The Will of Color
The Will of Color
It was never simple before then. Every line of the world intertwined with each other, a never-ending web upon the wrinkled surface. Beautiful, yes, but it was chaos with man burning the web into ashes. The humans tried to save the world. Oh, how they tried. But eventually it became too expensive to keep the plants from dying in the thin air, suffocating under the heaviness of the poison. Soon, the animals died away, and just like the plants it was without struggle. They died away as if they were saying, “See how you survive without us, jackasses. I’ll be watching from Heaven as you all go to Hell.”
And the humans did survive. After the intense famines and illnesses passed, the intelligent and the rich were all that was left. More than 75% of the human race was dead, but unlike the plants and animals, they had not gone without a struggle. There were scars from the human’s great effort with death. Countries were burned and destroyed. Four atomic bombs had been set off, and no one even knew why. But now all that was left was a scattering of people around the world, living in small groups, like the floating sparks above a wildfire.
The barren landscape offered nothing but grey ash and dry dirt. The sky was burned in a permanent poison. The Earth was nothing but death, forever dead , but the humans were smart. They figured out how to feed themselves in one way or another. The two kinds of people left on the Earth, intelligent and rich, separated themselves like tigers from lions. The intelligent made the food for themselves and sold it to the rich as well, and the rich paid the intelligent to build what they would for them. Luxuries were all but forgotten. Food, water, and a decent shelter was all that mattered anymore. And with time, the faces and colors of the plants and animals became a distant memory, and soon, a legend.
No one could bring them back.
Only pure instinct kept those 25% of people alive, and even that number fell rapidly within the next hundred years. Soon, 10%, and then only 5%. Sadness spread like a disease. There was enough food and water to sustain those 5% for the next millennium, but hope was not something they could farm in the toxic world. The air did not clear. The ground did not soften. The rain did not fall softly, like small crystal miracles. It fell like acid, and it burned the hearts of everyone still alive.
It was only twenty years before only 300 people were left, too old or too sick to have a child, and too lost on hope to want to live anymore.
Winter came, and the first white snow in a thousand years fell from the sky. It fell on the barren landscape that contained not even a glimmer of color. The snow fell, and soon the world became like a blank piece of paper, fresh and clean and new. The virgin snow melted, and came again, then melted, then came again. The world turned and the sun shone, but still the snow came, until the world was covered in white.
The long winter ended, but every human in the world was dead.
The crust of the Earth was soft and damp. The air was fresh and clean again. The rivers were rid of their pollution and running, and the oceans were breathing again. The Earth was new.
And then, somewhere in the ruins of South America, there was a noise, and it was heard around the world: the sound of a seed breaking through the soil. The small green plant was the only color on the entire planet.
The chain reaction began: Mother Nature willed it, and the Earth was renewed. It flourished again, and the web of the world spun itself in fresh thread.
XX
Symbiotic relationship: Between Man and Earth? The intelligent and the rich? The plants and animals? Mother Nature and the world?
Or the lack of any of those?