Flash Fiction Friday: Waiting for the End

The world was supposed to have ended by now.  After the 2061 famine I thought for sure we were over.  Ten billion people reduced to three-point-one.  But we survived, somehow.  Rebuilt.  Then the year of the firestorms came, and then the plagues.  And who can forget the ninth World War?  

Still, through the many years, I can't tell that we're any closer to the end than we were back when there were seven habitable continents.  After OmniBiotechnics came up with the Life 2.0 serum, we're now farther away than ever before.  I've been walking this earth for four millenia and I like to think that things are better now, but I'm no longer sure.  Death is a rumor created to keep us in line.  The same is true with love.  There's not been a recorded birth in three thousand years.  I'm not sure I remember what a baby looks like.  My days are spent sifting through forgotten tomes of ancient history, looking for prophecies in dead religions and bizarre cults.  The Entertainment House wants to find something "new and exciting" to present to the populace, and where better to look than in the past?  "There is nothing new under the sun," I read in one of these books, and I'm inclined to agree.  From what I can tell, all of these religions point to some sort of Armageddon or some breaking of the earth.  Something that finally wipes us all off of the face of the earth.

I think it's safe to say that they were all wrong.

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Dear Adelith, 

I know it's been over two hundred years since I last wrote, but I woke up this morning thinking about you and thought I might as well.  How've you been?  How's Averret doing?  Does he ever ask about his papa?  I imagine not.  He was so little when I started my sentence that he probably doesn't even remember me.  I hope you told him about all the good things that I did back before I screwed up.  What House does he work in?

This is stupid.  I'm not expecting you to write me back, and hell, I don't even know if this letter will find you, but if it does, I want you to know that I'm so sorry for everything I put you through.  Had I known I would have received a life sentence I never would have got involved.  You don't understand what it's like here, serving a life sentence when you're practically immortal.  The boredom is maddening.  The only new thing I see each day is a different color wall to my cell.  Today it's a blue day.  Tomorrow is black.  Those are the worst.  Reds are pretty bad, too.  If there was any way I could off myself in here I'd do it in a heartbeat, but the guards are rather vigilant, especially to people like me.

I don't know why you were on my mind this morning, but you were, and I just wanted to let you know that I still love you, even after all these years.  I think fondly of the days before the serum, when we were poor but happy.  I hope life is everything you wanted it to be, Adelith.  I love you with my whole heart.

-Pogue

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Kee-yu dreamed of food. A rice paddy, vibrant green and teeming with millions upon millions of healthy grains. A gentle wind cooled her face, tussled her hair like Mama used to do when she was a child. She tasted rain in the wind. Uytugyo will provide, the shaman said. He always will.  Kee-yu wondered where Uytugyo was when the monsters swarmed in and stole her mother away all those years ago.  

She ambled through the paddy, fingers lightly touching the plants as she moved. The grains were full, and she idly plucked a kernel and popped it in her mouth. She made her way to the center of the field, stalks dancing all around her, bending and twirling with the wind.  Far in the distance, just beyond the Blue Mountain, she could see smoke rising from the Dead City.  You must never go there, Kee-yu.  Never.  The monsters live there and they will gobble you up if you wander too close.

A gentle kick pushed against her swollen belly.  "You like the rice?" Kee-yu asked, gently rubbing her hand against the child's hidden body.  The baby pushed back against her hand, and Kee-yu smiled.  

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This piece is similarly inspired by my flash fic piece titled "Waiting for the Rain."  Where that piece dealt Realistically with differing POVs as they waited for it to rain, this story offers three different POVs in a fantasy setting revolving around a series of futuristic events and an obvious leitmotif. Also, I presented this piece in 1st person, 2nd, and 3rd-limited, so as to stretch myself.