Aeterna Dystopia [EN]

PROLOUGE

A bitter breeze whispered around the nose of the brown-haired girl, who had just been awakening from her restless sleep with a rather dry mouth. She lifted herself unwieldy from the dusty wooden floor, which in the past few hours has served as a bed more or less, and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, until she could perceive her surroundings correctly for the first time.

The winding building, in which she had sought shelter, was unchanged gloomy and devastated. It must have belonged to a small family before, Alenia noted, when she discovered a broken wooden baby crib on the opposite wall of the one she was leaning against. The sight filled her with melancholy.

A sharp gust of wind swept through the shattered window panes above her head, whereupon the soulless skeleton of the house seemed to groan under pain and cough out dust.

Alenia let her pine green eyes glide from the crib, over to the dilapidated striped wallpaper to the tall closet, whose doors had already been torn out of its hinges - most likely as desperate travelers rifled through every corner in search for food or items that might be helpful on their arduous path, Alenia thought and sighted. After all, her own story was quite similar.

She stood up and stretched her stiff muscles until she felt some joints crack pleasantly. When she looked down at herself, she was rather disgruntled to find that her previously snow-white, kneelength dress, under her anthracite-colored coat, had lost considerably in elegance, after the past days and nights. It was soiled by dust and dirt and even somewhat ripped at some places. Also the delicate pearls, which looped around her waist like a broad belt, loosened in countless places or were already lost.

Alenia absently wiped off the loose dust from the silk fabric with her flat hand. On the other hand, she thought with a hint of sarcasm, she would definitely be far less conspicuous with a filthy dress in the gray monotony of her surroundings.

Suddenly, the reproachful growling of her stomach interrupted her deep thoughts abruptly.

"Whew, hungry...", she murmured.

A shiver chased over her back. Her voice sounded eerily unnatural echoing through the desolated room and she hurriedly picked up her few belongings and stowed it away on her body, before she sneaked endeavored silently over the floorboards into the plain hallway and then scampered down the sordid stairs. At the empty door frame of the house's entrance she paused for a moment to carefully peer outside.

Even though the view she was greeted by should be quite familiar to her by now, she still shivered, as she gazed down the desolated street, which extended in front of the building. For a moment her gaze remained on the front page of one of the tattered newspapers that the wind had blown on the curb as if they were the abnormally large leaves of a chestnut tree in autumn.

When she started moving and left the supposed safety of the house, in order to take the deserted road south, that newspaper's headline went through her head a few more times, like an ominous echo.

"THE LAST SETTING OF THE SUN - THE APOCALYPSE APPROACHES "