THE LAST NIGHT OF THE WORLD

“In our place, it sheds a tear at dawn.”

It will begin as a great silence over the land. The heartbeat of the mountain, heard in the rustling of leaves and the murmur of water, will sound no more. Nothing that before made noise will make noise any longer. People will move like quiet shadows through the streets. The great cities will not have an echo to their name.

Thus, it will be known, the end is near.

Then, a great storm will gather over the mountain, it will rain, and it will hail, for the darkness is preparing to overtake the land as it did in the beginning. Sixty days and sixty nights, it will pour down over the empire of Edon, and the water will not wash away their sins, and their voices will not be heard when they cry.

On the sixty-first morning, the sky will be clear and the sun, that greatest star, will shine down from its seat. People will emerge from their houses, and the sunlight will blind their eyes for a moment, and when they regain their sight, what they see will be a barren pile of rock where the mountain stood. The rock no longer houses the Goddess, and the rock no longer holds a heart.

For the Mountain Mother has abandoned her people, and she has abandoned her place, and the hollow in which she lived will be full of bats, and packs of mangey wolves will come out of there.

And no matter how many times her priestesses sound the muted drums in the temples, she will not return, she will not look back, and her blessing shall never again be upon the lands of Edon.

On that morning, the silence will lift, and a cry greater than every cry shall resound from all around the mountain’s foot, for the Mountain Mother is gone and the people know, the coming night will be the first and the last night of the world.

The darkness will engulf them, and never again will it dawn.