Earth is not as I remember it. It is unrecognizable to those who lived before the end. It is still healing and so are the hearts of those whose loved ones didn't survive. Our children will tell the tale, but they won't understand our suffering and because of that, humanity is doomed to repeat itself. Mankind has a short memory, made shorter by things they didn't actually see or experience.
It's been over a year and a half since the apocalyptic events on Earth. Was it worth the loss of life for the human race to be given a second chance? Perhaps, but I think the dead would say otherwise. In the end it wasn't about power or science or technology. None of those things could save the human race. It was love. It always had been. Without love, the rest of it was meaningless. Love had saved humanity and it was love that would help rebuild it. I had dreamed so many times of my sister and her words, "you can't go back." I thought they were about returning to Earth, but they were about not being able to return to the life I once had and the people who were a part of it. I have to forge a new path. I've lost a lot, but I'm not alone.
I rub the small gray stone that hangs from the metal ring on the string around my neck, and breathe in the warm dry air. There's nothing like Earth air. It fills my lungs and calms my soul.
I touch my swollen belly and look up into the cloudless sky. It is daylight, but I can see the moon, full and round. I will tell my baby that that is where her daddy will live on forever, up in space, on a planet, not that unlike our own. I will tell her the story of how her daddy lives amongst the stars and how he risked his life so that others could live.
I stare at the three markers placed in the ground. Their bodies are long gone; their final resting place, I'll never know. But I wanted a spot to honor them; a place for them to be remembered, even after I'm gone. A place where I can one day be laid to rest next to them. I set a bouquet of weeds tied with twine on my sister's grave and one on each of my parents'. The mixture of grass and other shrubs is all the vegetation that's been able to grow. So much of the land is still torched, barren or destroyed, but not all. I look out over the fields spotted with patches of green. Little spots of light in so much darkness. The land is beginning to heal, and I know that one day, I will too.
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From Darkness Comes - Book 2 in The Dissonance Series
Ciencia FicciónShe survived the end. But it's only the beginning. Ever thought escaping Earth meant survival. Instead, it meant sacrifice. She lost her parents, her sister, and the two boys she loves-left behind to an uncertain fate. Now, on a distant planet she n...
