i think it’s possible to just be sad and never know happiness except through the words of others.

that’s what was going through my head when i wrote this:

The girl seems hopelessly lost, standing alone and indecisively as streams of purposeful people scurry around and past her and are swallowed by the distant buildings awaiting them. She is thin, almost a waif, with a smudged face and a look in her eyes that testifies to her having seen more than one her age should have. She half-turns, indecisively peering around her, looking for something or someone, some sort of sign, yet all seem oblivious to her presence, striding past her without seeing her. A grey drizzle starts to fall, deadening the slate sky even more. She sighs and shakes her head in sorrow.

The girl looks up into the sepia-stained sky, seemingly noticing the weather for the first time. She pulls her sweatshirt in tighter around her narrow frame and shivers, a drop of water coursing down her face and dropping to the pavement, caught up in a stream of other drops, lost in the puddles. She, however, stands alone still, watching and waiting for . . . for what?

The drizzle increases, becoming a steady rain. The girl is soon soaked, even drenched, and the rain shows no signs of slacking. She, however, shows no signs of moving. It is becoming increasingly hard to see the girl thanks to the rain. She becomes ever more immaterial, her face growing whiter and her clothes darkening, the world starting to blend in with her. It is almost as if the polluted rain is purifying her, a sort of cleansing otherwise impossible.

The steady rain has now reached monsoon-like proportions. No one comes to help the girl, to ask her if she’s ok, to see if she needs something or someone. The torrential downpour wipes out all sight of the girl. A faint shadow can still be seen through the sheets of water, but even that seems to be growing fainter. Seconds, minutes, hours later, the rain starts to let up.

Soon, the girl can be seen again. More accurately, were the girl there, she could now be seen. The sky lightens to an almost blue, a shade never seen in this bleak world. Where the girl was now lies only the soaked sweatshirt she was wearing and nothing else—or, rather, nothing else obvious.

The sky is now clear of clouds for the first time in as long as memory stretches; the color is that of a baby blue known only in legends and myths as the true color of the sky. Oddly enough, the blue is the same shade as the girl’s eyes. People step out of the buildings that had earlier swallowed them, looks of wonderment on their faces. One walks to the spot where the girl was and where the sweatshirt remains and picks the sopping wet piece of clothing up off the ground. Something previously hidden within the folds of the sweatshirt drops to the earth.

A woman scurries to the spot where the object dropped, examines it closely, and drops to her knees, keening in grief. The others gather around her, whispering to themselves, puzzled by her actions, awaiting an explanation. She hiccups herself to a gradual stop and says, with tears streaming down her face, “We’ve done it again.” Puzzled, the others look closely at what she cradles close to her, cupped safely in the palms of her hands, and as they recognize the object for what it is, comprehend that again one has sacrificed all to save their world.

The second coming occurred—and no one left.