The Song

I've known the song since I was born. Its rolled around in my head, drilling into my skull, vibrating through my bones. shaking through every breath I took.

I remember when I was just a child, I couldn't have been more than five or six at most, and I started humming the song. Just hummed it as I picked daisies out in our field. I brought them back to the teacher and watched as her eyes widened as I held them out to her, she was terrified of me. That was when I knew. I was different. I was dangerous. I was alone.

The village quickly held a council after they found out about me. My mother and father went to it. They left me at home. I remember their faces when they came back and looked at their child like she was a monster. My mother wrapped her arms around me, but I could feel her trembling through the "It's going to be okay, you'll always be my baby"

I looked curiously at her and then at my father, watching me and standing halfway between the bed and the doorway with a mixture of fear and uncertainty.

It was then I had the urge to sing the song. Just a verse. I don't know why. I opened my mouth and it poured out of me like a raging waterfall. My mother pushed me off the bed and threw herself across the room, eyes staring at me in terror. Her mouth parted slightly. She didn't say it, and she didn't have to, Monster. That's what I had become in the last few hours. The destruction of the world personified. I was Alone. Completely alone.

Word spread fast about me. "The Monster Child" "The Destruction of our Age" "The Singer of Sorrows." I had many names throughout the years. I left my home no more than a week after they found out about me. My parents never came to look for me.

Today was the day I decided to sing the song. I decided it should be somewhere peaceful, where I could sing it without being interrupted by the screams and the cries for mercy.

"It'll be better this way" I said to the field "none of them can understand anyways"

The grass blew in the wind.

I smiled, Nature didn't fear me. Nature didn't know better.

I opened my mouth and let the first few peaceful bars ripple out. The grass shivered as it hit them.

I watched with a smile as they shriveled and turned to ashes.

"Well, at least I know it still works." I sat on the ground, and began to sing.

"Within a matter of hours, I will be the last person on this planet." The thought swirled beneath the lyrics. Emotions, feelings, faces, all swirled beneath the lyrics.

"This is my destiny. This is who I am." I thought. "I am the singer of sorrows." The harsh angry chanting erupted from my throat in sharp bursts. With every syllable I watched as chunks of earth convoluted and shrunk away from me.

The words ate into me, burning in my mind, gnawing away at any emotions that wished to remain. I was the song, the song was me. No one else could possibly understand.

The screams tore from me now, the trees collapsed at the sound of them.

Then, a voice sang from just behind me.

I turned, shocked at the sound.

there was a frail little girl standing there, holding a fistful of daisies.

I was looking at myself.

She looked up at me with such clear eyes I felt like hiding.

"I don't think you wanna do that."

"What's it to you!?" I spat back. "you don't understand, you're just a dumb kid, you-I was just a dumb kid."

She bit her lip. "Do you want a daisy?" She held one of the flowers out.

"Where'd you even get that, all the flowers must be burned for four miles around."

She shrugged. "You can never kill every flower. Not really. They will always grow back. There is always hope."

I scoffed. "I haven't had hope in years, kid. I am literally the destruction of the entire universe as we know it."

She shook her head and smiled. swaying back and forth as she hummed a song.

I glared at her. So innocent. So stupid. That was me before I had accepted my fate. I opened my mouth and started the song again, angrily fixing my eyes on her. I wanted her dead most of all.

The angry lyrics pounded out of me, the ground shook and the clouds began to swirl above me, the trees started to burn up in the distance. But not her. She just swayed back and forth, humming a song of her own, face half buried in daisies.

"Die already!" the thought tore through my head. I put more force into the song. The harsh chants burning my throat as they escaped from me.

The ground lurched below me. I nearly fell. The song started to reverberate through the air, echoing from every corner of creation and the ashes of humanity swirled through the air.

But she just swayed back and forth, smiling into her daisies.

I collapsed. My song was over. It was finished. The last echoes of it dying away.

But her humming remained, hanging in the air. The last living thing upon the planet.

She then laughed and began to twirl amongst the ruins of the planet. She sang. Her voice strumming softly throughout the empty air.

I watched her. Not angry, not regretful, not anything. I was no longer the Singer of Sorrows. The song was over, my time was done.

She smiled at the empty air, and spun, her voice becoming clearer as she did.

The ashes began to stir. twirling around with her.

I blinked. This wasn't possible. I was the end.

Her voice rose and she let her flowers blow into the ashes, laughing a little as she did so.

I watched as the flowers spread into the ashes. color spreading here and there, splotches of green and pinks appearing amidst the dark grey. And then shooting into the angry sky, calming it into a docile blue.

Her voice grew louder. The color began to shoot everywhere.

I flinched as I noticed the grass suddenly growing beneath my hands

Her song grew quieter, and the ashes evaporated into the air with the last echoes of the song.

I looked up at her. She stood there with her hands still full of flowers.

She smiled down at me. " Do you want a daisy?"