Firestorm of Meteors

Moonless night, November 12, 1833. Susan perched on the cliffs behind her house, as always. She scanned the vast sky, whispering her deepest, eternal wishes to the Lord, yearning for an answer.

A blinding flash of light caught her eye: a meteor streaked across the sky, followed by another, then four more in a dazzling display. Susan's lips curled into a radiant smile and her heart swelled with warmth and hope as she realized that she was witnessing the Lord's answer. A profound sense of awe and wonder as she stood in the presence of the Divine. The meteors continued to fall, their numbers multiplying with each passing second, until the sky was ablaze with a celestial fireworks show. A breathtaking masterpiece painted by the Supreme Artist with a brush dipped in fire.

After a few minutes, Susan's smile wilted as she heard an ominous thunder rumble in the distance. The sound swelled like a rising tide as the number of meteors exploded into the hundreds, creating a mesmerizing and terrifying spectacle. Susan had never seen anything so celestial, so otherworldly. No one had. As seconds passed, the meteors thickened into a dense curtain, blocking out the stars like a blizzard of shooting stars. The faint thunderclaps erupted into a deafening roar, the sound of thousands of fiery meteors streaking across the sky like cosmic fireworks.

What could it be if it wasn't the Day of Judgment?

Susan's sense of happiness shifted to a terrifying fear of the end. Her heart raced so fast that it couldn't bear the transformation of all the beautiful emotions she was feeling into the greatest fears that exist within the human soul. She sprinted towards her house, surrounded by the ethereal lights of the sky and the piercing screams of terrified animals. She wanted to warn her family and sought shelter from the impending doom.

When she arrived at the house, she saw that all the sheep had vanished, leaving only the whinnying of horses in their wake. She rushed towards the door, screaming, and collapsing to the ground. Her father awoke in shock, as did her mother and little brother, who began to wail. Her father couldn't understand what she was saying, but he could see the terror etched on her face and the otherworldly lights seeping into their home. He went to the door and was horrified by what he saw and heard. All creatures on Earth were gripped by fear. The stars fell like raindrops, and the night turned to day.

Her mother shrieked and clutched her four-year-old son to her chest, shielding his eyes. Her father gasped, "This is the Day of Judgment, as the Bible says." He slammed the doors and windows shut, but the light seeped in as if it were July. They all fled to the basement, seeking shelter from the apocalyptic end, or so they believed. The father frantically scoured for his Bible while her mother hugged her son, both terrified of what might happen next. Susan cried uncontrollably, her sobs racked with fear and guilt.

At first, she thought the meteor was a sign from the Lord but she now realized it was a clear rejection. She saw her love for Wilson's son as a sin, and her fantasies about him as something to be punished for. She knew this because of her selfish and worldly desires. Love had become a destructive force, unleashing the wrath of heaven.

How could her mind distort events personally?

The deafening roar of 250,000 meteors per hour, something no one had ever seen in her time, changed young Susan's beliefs and dreams.

Susan slid under the only bed in the room, her collapsed mother on top of her. She could hear her brother crying and her father reading the Bible and hugging them. She squeezed her eyes shut and began to plead: "I know I'm a sinner, Lord. I swear I'll never think about those things again. I know I was only selfish, and I never thought outside of myself. Give me one more chance, Lord, not just for me, but for my family. I'll make amends for all of this…" Tortured herself with guilt for abandoning her faith and putting her love for a man before her love for the Lord. Until the crying and fear exhausted her to sleep, and she slipped away.