Stillness

You could see the firebombs in their slow, terrible descent, watch them as they floated with precision towards the hills. Their tails of flaming magnesium glittered and shone into the night, illuminating everything for miles around with ice-cold white light. I’d seen long-exposure pictures of stars that looked like this, white stripes painted across the sky, but to watch it happen in real time was an experience like no other.

The mountains were coming apart so that everything looked like an ocean of slow-moving stone and dust. The bombs struck the ground so hard that the shoulders and angles of the peaks were melting beneath their weight and fury.

I steeled myself. There was no surviving this final assault. Not now, with my armies spent and my position revealed. We had fought for so long and been so close to victory that I had never given up hope of success, not until tonight, when the sky opened and the stars began to fall.

I was standing outside now. The night air was hot with summer, in contrast to the chilling tone of the metallic fires all around. I had stopped hearing it all, after several hours of bombardment. The crashing gave way to a peaceful silence. I had found that my ears were bleeding; perhaps I was deaf?

I turned, and the silence had deceived me with its peace. The whole mountain behind me was aflame. White sheets of light shot and danced their way towards me, bringing with them innumerable landslides. The force of it shook me to my knees, and I put a hand down to steady myself. I closed my eyes for a single second, then marshaled myself and stood. I met the dimly roaring tide with my head held high.