as the air warms with summer’s inevitable approach. For we know his arrival is imminent.

But the dragons flew too high for one to catch them when they left. They seemingly disappeared into the sun, perhaps recharging for the next city they would incinerate. Anger ignited by the razed cities, mankind too, burned the dragons. What proceeded was a world engulfed in scorching heat, eliminating all, dragon and human alike.

Burn, God said, staring at his creation with a face incomprehensible to humans. To a crisp, all of you will burn.

And so they shall.