Lethian's Bells

And as the months went by, the people listened to Lethian's message. And soon began to remember how it was to live without death. And then began to forget the need to fight. By the end of that last year, both sides had put down their arms again, and a new pact went up before the people that they would never again shed blood.

That had been nearly three thousand years ago, and the pact had stood. This time, there had been no shedding of blood. It might have been better had there been.

Leah took her last pull and then extinguished the stub in the grass. The sizzle as the fire extinguished in the grass sent up a trail of acrid smoke. The earth had rebelled against the radioactivity absorbed into its soil, its crust, down to its core. Patches of fire still burst spontaneously at times, reminding her of the last days when some of the survivors were caught unexpectedly by the combustion which quickly turned them into running, screaming torches.

She stood up, trying to block out those last days when Cyanne and Daniel had finally succumbed to the sickness resulting from the poisons released into the air from the last bombs. Strangers on the road to nowhere, alone, hungry, desperate, they had befriended her and had been her only family long after her own were dead. The three of them had learned quickly how to watch out for each other, to help each other survive. But now they were gone, dead along with so many millions.

Thousands of years ago, Lethian had wearied of the shed blood; he would have wept at these nanotech weapons that had killed without a drop of blood falling. No, the Xandrian would never run red again. But never again would ears listen to the sounds of the bells. Never would they hear the old songs of life, love, joy, sorrow, and death. Death.

She tried not to think about all of the people who had perished, their bodies already absorbed into the earth, including her parents and young brother. If she stopped again for the hundredth time to wonder why she was spared, she stopped herself, only letting herself remember her mother's dying words: "Survive, live on...leave this place."

A few days ago that had seemed an impossibility and she had thought herself destined to live out a life of solitude on this poisoned planet, with no one else alive. At least, as far as she knew or could travel to find out. She looked out at the Xandrian, at the mountains. There was still beauty here, and she wondered at the irony of it all.

"Are you ready?" she heard his voice before she saw him walking towards her from the west. His ship was there, had been for a few days now, when he first found her. He and his mates had come to search for any survivors. Many more of them had scanned the earth, desperately looking, finding no one, and had been ready to leave - before he found her. Only a small miracle had lead him to her; the spark of one of her cigarettes sizzling into the dead earth, sparkling in the everpresent night. He had called out - and she had answered, at first not knowing who he was, but desperately joyous to hear another human voice after so long by herself, surviving as best she could, eating poisoned plants to calm the hunger pains, telling herself the old stories just to hear a voice, even if it was only hers.