The Changing of the Guard: Rebirth

The asteroid came hurtling down in the early morning hours of February 4, 2014, when the sun was just peeping over the horizon. As it entered the Earth's atmosphere, it blossomed into a somewhat flowery fireball, trailing glowing yellow and orange debris from the main body. Everyone, all the remaining people of the Earth, were all awake, and all watched it descend. But, quickly, the heat became intense, and the winds rose in howling unison with the temperatures, and soon many of the people had to avert their eyes, and seek cover. However, strangely enough, there where some who chose to remain outside until the heat burned their eyes out, and the winds raked their skins off, and they fell dead where they stood. And, if they had had lips left, you would have seen them all smiling....

But, cover or no, all were soon dead anyway. The asteroid came crashing down somewhere about the middle of the Pacific Ocean, releasing a maelstrom of boiling sea water and steam and rock and metal dust, that quickly sped toward the land areas of the Earth, and into the upper atmosphere as well. Within minutes, the continents once known as Asia and as North and South America were struck by walls of water, steam, and debris thousands of feet high, and the skies became choked with dust and darkened the lands. A few more minutes, and the torrent had crossed those landmasses and began carrying their lethal mix of heat and particulates over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the rest of the seven seas, reaching Africa and Europe and Australia, and the Polar Caps as well. Soon, the walls of murderous destruction ran into each other, meeting "in the middle", if you will, releasing even more heat and energy, and then rolled back the way they came, to once again cleanse the lands....

"The event", as someone might have called it, had there been anyone left alive to call it anything at all, actually lasted several months, before things settled down and returned to "normal", although no one familiar with the former appearance of the Earth would have called it so. To someone who had seen it before, the Earth was now a very, VERY, alien place. One could now call it "The Mud Planet", without an argument. Where once there had been birds and trees and animal life, there was now nothing but mud and ice, with no living things in sight; neither in the sea, nor in the air, nor on the ground....the World had truly ended.

But, none of that mattered. If anyone had survived, what would have been truly astounding was the silence.....the utter silence....It seems that when the asteroid hit the Earth, it had altered it's axis, and the Earth now spun in a different way, and maybe that's why there were no longer any significant weather patterns, or strong winds. Or, maybe it had to do with the suffocating blanket of dust that had covered the Earth for so many years; maybe that had suppressed the weather in some way....or maybe it was the Earth's new, slightly different orbit around the sun. Most likely, it was a combination of all these events, and the silence; the silence....was astounding. Through all the lands, there was no sound, and nothing lived...

~~except~~

~~except~~

for one little tiny, scraggly Mockingbird with a broken wing, floating along on a log in the middle of an ocean, over a part of what used to be known as "Kansas", somewhere in the middle of the former continent of North America. As he bobbed along on the log, he chirped softly, and cocked his head side-to-side, the better to hear. And, yes, he did hear something, something far off to the East, that used to be North. He heard a baby crying, and the Mockingbird chirped a little louder, and floated on....

The children awoke, inside the cave, on the side of the hill, that was on the side of the mountain, and began making their way out of the murky darkness, seeing light shining ahead. There were three of them, one boy [5?], and two girls, [2&3?]. The two-year old was crying and whimpering a little, for they knew not where there mother was, seemingly having been asleep for a long while. But yet, they remembered having a mother, a mother who left them alone a lot, and who wasn't very kind to them, but yet they remembered. Still, the older ones were used to being alone, and plunged on through the cave, and only the baby cried a little...

Eventually, they reached the mouth of the cave, and peered out at a strange New World that none had seen before. The boy remembered that all had been snow and ice before, and hard, bitter cold...now there appeared before them a lush, tropical jungle, and the weather was warm, inviting. They had shed their furs while walking out of the cave, no longer needing them, and they now stood outside in their brave new world near naked, but extremely comfortable. And lo!! Where there had been nothing before but rock and snow and ice, now stood trees and ferns and flowers and ponds and waterfalls. The children sat down, stunned at the beauty, and spent several minutes just looking, having never seen anything like this before in their young lives. And, up in the tops of the trees, there were...there were...birds...

Only the boy had ever seen birds before, and then only in a picture-book he had found down by the settlement. He had never imagined them really existing, but yet, here they were, birds of all colors, and shapes and sizes. And they flew; they flew, from tree to tree, like phantoms from the sky! Then he felt a tugging at his sleeve; it was the Baby, she was pointing to something along the ground. The boy looked, and saw yet another bird; one who wasn't flitting amongst the trees, probably because of a wing that was bent at a rather strange angle. But, the bird chirped at them, and came hopping along toward them as best he could, and soon was in their circle. The bird ran along their hands and knees and pecked playfully at them, and soon they were all laughing. And, while the children wondered at all the colorful magic of the birds in the trees, they soon fell in love with this drab, bedraggled old songbird, and never knew that he once had been called a "Mockingbird", and had traveled thousands of miles to see them, without the benefit of flight...later, the Mockingbird hopped away while turning and chirping at them, and they soon followed him. He proceeded to show them where the fruit trees were, and where the ponds that had fish were, and even caught a minnow and swallowed it just to show them it could be done. It even drug dried branches around for them, and showed them two rocks that would create sparks and cause the branches to catch fire, and warm them. That night, they slept on the ground on one of the furs they drug from the cave, while the Mockingbird hopped around from one to another and "kissed" their cheeks to make sure they slept well.

The next morning, the Mockingbird was gone. The children sat holding each other, and thought about their life. They had no mother and father, and the only friend they had ever had, had left them. But, somehow, they had the feeling that He wasn't too far away....and they smiled....and...

~~THEY WERE HAPPY~~

THE BEGINNING