The Millennia Later

Desolation has its own stark beauty. It’s in the limbs of dead trees twisting up, pleading at the grey sky. It’s in the air, cold with a faint hint of smoke and the barest breeze that stirs up the dust at your feet. The white-grey ash falls like snowflakes, dusting your hair, your coat, your mask. You catch one of the flakes and it crumbles between your gloved fingers. The ground is packed as hard as concrete under your boots as you turn your back on this cold, still world. You look up; the moon is barely visible. You will carry that memory with you as you go back underground. Mankind no longer has use for the stars.