The Shadows' Day

"The humans aren't sad."

The Shadows watch.

"How can you tell if they are sad?" Christopher gives his brother an unhappy stare. "They aren't awake."

He receives no rational response. All of them, truthfully, are still grieving, and they have no time for arguments. They had tried to make the world perfect, rid it of its cruelties, and instead made it a quiet, lightless place. Cities topple over and buildings are buried in moss. The waves of shorelines vomit up trash and regurgitate the destruction of humanity upon their peaceful society. The birds no longer chirp, afraid of death, and the animals no longer lurk, for they know that they are not the only ones who are lurking.

The Shadows rule the Earth.

It is all thanks to her.

But she is no longer here.

"Listen," says Blake, who hardly ever has the strength to speak anymore, "We tried what we could. There was... There had been... We didn't have any evidence to prove that it would do that..."

The tallest Shadow scowls, his crimson eyes burning holes into the ground beneath his feet. "I should have tested it." His mouth curls upward in a distasteful snarl. "I should have done what I could. I should have-"

"We don't have time for 'should-haves', Red!" The violet-eyed Shadow shrieks into the darkness. "We have to solve the problems that we already have, not the ones that we did have!"

The human was their last hope.

They had been struggling with how to commence with their plan for weeks and weeks and weeks before they found her. She told them what to do, explained to them how to do it, and... along the way... she exposed the truth of their emotions. They are not just beings without feelings. They have emotions. And yet they never acknowledged them before she showed them how.

Red remembers the way she spoke to him, smiling. She had told him that he could be good, and that no one could tell him that he couldn't. Shadows, she'd said, are capable of being good.

He'd believed her.

Before now.

Now she's gone because of him.

He could have tested the formula before trying it on her. He could have tried it out during the other Shadowwing tests. He could have done so many things to keep her from being gone.

No one is supposed to be 'gone' anymore. It is supposed to be a utopia. Plants are flourishing, wildlife is thriving, Shadows are living, humans are living- it is supposed to be the perfect balance between everything, finally achieved.

He told her it was going to be OK.

No, no- he'd promised her it was going to be OK. And he'd meant it.

Things are not OK. She is gone, and she is not supposed to be. Everyone else is here but her. If she was here, it would be OK. If she was here, then they would have accomplished the utopia that they have always needed.

But she isn't here.

And all they have left is a world that needs her.

"We could have changed something," he says, his voice broken, "We could have gone back and... a...nd... Perhaps we still can, and we can change this..."

Christopher and Blake listen to their brother ramble, knowing that nothing they will say would cause him to stop. Often he has these sudden strikes of fear and loneliness and hurt, and often they hit him so hard that he does not stop for a few solid minutes.

His grief is clear.

They keep telling him that it isn't his fault. She is gone because of no one, because of a mistake that no one made. They keep telling him that it isn't his place to worry.

But he worries nonetheless.

The buildings fall, the skyscrapers crack. The world beneath their feet turns black. Everything they had planned falls out of the sky and everything they love has already died.

There is nothing more that they can do.

Except leave it up to interpretation.

The ending is not true. Whatever end you bring upon will be the end for them. All that it says is his one promise: things will be OK. And should he break his promise? Should he try to keep it? Should the formula work and she be living the life that she was meant to?

It is up to you, whether or not this interpretation is the true end.

*More interpretations coming soon.*