Evening Mourning

Klingon Hamlet

Maybe we were wrong.

The words rang out in the summer eve, breaking my peaceful dream-haze. I looked up from my crossed legs and steepled hands to my friend who sat a few feet away, his eyes narrowed, a frown creasing his long brow. What?


We should have given them another chance, he said slowly, his tone unnaturally deep, as if the words were oozing out from some long-buried wound. He looked up from whatever had captured his attention and focused squarely on me. They didn’t have to die.


I met his gaze without anger, despite a stirring of irritation in my heart. Yes, they did.


Laughter danced along the gentle breeze, trickling through the cracks in the woods that circled our grassy hill, emanating from the children’s playground so close yet so far. Carousels and bumpercars creaked and groaned under the weight of our playful angels. A part of me longed to go back there and then, when worries and the weight of unwanted responsibilities had yet to strain my wearied soul.


I looked down again at the grasses that swayed like rows of dancers to the silent tune of day. Through this slowly-changing pattern I could still make it out: the ghost of Once Blue, Now Black. It still spun slowly in its restrictive domain. It still left a stain as it circled its Mother Fire, as it rolled and tumbled, devoid now of all life.



So be it; so what.


My friend stood up and brushed errant grassblades from his scratched knees. I wondered if land or nails had scored those knees. I worried about my friend, because he mourned those fools. You alright?


I will be, he said, smiling sadly at me as he walked towards the woods, his shoulders up high and his head bowed low. Too close to them, my friend had been, for he had made them and nurtured them, brought them water and wind, food and fire. He had punished them when they misbehaved, yet had been temperant even as they vomited their waste upon the very home he had made for them.


I thought about the day I stepped in, and made real their myth of Armageddon. I had even worn the cowl, borne the skull, and weaved the scythe. Their cried, their sprays of blood. Fountains of fire and blood and oil. Mushroom clouds uppercutting the stratosphere. Shockwaves flattening forests. Invisible heat burning people inside out. Millions of puffs of smoke. A united cheer---for they had finally stood together, diverse and indiscriminate---even as I turned them into a sea of melted flesh and bone. Finally, the Earth itself, a husk to be left drifting, ever captured by the sun’s tight embrace, withered and blackened.

I heard those cries, even as I heard the children laughing. They had been spared, a final gesture on my part, more for my friend than for me. I looked up to watch him walk into the woods, to watch his robes claw at the grasses and weeds as if to touch all life and acknowledge its beauty; to watch him look up and left and right and down, consuming all the beauty that this new vista had to behold; but he was already gone.

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