An Extract from This Month's Release: Earth-Bound Sunset

I've decided to celebrate each release with a series of extracts that run for the month it's released in. This month saw the second edition of 366 Days of Flash Fiction released. Links to the collection can be found at Books2Read at: https://books2read.com/u/b6MrN0

 

Earth-Bound Sunset

Written the day after it was announced the Northern Hemisphere had reached a two-degree average above the mean for this time of year, and inspired by a piece about flowers blooming after rainfall in Death Valley, this piece is set on the same world as the Hummingbirds poems, before natural disaster became more widespread. Mankind walks the knife-edge of survival, and bares his ass in defiance to the oncoming storm, but our continued existence rests in our hands. Written on March 7, 2016, this piece is the March 21 entry for 366 Days of Flash Fiction.

“I remember when the flowers almost never bloomed,” Sanders said, indicating the carpet of color with a sweep of his hand. “I remember when this was a sight so rare, people would come from worlds around to see it.”

“What changed?”

Sanders looked at me.

“We changed the climate. Made it hotter. Made it wetter. Made this kind of thing a lot more common.”

He stared out at the flowers and sighed. I stared with him.

Truth be told, the flowers were beautiful and, like he said, the sight of them had once been rare. Now? Not so much. Tourists still came for them, but not so many we had to regulate their numbers. It made the job a lot easier. I watched Sanders drinking in the sight, and I had to ask.

“If they’re so much more common, now, why do you spend such a lot of time just lookin’ at them?”

In order to answer that, he lifted his head, and regarded me with solemn, sad eyes. It was the closest to grief I’d ever seen him.

“Because soon the weather will shift again, and these flowers will cease to exist, like all the rest.”

This time, I didn’t ask him why we gathered the seed from every mature blossom we could find.

The flowers carpeting the valley were like the sunsets that crowned the mountain peaks—a natural farewell, only much more drawn out than the one that ended each day.

Cover art is by Jake at JCaleb Design, and links to 366 Days of Flash Fiction can be found on Books2 Read at: https://books2read.com/u/b6MrN0