The sun lit up the campgrounds, the forest, it was starting to invade the ruins. Like weeds or perhaps a festering mold, within ruin came life and healing seeds. While the scene was bleek, many dead in hopes, hopes of destroying what once was, to save, save what will be in the future far long. Many of them were too weak, short sighted. Their grasp of time within their lifespans short, only a century or two with health. Unable to see that the world has died, with each heartbeat another piece crumbles. They had seen the world regress, dried to dust. The air becoming proliferated, smog, smoke, dust, tears, that was all they made clear. Making life slightly easier short term, only to throw it away later lost.

A woman hummed, the task she was given, one neither full of pride nor shame, to fight. Much like the others around her she fought, for her eternal life drove her towards it, a desire to live, live longer than… A desire to laugh under the sun, without fog made from smoke and dust black grey. Call it selfishness, it irrational, call it whatever you will they feared much. Each passing day she, and the ones around, they felt the cries of the earth mother pierce.

Like a dying hospital patient sick, or her boss which was health and sickness old, the earth was dying, and it, her only. A constant which does not change, neither war, nor famine sickness and smoke has parted. While people separate, their bonds fade, the earth has never left her embrace warm. A constant companion, within strange times, this certainty grounded her, so she fought. Fought against the progression of thousands, to reverse the earth back to simple times. A world of purity, a paradise.

“The death of a few are worth the many, if we have to regress, to progress, I… I will do what I must to live longer…”