The Universe is a black, deep sea that sits upon a chasm of nothing. A dying world lays in a threshold amongst the painted canvas that sits peacefully in the waters of space; this world has a name. though some might call it young amongst the stars, and some might call it the oldest, it bears its fruits to the stars in search of a future none can speak. The tragedy and beauty that is ...Earth.
The shouts of dying men fill the night sky that once was peaceful to the calm sound of crickets and life; what once were 'shooting stars' are now the decaying ash of pilots falling from the echoing thunder clasps of the battle in our outer atmospheres. . . The screams of their wreckage fall unbroken into the layers of old, collapsing citadels and the remnant of man looks to the stars in wonder and courage, to hope, that they succeed in a nightmare they fear they are losing.
A battle rages across this world that has come alive from its dormant days with the lights of its homes echoing across its expanse, but these lights are fading to bright fires that smother its breath.
Our world is dying. . .
- - -
"Repeat, repeat, eject Traveler 1, eject." the voice mumbled by static muffled over the old comm system as the sound of sharp warning repeated in loop. "Eject, eject, eject. . ." a red blurring light, and with a twist of a half broken bar the stars could be seen, as if mingled pools blurring from the twist of gravity in the atmosphere - then the cold of the elements was felt. The icy bite of the wind and blur of the snow, a tug, the sound of ripping fabric and the parachute was deployed. Gaining breath with short gasps. . . "hueah, huah" the heat of my breath smothering me, the cold wet of piled snow, immobile, my bones aching, my mind hurting to the desire to escape as sheer annoyance the compression of the feet of impact within it.
"John!" a voice echoed into where I lay. "Wolfe, that you?" I answered back my voice scratching upon the last word as I breathed harder "huah. . . huah. . . huah", faster "huah, huah, huah. . . ".
"Don't worry I'll be right there!" I closed my eyes and saw the debris that had hit my vessel, and I opened my eyes. The half broken skull of man lay beside my helm in the snow "Wolfe, I'm laying in them". "Try not to panic John, I'm almost there." I felt a hand blindly come over the small foot of snow I lay imbedded in and grab my arm, the body of Wolfe leaned over and helped raise me out of the drift. He was bleeding from his right leg, it was torn, crooked, and bent inward against his left. "Thanks." I slapped his back, looking up to the stars I could only see the haze of speckled light, as if dust in our atmosphere.
In the distance I could see the black charred ruins of one of our cities, and brilliant flames rising from suburbs illuminating the horizon with every color of burning tinder. I saw the plumes of smoke of decaying vessels in orbit falling into our Earth, and I felt the cold of what I called snow. . . of the ash of human remains falling from the battles above. Yet above this all, lay one closing bubble of peaceful space, slowly closing, and from it a beautiful luna. . . a crescent of brilliant colors, iridescence, and seeming to dance above.
Standing I took Wolfe's arm and helped him up as one leg hung tightly barely scraping the snow drift of ashes. "Look, you can see them." He pointed to the brilliant white lights that came darting with silence, up from the city below and quickly with an arc into the atmospheres. "Old Peregrin birds aren't they?", I could only stare without answering, then looking at my friend "Nah, Peregrin's are too new. Have to be Echo's". He merely grunted "Damn if I have to learn another".
"What? are ya gonna break your other leg?" jokingly we hobbled towards the city in the distance, knowing that our fellows who fly above we will see again in the calm, peaceful Luna of space when it is our time to die.
