It had been a time of great change. The humans were to blame.
Their world was disappearing inch by precious inch: a lush, sun-drenched land full of colour and life becoming a barren, ruinous, grey wasteland.
What would become of them all? Was there even a future?
If there was, it certainly wasn’t bright, or merry, or beautiful, or any of the things it was before.
But they couldn’t complain, could they? They had brought this on themselves. But was that really their fault? They had just been doing what they had been for years, for decades, for centuries, even. This effect had not been a quick fix of a few generations, but a causality of years of damage and heartbreak.
And slowly, nature, unable to contain the darkness within, grew rebellious and inflicted it on humanity. All greenery faded away. Bright changed to dull, and light to dark.
It was a time of infinite sorrows. Wars waged over food. Life pit brother against brother in the ultimate fight for life. It was the race. The race against time. Humanity fighting for seconds. For morsels. For crumbs.
And then came the aftermath. A set of new heroes entered the world. They built what their forefathers could not: a bond with nature. They created, discovered, innovated. But there was one thing they could not cure: Humanity’s thirst. Thirst for curiosity, for wisdom, for power.
And then they committed the greatest sin of all: Self-Harm. They erased their minds, Their memories, And were finally devoid of emotion.
And one could argue that this was the Afterglow. Life prospered. Blissfully ignorant. Unaware that the meadows they played over were the graves of the many. That they had walked over the cold corpses of the race known as ‘The Before.’
In one way, this was their saviour. Ignorance was Bliss, at least for them. But then there were those who began to remember. It started with the children. Their minds were young. New. Blissfully Naive in the ways of the world. And it started with the nightmares. Visons. Hallucinations.
And then came the flashbacks. The memory of the sin they committed.
And what to do but then. The ones who talked had to be silenced. It was a necessary sacrifice. A necessary sacrifice. Those were the words that lured them to sleep at night. The many becoming the few becoming the one. Constant vigilance. It was a necessary sacrifice…
And then humanity moved on. The screams of those tortured before being cut off by the sound of a single shot, became commonplace in the new world. Their creation had done nothing. Nothing. But the people were used to it. And they were obstinate. Stubborn.
And then there were those who rebelled. Met in the shrouds of secrecy and darkness. We began our secret society. The Secret Society of the Survivors. And one day we ran.
We fled. Abandoning all our principles. The very thing that brought us together, urged us to flee. And we left, leaving them all to a merciless fate.
I still remember their screams. Their screams as they were torn apart. Destroyed. Obliterated. While we stood and watched and did nothing. We were their destruction. Their swan song.
And then we built this place. Far, Far away from those who had died. Died so that we could live. They had died believing they were alone. But they weren’t. We buried their bodies. Our comrades in arms. And then vowed never to return.
We began our own colony. On New-Terra. Life moved on. Humanity always does in the end. And now I stand here. On the edge of the new world. Standing. Waiting. That’s all I will do now. Simply Wait. Wait for all Eternity. Because they will come. And we will fight. Fight to avenge all those who were killed when it should have been us. We will stand together. Together and we will drive those mad brutes out. And then and only then will I finally rest. Rest in peace. Because I am the last of my people, ‘The Before’.
And until then I will wait. Standing here, Waiting, for Eternity. For my home. For My people, who died. And to avenge them, I will wait.
And to anyone who finds this, remember.
Remember.
Remember them.
Remember me.
Remember the feeling of despair when you’re tumbling down the cliff.
Because that moment will come for you, as it does for us all.
Your swan song.
And this? This is my swan song.
ANVI TUTEJA
-with you till the end of the line, pal-
Thoughts Caught 