After the War
This piece is a Write or Die response to The Mission
They called it the necessary war. The war the world needed. Perhaps they’d called every war that, back and back to when humanity had picked rocks off the ground to throw at each other.
Like most of the things the species had deemed ‘necessary’, it had gotten seriously out of hand.
Mortimer put down the pen and blew across the smooth surface of the vellum. Though the air was dry, it was far from warm in the tower, and beneath the half-fingered gloves, the joints of his hands ached and throbbed. When the ink lost its shine, he placed the sheet with the others and turned from the little rosewood desk. As always, the fire had died, a few embers breathing in crimson unison with the draft coming under the door.
Beside the small hearth, a roughly woven basket held pinecones and branches, hastily gathered during the short hours of daylight, eked out with a miser’s instinct through the night. He shuffled across the cold floor to feed the coals. Winter wasn’t here yet but it was coming, as sure as the witch of the north.
Flame licked around his offerings, tasted portions left black and smoking. In the moving colors, he saw them again, hailstorms of rockets, arcing across the sky, their poisons and fire consuming everything in their path. Afterward the earth had been black…
