Where the Marigolds Grew

Her breath smells like cherry wine, and there are marigolds in her hair. Humans are nostalgic beasts; they'll carry their memories everywhere-- like little flowers growing too fast in foreign climes --nevermind the destruction they wreak. With empty hands you toast to the end of all things, miming the gesture as you clink your glasses in ersatz salud. You gulp and choke on air. The wine ran out hours ago; only dust motes and dirty water remain.

It wasn't a single occurrence that saw the world die: it was just the tipping point, the culmination of a long line of petty slights and grievous wrongs. Not all at once, but strangling like a coiled phytoparasite, inch by inch, ignored along with the warnings. Eventually the planet was overrun and the last of it gave out with a whimpering puff of smoke like the billows from a sodden fire.

As she dances and glides, you're awestruck; reminded of Degas, of William's ekphrastic ode to The Kermess. You wish you could describe her in so many pretty words. Her hair shifts and you catch hints of mahogany and teak; you had to burn the bookshelves tonight. As the pages ignite you wonder, has she heard of Frost, Smith, or Kelly? Does snow mean more to her than the long freeze up north, drowning more than the intake of water into lungs, a song more than the sum of its words? But then, your favorite poets have no claim on this new and dying world. And neither do you.

The bitter cold this time of year is usual but deadly: you stay close to the fire and hope the smoke doesn't kill you instead.

It's grown harder to move; heavy as sleep, trudging through the air beneath a thickening atmosphere that had stained the black sky a brilliant blue. It's harder to breathe, too; sandpaper rough and straining due to the rapid decrease in humidity. The sand reflects as much heat as it bears, and the nights are long and frigid, even in the husk of the reinforced bunker. Entire oceans dissipate into that blue, blue sky. You watch it on the sensors when you have the stomach for it.

The wooden floor boards creak beneath their own weight (you always were a sucker for the old world), so much that you are afraid to move. If there were any calves left, you might mistake the sound for the wails of those gone to slaughter. You're huddled against the wall, awaiting a catastrophe you won't be privileged to see. You hold your breath for it, but your lungs constrict and burn from the pressure; the world doesn't care if you live to witness its final hour. The memories buried in airtight caskets in the basement insist that you won't: that you can't.

The days are breaching 55; the nights slip below -30. The lability wears on you. There aren't enough blankets; there's not enough shade. The wind whips on a whim and sandstorms dance tantrums in its wake: they could flay flesh from bone, like butter. The dry air chafes any exposed skin even as it intensifies its strength; coarse and cruel in the way of the natural, which cares nothing for the comfort of humanity. After all, humanity cared nothing for it. The only remaining sources of natural oxygen are the cyanobacteria teetering on the brink.

Insanity beckons; you do your best to resist. The days and nights blur: your position is well-fortified, the last you saw outside was so long ago you've lost count of the time. You've forgotten the feel of the sun on your skin, though you know from the readings it would only burn. The stars are a distant memory, cold as space itself.

She dances alone; you don't have the strength. Your arms look like twigs and starter logs, all boney and blue-green veined: you're just thankful the starvation hasn't hit her in full yet. You want to tell her to save her strength-- that dancing here is foolish --but you both know that help isn't on its way.

The ashfall is more frequent: it scatters heavily along the roof, blocking out the solar panels. They've been defunct for months now anyway. When all this is over-- when the final hymn is hummed --all that will remain are skeletons and bacteria. And then-- who can say?

There was an argument, once. A lone point of contention between you two, who shared so much.

"Call on the System's Alliance!" she'd shouted, hoarse until she had to cough, red, into her sleeve (for the end is full of colors), "Beg them for aid!"

You'd laughed, flippant but stern. "And then? They'll arrive so late they'll be crushed under the weight of their own impotence, just more helpless people dying on a dead world. Is that what you want? More death?"

"I--"

"There's no hyperspeed, no warp-jump to save any of us, just the cold dark maw of space. They wouldn't have enough resources for the return voyage. They'd starve here, in the middle of our ashes, a thousand years too late."

The memory flits like an ugly dream through your weakening mind. But still, she is there, dancing in the god rays, strong as the day her cheeks flushed pink with anger at the hopelessness in your voice.

Long ago, landing summoned elation to the point of euphoria: you were the lucky ones, after all; the rest were doomed to live out their existence never seeing any sky but the cold void of space or breathing anything but artificial air-- dead and ashed long before planetfall. Robotics were sent ahead to secure and terraform much earlier; but here and there, little things went wrong straight from the beginning.

You choke on the memory and hammer out the message, harder than necessary, though it will take a lifetime for its sad secret to unfurl before new eyes in an ancient place: Elysium-2b has fallen.

Whoever named this planet sure had a sense of humor. So much for paradise.

It is comforting, in its ache, to know of your own insignificance and that, even as this seeded garde n-world falls, countless others will spin in its stead.

You hit send, and a smile dawns on your face-- warm as the diurnal sands --as she dances behind your eyelids, marigolds strung throughout her hair (and it doesn't matter so much that they don't belong here, in the end).

You are so distracted by the echo of her waltzing feet, the frantic movement of her humming mouth, the strange cold stillness of your fading memory as your head tilts and lolls-- you only peripherally notice the boom of the rescue cruisers that've warped in overhead. Perhaps their invention during your long dormancy aboard the colony ark wasn't so impossible, after all.

You weep, gentle, until your head falls forward and the thrum of the engines melds with the palpitations of your guilty heart and the sound remnants sink into the cosmic vacuum of nothingness.