The Last Light

The light flickers overhead

A flash of blue and white

Tearing the sky in two

I watch it hit a tree

Miles away

Watch as the tree

Catches fire and burns

A smile spreading on my face

I laugh and shout and sing

Once I would have been sad

To see such a thing

But since the lights went out

When the electricity grid shut down

I’ve changed

We have all changed

So now I watch the burning tree

Glad to see a light out there

In the darkness

At the end of the world

---

This was written for Day 12 of “A Month of Mini Writing Challenges“.  See this page here for more details and a list of prompts.

Pandora Reborn

The sky was empty.  No moon or stars.  Just black clouds and the darkness.  It was as if the world had been swallowed by the underworld.  There was nothing.

And then the thunder came.  The clouds crashed together and lightning in blue and white ripped open the sky.

It was such a scene as this that announced their arrival.  They had come, as had been prophesied, had we but known it, but the language lay unknown and undecipherable.

Their purpose was to bring terror and death to the living.  The portal to hell had been opened, all because I had uttered the words I had read in that book.  Words that none living should have been able to read, but for some reason, I could.  With an inflated sense of importance and excited by this discovery, I rushed ahead foolishly, without caution.

If only I had known what would happen if anyone was to give voice to that particular enchantment in the grimoire.  It was the first and only one I had seen.  The first and only one I had read…but there was no undoing it now.  I was Pandora reborn, and if any should survive this, they would curse my name as they had surely cursed hers.

I had brought the entire world to ruin…