The end

The drummers stared into the rising sun, their rhythm having reached its demise. The chanters before them, their exhausted heads at the drummers feet.

The shrill amongst the scorched earth--the prevalent hallowed mourning poured first from the sky, piercing from the overcast shawl and turning the haggard haze fluorescent. The day was heavy with remnants, half tales, tired lores, arid leaves lost and spared.

And the stern lulling turned the struggle to a sleep.

Everything was bowed and reverent and genuflected to the sweeping cadence of nature that harbors and strikes and relieves any notion of end. The fled birds returned as ravens perched on charred ruminations, bone and dark ember melded in eerie uniting. They knew the end and guzzled it eagerly.

The end, the end, the mighty end, the tired end, the quiet smolder, in settling of figment and semblance--ash returned, again, to its earth, and the brazen sun shone throughout.

The chanters arose, their eyes emblazoned and christened with zest, and sailed in graceful flutter into the vast, open sky. The drummers then turned from the sun, their assembly in a single row, their posture certain and undeniable. In unison, they heralded a final strike of their drums and leaped, returning themselves to the heavens.

And so was born a mighty wind, mighty and resounding, that felt deeply the naked earth's face, spouting skyward her impotence, barren bones and corpse no longer hidden, truly exposed and left as testament--all that was free was made to rise, all that had fallen was left to fall apart.