mirevolver

Have you ever had a recurring dream? Or perhaps a vision of something that flashes before your eyes when you have nothing else to think about? Nearly every time I close my eyes, or let my mind wander, a particular image flashes through my mind. Sometimes it is just a mere flash and other times it is there for as long as I wish to see it.

Countless times I have seen this place. And yet as I type this, my eyes are not looking at the screen but they are looking out at a great distance. I am standing at the edge of a cliff, the rock face below me plunges down for hundreds of feet. At the base of the cliff there stretched out a great and barren plain. The sky above me is clouded, but not with the grey or white clouds one would expect to see overhead. These clouds are dirty, brown, and menacing as lightning bolts frequently surge from them and relentlessly attack the ground. I see a bolt of the lightning strike a boulder in the distance, and watch with awe and fear as the rock shatters and explodes into rubble. The sky between the clouds is not blue, but a shade of brown darker than the clouds. Looking at the sky pulls any remaining shred of hope from you and forces your eyes back to the barren ground at your feet.

I am not alone in this place. There is a crowd of people behind me, as though I have led them to this place. Some followed because they trust me, but all have followed me because that which they fear has taken the place we came from. They are still afraid, and all of them collectively shudder each time a lightning bolt tears through the sky. I too am afraid; however I make every effort not to show it. We travel mostly in search of a place away from this nightmare, but we also travel to escape that which is behind us.

I walk along the edge and the crowd follows. I have been to this area before, I know this area. But the last time I was here, it was a very different place. The land was green and fertile; the sky was a comforting perfect shade of blue. This was once a prosperous land, the most prosperous of all, but others were jealous. The jealousy of the others bred and turned into a deep hatred of this land and its people. They began to tell their own people that they were being oppressed by this lush fertile land. They began to feed on their own hatred, it sustained them, and from that hatred, they vowed to take this land and force the people here to leave. Or if they couldn’t have this place, they would destroy it. As the unchecked hatred brewed into a blinding rage, they struck.

The people of this once rich land ignored the hatred of the others. They did not realize the danger they were in, they appeased the others and ceded small demands to them to prolong the peace. Those who warned of an attack and wanted to defend this land were dismissed as being rash and thirsty of violence. And thus nothing was done to stop the rage of the others. The people of this area were a great, kind, and respective people, but in the end they were naïve. They had more concern for the rights of those who would want them dead than they had for their own rights. They made excuses for why the others were so jealous and hateful, and in doing so they turned the blame on themselves. Their naïveté was their downfall.

Now we tread across the barren land to find a place better than here. Even after the first strike of the others, it was not known how much their hatred had grown. They were not satisfied with that strike. Their hatred demanded more. They felt the pleasure they received and wanted more, the thirst created in them was too great. In their quest to satisfy this new unquenchable thirst, they decided that nothing short of total destruction would be sufficient. And now as we look around, we see what hatred brings.

Could we have done something to stop them? We will never know. The question is as unanswerable as it is irrelevant. The only thing that matters now is to survive. As we navigate a narrow path down the side of the cliff, nobody questions the past, we can only question how long our future will be.

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Aside from my great plans to become the future dictator of the moon, I have little interest in political discussions.