Darkness falls.

Shadows pour out from the crevices, from the undersides of leaves and the hollow concrete pipes. The burning orange sun dips behind tall metal structures, turning their edges to fire and illuminating one thousand panes of broken glass. Wind flows through them, echoing the sounds of long ago voices. The glass fragments cut into them like so many teeth, clinging brokenly to their rectangular frames and whistling their tuneless note. They whistle with the wind as the voices cry—cry for the city, cry for lives gone and lost, cry for the cold night sky as it watches the sun fall away past the horizon.


Then the fire is gone.

The structures remain, hollow and jagged like mouths against the outline of the sky, an endless black. A single star pinpoints the last glimmer of hope; a fading pinprick in a blackness that has reigned supreme for all time, and will rule long after the last spark dies. The city watches, watches the star. It watches with shattered eyes and empty hearts; faceless skulls buried in the rubble and rust at the city’s base. The city watches, and the pinprick fades; a tiny speck of man made light in a cosmos of uncaring dust. The pinprick fades, and the true stars twinkle coldly in a sky now theirs alone.

Somewhere nearby, the forest chirps, leaves rustling a bit in an autumn wind. The city sighs, and the forest creeps slowly in. Lost and alone, the city feels roots take hold, and year after year will go by as the city decays. Trees will sprout, moss will grow on the concrete—animals will make homes for themselves where humans will never sleep again. The city will die, with only the cold, foreign stars to witness as its walls slowly crumble.
The city will die, lost and alone; a fading scar on the untamed jungles of the planet known as Earth. No one will notice and no one will care; the tiny spaceship will push on without the faintest regret in its mind for that last, ancient city, without a tremor in the sleeping hearts of its long dead crew.
But unknown to the ship, unknown to the stars that watch is passage, one child lies asleep deep within the hold. One child, too deep in her dreams to be reached by the cold, holds the city tight within her mind. One child alone, floating in the deepest dark, powerless—locked outside of time and yet somehow terribly alive. One child remembers the city—and for one child there is hope.
One child has the power to change not just the world, but the entire universe.
The city sighs. The city is dieing. But there is still one spark left…

Darkness falls.