To Douse The Sun

If nothing else, she was resilient. Joy from desperate hope fulfilled welled up as tears in two sapphire orbs, once commonplace, now endangered, which peaked out beneath an unkempt crown of ebony locks. Sun bleached and windswept clothes clung to her, a macabre attire replete with various bits and baubles collected in nostalgic fits on her travels, pinned and pushed into every open space, signs of lost wealth and civilization which combined to mark their wearer with a message: "I am the queen of the dead".

She was alone now, yearning, comfortless, stubborn, drifting on the last breaths of clean wind from one nameless oasis to the next, driven to survive long enough to save the world. The fire of life burned yet through her, and though many days it felt more like the low throb of cooling embers, today she felt the full flame keenly, and something else.

Relief. Not an ordinary relief of comfort or even survival, but one wrought of success in the face of desperation, of thoroughly beaten odds. Overwhelmed, she forgot the dull aching of starvation and the cries of her wound-riddled body. She’d made it. Wincing from the pull of cloth on blistered skin, she removed the crude wrappings from her hands and feet and trudged a few belabored steps before collapsing in the gentle shelter of a great tree, that last lonely splash of green which had called out to her a few days prior.

It was pragmatism which had kept her alive and led her here, but it was hope which had kept her alive and led her now to breath, and laugh, and weep, to feel green grass on bare skin again, to get lost as only a child of loss can in nostalgic dreams of cloudy skies mirrored off rain puddles, of bird songs and snow angels and hugs from beloved. To drown in inklings of a world long dead. Instinctively, she clasped her locket, an amber jewel fashioned into a heart dangling from a silver chain about her neck, a finely crafted relic of an era when finely crafted things had been taken for granted. A gift, it had been meant to remind her of love and of family, but her grasp tightened shakily around it. The tainted heart now whispered only of loss, of pain, conjuring up the snapshots her soul had taken when she’d seen her loved one’s faces for the last time, on the day they’d retreated into that damned virtual vault.

The somber vision ripped her from her reverie. A threadbare backpack which represented the world's weight on her shoulders now sat by her lap shedding granules of sand with every stray wind. She hunted for her handheld and laid it down in the grass, screen off, staring blankly for a long time before finally opening up a file and pressing play, beginning a ritual she’d completed at each of the dozen oasis she’d reached during this doomed quest.

"Honey, I'm glad you're not here." A raspy electronic voice filled the air with mixed tones of melancholy and fear. Hearing his voice again, even this hopeless disembodied drawl, somehow always tempered the aching in her heart.

"It always felt wrong, leaving the rest of you to burn up while we went away to a paradise, but this...” She began to dig into the ground as deep as possible with a simple spade and tired hands. “This is no paradise. This is what we deserve. We were foolish, greedy, we filled this world to the brim with everything imaginable, and left nothing to be discovered.”

The lightscreen blinked off to conserve power, leaving only leaf-scattered sun sparkles to guide her. He continued. “We're too smart, too fast, it only took an instant for us to experience every conceivable arrangement of things. Every song that can be sung, every book that can be written, everything that can be drawn or crafted or imagined. And now…” There was a long apathetic sigh. She dug deeper. “...there's just nothing left. In the chaos, I've seen countless versions of this very letter and discovered that meaning isn't contained in subtle word choices, it's greater than the sum of it's parts. There's no solutions buried in there, nothing that can save or even comfort you, or us. It's an ocean full of data, barren of worth.” She wiped the building sweat from her brow, removed the black metallic rod from the backpack, and implanted it as far as she could in the damp earthy hole she’d created. The electronic voice grew feverish. “We can't grow, can't learn, can't create. We're stuck on some vast cursed plateau between man and God. There’s nothing left for us but to wait for death, an impossible wait. I’m so sorry that I spent the remainder of our days chasing after salvation. I love you. I miss you.” A lull, before the ask. She reached for the device with habitual timing. “I know you will hate this, but you're our last hope, please, just—" She clicked it off. The ritual was mostly just about hearing his voice, hearing any voice, and she hardly paid attention to the words anymore, but she couldn't bear to hear him ask that again.

The rod clicked and sprouted roots, nestling itself into the earth. She waited. Nothing.

The men who’d sent her on this final fool’s errand had promised that if she could find places with moist soil and plant the rods, life on earth wouldn’t end. They’d buried the seeds of life so deep the elements couldn’t burn them away, and they were ready to wake up when earth was habitable again, when these monitoring rods she’d planted told the seeds it was time. She knew it to be a stupid, frantic plan. A plan Z. They didn't know if or when the magnetosphere would correct itself and protect the earth again. Nothing they made could survive on the surface over a geologic timescale, and this tree's shade wouldn't last forever. They promised it wouldn’t take that long, but then again, maybe they just wanted to give her something to do. The thought chilled her.

