Ashes

“The end will fall to ashes and smoke.”

The voice trembled, and the cold air made the speaker’s breath visible, but despite all the fragile metaphors of it, the missive was delivered with a resolute tone. A certainty that pinned down a fact avoided and politically oiled through the years. But now, from the mouth of a babe, the truth was at last proclaimed.

Sadly, there were none to witness the prophecy, if it indeed could be called thus: it took no sharp eye to see the turn of events. Worlds had crumbled, cites with gleaming, silver towers had succumbed to that tide which devours all things. The ashes and dust she spoke of were already like a visible bank of clouds, hovering at the edge of a mountain-ridge, readying to drop upon the valleys with a deafening roar.

“Kimberly would have stopped them,” the child whispered fearfully, the tenacity gone from her voice. “He–”

What she would have said, and whether or not it was at all relevant, and who Kimberly was, and who he would have stopped were all unanswered questions, hanging on blue lips until the next few words would come.

But they never did.

The child slumped into herself, the red, red scarf that had wrapped her so tightly finally loosening its hold. And then…as if on cue…

Ashes shimmered down from the sky, covering the limp body, the grey, dead world, the metaphors, principles and follies; the skeletons, the words…

So tell me what you think. This was the result of a near month-long writers’ block, and it came out in less than five minutes. There has been no editing, so it’s straight from my fingers to the keyboard to YWS. DISCLAIMER: I admit that it may or may not be/sound cliche.

Tear. Me. To. Shreds.

Jenth