After the fall
A visit to the past, a vision of the future
A solitary flicker is all that can be seen in the absolute darkness of perpetual winter. Women and men huddle closely, their bodies the only guard against the cold.
They know little of the night beyond the flame, except the terror conjured by their own imaginations. In a world ruled by superstition and ignorance, exiles dance by burning fires, chanting incantations to summon the supernatural, that which they cannot see but know to be real.
Rubble from the past litters the cloying blackness where only distant stars light the way. Descendants of the fall pick through tatters to survive. An ancient object, rendered useless in this age, serves as a crude tool with which to dig or defend.
The cold is tempered briefly by mythical stories of ancient places, cities of warmth, leisure, light, and plenty. A long ago world scorched at the hands of evil forces indifferent to the cost of life and land.
Nighttime stories pass the time by firelight, mouth by mouth, year by year, upon new generations. The memories of ancestors, survivor chronicles, change slightly with whoever does the telling, but nuggets of which may endure to form the ancient wisdom of some unimaginable future.
Darkness prevails. Like death, it cannot be stopped. It overcomes the most mighty of civilizations, fragile victims of their own intricacy. It overwhelms the most permanent places of worship, systems of commerce, stores of grain, piles of money backed by false currency, and the staunchest of institutions: temples, banks, municipal centers, markets, food sources, water systems, power grids.
Learning, art, and music are silenced and centuries of tradition are snuffed, fallen and useless.
In the engulfing darkness, scribes write by candlelight with frost-bitten fingers, painstakingly preserving whatever knowledge that remains, for a future they will never see, when the warmth and light return. Their candle, a solitary flicker in the darkness.
