The End.

     There are two seemingly identical children, children of the earth. They are scrawny and weak now. Their eyes have grown wide from observing the changes that have gone on around them. Their backs face each other as they remain perched on a ledge formed by jagged rock in a shadowy cave. Bare feet dangling in a dark and cold swamp of what appears to be thick oil, they watch it rise slowly, inexorably. This place was once a lush, animal abounding wonderland whose pristine loveliness has been desecrated by unspeakable abuses that transformed light into dark and purity into filth. They do nothing but grunt and sigh. This is the way they argue now. They have always disagreed, but long ago their disputes were impassioned and vociferous and even before that, there was a time when they sang and laughed.
As they persist in arguing, their skin turns a paler shade of grey revealing ice-filled blue and purple veins. Backs still facing, they shiver now that the frigid oil has risen past their shins and up to their knees. They continue to ignore it, pretending that the current situation is simply a harmless nightmare while grim reality creeps relentlessly up their legs, rapping on the closed door of their consciousness. Denying the facts that are right in front of them may alter their impressions but it does not alter the truth. They have caused all of this. It slides up more rapidly and rises past their hips, covering the entire ledge from which they refuse to move. It gains speed and they begin to feel anxious. They decide that something must be done. Now that their environment has become unlivable they must escape, but as they try to get up the oil is too thick and they can barley budge. The panic sets in as they try to wrench their bodies from the mess that

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they have created, but in the process one plunges onto his side and begins drowning into the thick oil. The other tries to help, but can’t extend his hands fast enough to reach the fallen one whose cries are muffled by the oil until it is solemn again.
As the child realizes what has happened his mind is hurled into a memory of his past. Greens and blues surround and flow through him. Majestic trees tower above him and gentle winds caress soothingly. He remembers the dry warmth encircling him and glowing within. He remembers lying in the grass staring up at the blue sky full of white clouds as he dreamt of a beautiful future. He can even recollect his artistic thinking at the time and his once open mind that filled him with happiness. His eyes recall the vibrant colours, his nose the fragrant flowers, fresh-cut grass and moist earth. Even his tongue tingles as his mouth salivates for the taste of fresh cold water sliding down along his taste buds like tiny rivulets. He yearns for the fresh water that made him feel alive. He could feel all of this and then remembers frolicking like an otter in the world’s cleanest waters, in streams, in lakes and in the oceans. He watches himself playing in water so lucid that he can see rainbows of fish swimming around him. He gazes at an earth below the water in a time teeming with life, rich in story, and full of security.
He is warmed by the beams of sunlight shining through the playground in his mind. His reminiscences date back from hundreds of thousands of years. This child’s life is not ordinary. This child’s life has been extended to parallel the existence of humans. This child and his ideals have thrived in every human that has ever existed during the time from the first of his kind to the last. He is also a typical human at heart forced to live

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through everything humans have ever done. He can remember a melting ice sheet causing the sea levels to rise and the warming of the earth at the beginning of the twenty-first century. He remembers and begins to mourn.
This child snaps from his memory and begins to gasp for air. He has been so deeply involved in his memory that he believed he was breathing fresh and clean air, but now he realizes that what he is breathing is thickly polluted air to which his lungs have adapted. His emaciated body is a result of what he breaths and can no longer eat. A regular human can survive for weeks without food, but only for a few days without water. He has been deteriorating for years while ingesting noxious waste, but has not succumbed because he is special like his brother, the keepers of the earth. He looks upward for an answer, the way so many have but finds nothing except for the black cave ceiling. Then to his apprehension he realizes that it is not a cave ceiling, but the bright blue sky turned to black that has sunk down on him.
There were so many signs that the sky was falling through the hole that had resulted from the venomous belches of our harmful machines. Dramatic changes in the colours and temperatures of the earth should have alerted the sensibilities of all. There were concerned humans, scientists and leaders who pleaded in vain for people to remedy their destructive ways, but humankind’s greed and love of ease prevailed. Parents were torn between the damaging conveniences of their everyday lives and the realization that the beloved animals they had grown up with were now only available to their children in tour-guided museum visits. Still excuses were made as people plodded on, fortifying their

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wretched web of devastation. The child’s flashback ends abruptly when the oil tickles the bottom of his chin.
He relaxes his neck, but his head remains fixed staring up at the sky. The oil is at his ear lobes, it engulfs his face, covers most of his hair and as it seeps into his ears and slides into his mouth he realizes that what has consumed his brother and is consuming him is not oil. It is just dirty and thickly polluted water.  His eyes widen in shock as the water laps into his mouth, filling his esophagus and clogging his trachea slowly suffocating him. In his very last moments, he thinks that if he had worked together with his brother they could have prevented the annihilation of the human race and maintained the health of the world on which they were all dependent. The last shred of hope and love dies with him.