Out of routine, she reached for the backpack and began a slow, pained climb up to the lowest branches of the great tree to scan the horizon for another target. But the backpack was empty now, the horizon colorless, and the last monitor hadn’t even activated yet. She wouldn't give up on this meager victory, it was the story of her life. She'd come excruciatingly close to a real victory once, to salvation and a future, but then they’d given her place in the vault to a more privileged soul. Even that anguish had been mitigated by the hope she’d had for those who made it, until that damned message arrived. It was a relentless cycle, hope replaced dashed hope, the goal post growing ever farther, and now she was here, driven to the edge of herself by one last fleeting, ludicrous hope.

As the adrenaline faded, her pain returned tenfold. She collected her things and hobbled back to the base of the great tree to find a seat in the grass by a small watering hole. Nagged by anxieties, she prayed.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, hazily aware of the shifting shadow of the tree changing with the waning sun, she was roused by the gentle thrum of the monitor sending a “connection success” message before dying back down into a hibernation state. That was it. Mission complete. Power would drain from the vault and redirect to plan Z.

Her loves were dead, she had nowhere left to run, nothing left to do. "...release us... unplug us." It rang in her head. She never understood their death wish, but she'd granted it. Looking up at the great tree with a raw smile, she took a deep, ragged, appreciative breath of rare fresh air and sprawled out in the grass, enchanted by the marvel of a twilight sky. A new hope budded as quickly as the last wilted. She wept tears of epiphany, she'd never been so ecstatically traumatized, an overwhelming peace cauterized the wounds on her heart.

She had made the right decision for them, however haunting, but for her there was no giving up. Regardless of the thinning atmosphere, she could make a good home here, there was a whole new life to discover, so much more to see. “I choose to live.” An answer for a question none had asked.

She never moved again.

—

A spark of joy surprised Mother, waking her from a deep slumber. A small heart had wandered over to visit her, she’d thought those days long gone, though this one was more alike to the first than the last.

Back then they’d come as families, few in number, seeking shelter beneath her branches. It was natural for her to provide. Though the songs they sang were less melodic than the birds, she learned to enjoy them with time. With her blessing, they thrived and grew in numbers until she could no longer track their comings and goings. One day they returned adorned in skins and trophies, marking the beginnings of their addiction with collecting things. They tended her for many seasons, dwelled with her, respected her provision, and she loved them. But their numbers swelled, and soon they learned to make shelters of their own. Roughshod tents gave way to crude structures made of her kin, and then to magnificent works wrought of stone. She no longer recognized them, each child who climbed her branches was different from the last. They swarmed about, leading increasingly hasty lives, driven by some feral instinct to collect more and more until their homes reached up into the sky and choked it, and the blackened tears it cried no longer nourished her, and they covered all the grass in stone just as they’d hid their own skin in shame. Fewer and fewer they visited her. Their songs grew quieter, more dissonant, and they disappeared into their towers — until they all came crashing down.

She’d survived the days of fire and of ash, and many years of drought after. One last small heart came to her clutching a shining amber jeweled symbol of avarice, pulled from the earth and hewn into their image, but distorted and simplified, either because they were blind to what was within them, or because they hated it.

Foolishly, she still loved them. Foolishly, she fought the sun. You won’t burn this one. She sang, and the little one heard her, and planted a child for her, then rested until swallowed by the earth. Silent, dark, stunted, the child never grew, but she groomed it nonetheless. She’d see it through to greener days.

Ages passed alone in its company. Beam after burning beam assaulted her lonely verdant canopy, but the sun's wrath was filtered down into a few gentle shafts which speckled the lush ground she'd long protected. Her strength wouldn't last forever, she knew, one day that wrath would breach her and send the last vestiges of life skittering and recoiling, only to be burnt away to ash like the rest of the world. Soon after, her own withered husk would be cast into a sandy wind. But not today, she sang every day, and persisted.

Then deep slumber took her, interrupted once by a solitary thrumming song from the dark child when the winds changed and the sun weakened and the ground about her grew green again. Miraculously, she'd claimed victory.

Now a new small heart had come and woken her. Naked, greedless, teased by the wind coaxed rustlings of flowers, sitting on a patch of wild grass beside a pool of still water. It hummed a merry tune, and she sang along.

I doused the sun with my love for you, to give you all second chances, so kindred, to the spirit of life stay true, remain now among my branches.