spottedink

[spottedink]

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her as if she were the sun…”

Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)

[spottedink]

The Stars

She gazed at the stars.

A cool breeze tickling her neck, 

Goosebumps on her arms, 

Leaves in her hair.

She gazed at the stars and admired their beauty,

Envied their power 

And their unyielding strength.

She compared herself. 

Walked through her day remembering soft smiles, 

Shared laughter,

Warm embraces.

She was happy. 

Life was good.

But it wasn’t always.

The memories crashed upon her like a wave of remorse.

She felt the ghost of fingers gripping her forearm,

Nails digging into her skin leaving piercing trails of scarlet,

Elbow on her throat, she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t move she couldn't-

She shuddered. 

Moved past the memory.

She gazed back at the stars.

“I am strong.

I am powerful.

I am beautiful.”

[spottedink]

Writing Prompt #1

Humanity has finally reached the brink. They’ve drained Earth’s resources to the point of prompting their own extinction. A small research team at NASA has discovered a solution: a habitable planet, full of lush forests and clear lakes, exists near enough to be reached within a year. The only barrier is a species of seemingly intelligent life currently populating the new planet. They are yet to reach their own industrial revolution, and could easily be overpowered by those from Earth.

The information remains top secret, but with mere days left to reach a conclusion the team begins to question if humanity truly deserves the second chance.

[spottedink]

“No More”

No more libraries. No more shelves of books with battered spines, exchanged and fingered daily. No more curling beneath a crystal window, novel in hand, surrounded by whispered fragments of conversations. No more air conditioning. No more headphones, delivering music straight into an ear. No more playlists of songs, organized by color, decade, and mood, uplifting spirits and glorifying tears. 

No more carnivals twinkling in the twilight, the sounds of laughter and music filling the air. No more fingers sticky with cotton candy. No more riding to the top of a ferris wheel and peering over the edge, gazing at smiling families, a golden field, the sun setting in the horizon.

No more airplanes. No more tracing contrails across a cloudless sky. No more airports filled with thousands of people from unique and foreign backgrounds. No more travel, at least not across long distances. No more moving from the beaches of Malaysia to the fjords of Norway in a night, no more hotels with crisp sheets and soft towels. No more running water, no more steaming showers and freshly washed hands smelling of lavender soap. No more toothpaste or shampoo.

No more cities lit by a million lights. No more street lamps shining pools of soft light on pavement. No more traffic. No more highways waving webs across the landscape, no more streams of drivers performing an intricate yet familiar dance. 

No more universities filled with ideas and possibilities. No more laboratories lit by fluorescent bulbs, microscopes revealing the delicate secrets of life. No more college dorms with glowing laptop screens, dim fairy lights, warm sweatshirts. No more high schools, middle schools, or primary schools. No more education. No more classrooms with long tables and stacks of worn textbooks. No more friendships and rivalries, secrets and petty relationships. No more innocence, no more youth.

No more Internet. No more cooking blogs or coding tutorials, no more shared photos or captured memories. No more Google Searches, no more information available at the click of a button. No more calling or texting or contacting someone across the world in an instant. No more relationships with distant relatives, no way of knowing if they were even alive. 

No more holidays. No more houses strung with bright lights, glimmering through flakes of falling snow. No more decorated trees, no more ornaments of red and gold. No more warm gingerbread cookies or crackling fires started with the flip of a switch. No more skiing. No more flying down mountains as the wind stings cheeks and tangles hair. No more moving through mountains in the winter, as relentless storms and drifts of snow as tall as houses blocked the roads. No more teams of snow plows. No more assurance of surviving harsh conditions, and no more methods of predicting weather. 

But most of all, no more security. No more promises that you’ll live to see the sun rise tomorrow, that a small cut won’t lead to death. No more trust, no more peace, no more unity. In a world where each survivor had lost everything they held dear, there was no hope for reconciliation or revival. As the lights flickered out in cities and homes around the world, so did their faith in humanity.