ShopDreamUp AI ArtDreamUp
Deviation Actions
Literature Text
She awoke with a jolt, thinking something was wrong.
Her uneasy feeling was the result of a dream: a city of ashes, burnt to the ground by some unknown revolutionary. Her city. Dead and buried under a layer of soot.
The surroundings quickly came into focus, reminding her where she was, and she rubbed her eyes, trying unsuccessfully to hold back a yawn. She adjusted her position until the tree was no longer poking her in the back with one of its knots.
Comforted by what she could see from her perch, she relaxed. The view was still as incredible to her as when she’d first come up here, though now the sun had dropped while she snoozed and it now cast long shadows over everything in sight. On the other side of the park she could hear the city thrumming with activity, as it always did. As it always would.
She allowed herself to remain there for only a few minutes longer before she stood up, wincing at a cramp in one of her legs. One of the hazards of the job, but she’d accepted that long ago when she’d accepted this job.
Up above, an airship floated past in no apparent hurry to get anywhere. The shadow it cast still caused her to startle, to look up, and she cursed herself silently for her own fright. Centuries of the city having them had done nothing to ease the horror of the things; heavily armoured and covered in cannons with enough firepower to flatten several quadrants of the city at the mere snap of one human’s fingers.
She knew she wasn’t the only one to still feel resentment at the presence of the airships. But she wondered if she was the only one actually willing to do anything about them.
--
A city of ashes, a city burnt to the ground by a group of so-called revolutionaries. Her city, dead and buried under a layer of soot. Gone were the airships; those too had fallen. Everything dies, eventually.
Except her.
She stood next to a burnt-out husk of an airship, her hand grasping the end of a wooden plank. It wasn’t the one she’d used to start the first fire, no, that one was long gone.
She hadn’t been alone in her actions, though. There had been others she had managed to convince after all. Those others had helped her evacuate the innocents, had helped her spread both the metaphorical and the literal fires.
Afterwards, one of them had asked her a question, as everyone but her readied for another life, somewhere else: What will you do now?
It would take some time for the dust to settle, she had said. But she would stay. She would stay, and she would wait, and she would rebuild.
She would wait here, on the hilltop above the city. Where she had always waited. Where she had always watched.
This was her city, after all.
Her uneasy feeling was the result of a dream: a city of ashes, burnt to the ground by some unknown revolutionary. Her city. Dead and buried under a layer of soot.
The surroundings quickly came into focus, reminding her where she was, and she rubbed her eyes, trying unsuccessfully to hold back a yawn. She adjusted her position until the tree was no longer poking her in the back with one of its knots.
Comforted by what she could see from her perch, she relaxed. The view was still as incredible to her as when she’d first come up here, though now the sun had dropped while she snoozed and it now cast long shadows over everything in sight. On the other side of the park she could hear the city thrumming with activity, as it always did. As it always would.
She allowed herself to remain there for only a few minutes longer before she stood up, wincing at a cramp in one of her legs. One of the hazards of the job, but she’d accepted that long ago when she’d accepted this job.
Up above, an airship floated past in no apparent hurry to get anywhere. The shadow it cast still caused her to startle, to look up, and she cursed herself silently for her own fright. Centuries of the city having them had done nothing to ease the horror of the things; heavily armoured and covered in cannons with enough firepower to flatten several quadrants of the city at the mere snap of one human’s fingers.
She knew she wasn’t the only one to still feel resentment at the presence of the airships. But she wondered if she was the only one actually willing to do anything about them.
--
A city of ashes, a city burnt to the ground by a group of so-called revolutionaries. Her city, dead and buried under a layer of soot. Gone were the airships; those too had fallen. Everything dies, eventually.
Except her.
She stood next to a burnt-out husk of an airship, her hand grasping the end of a wooden plank. It wasn’t the one she’d used to start the first fire, no, that one was long gone.
She hadn’t been alone in her actions, though. There had been others she had managed to convince after all. Those others had helped her evacuate the innocents, had helped her spread both the metaphorical and the literal fires.
Afterwards, one of them had asked her a question, as everyone but her readied for another life, somewhere else: What will you do now?
It would take some time for the dust to settle, she had said. But she would stay. She would stay, and she would wait, and she would rebuild.
She would wait here, on the hilltop above the city. Where she had always waited. Where she had always watched.
This was her city, after all.
Inspired by fav.me/d1p09nn and written while listening to the Hunger Games soundtracks.
Comments0
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In