Ever After

The field existed before anyone knew it was there or cared about it.

Lush, grassy fields with gently rolling hills framed the north while the east was a solid wall of rock, a large cliff jutting from the earth and climbing to mountainous height. Far to the west of the field grew a thicket, small saplings struggling for water and sunlight so they could grow taller and mightier than their brothers. A stream flowed from the top of the eastern mountain down to the southern portion of the field, curving around to form a natural border.

Years passed, and the western thicket became a forest. The grass in the rolling hills grew long, and the harsh edges of the eastern rock face weathered, rough edges becoming smooth and then breaking anew, sharp angles forming once more.

Then civilization discovered the field, and civilization changed it. The trees were cut down, harvested to build structures to withstand the forces of nature. The eastern mountain was carved away to form a fortress, built to withstand both nature and other civilizations as well. The stream was redirected, its path altered to allow civilization its developmental way.

As time passed, civilization not only changed the field, but it boldly began to predict the future. The same voices that spoke words like “total destruction” and “uninhabitable earth” eventually pressed buttons and turned keys, throwing their own madness toward each other. Under great clouds of fire, the ancient field was laid to waste; the wood used to create the structures burned to ash, the southern stream dried up, and the hills to the north were decimated. Civilization died there, and the field died with it.

The alarmists were right. The earth was doomed.

But time marched on. Absent of all human interference, the field laid in desolation for decades. What man’s wars hadn’t completed, nature once again set forth to finish. Rain filled the cracks in the large stone fortress--civilization’s last memorial--expanding in the winter’s cold, year after year, tiny cracks growing wider and wider until there was nothing left of the once-mighty structure but weathered rubble.

And the wind blew through the desolate field, carrying with it the seeds of new life. After years of ashen decay, saplings began to struggle out of the ground to the east, each tree eager to outgrow its siblings. A trickle bubbled up from what once had been the source of a stream above the mountain, and water flowed once more to the south, carving a natural path down the mountain. The northern hills began to sprout with green again, in patches at first, but the patches stretched together until they had overtaken the dusty hills.

And, without anyone to care about it or know that it was there, the field once again began to thrive with life.