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The tower pierced the top of the sky, having thrust its way through the clouds like a sword through the skin of the earth, and smoke that blocked the sun hugged the dark spires that jutted out from the walls like splinters, digging their way far beneath to find the secrets of space. Even the tallest of these gray, soot-darkened walls could not turn the idle eye from the blade’s silent, disruptive tyranny, and soon all things would be as black as the pool from which they originated, disintegrating rapidly into the dust to acknowledge their own lack of uniqueness, and rising, finally, toward the smoke.

These things the messenger knew, just as he had known when he had set down upon the worlds before this one, just as he had once known his Lord God as a bright, shining star. Yes, he knew these things. The where, the when, the how, had yet to be determined, and whether this damnation came by form of blood, blinding lights, disease or famine was of no great interest to him.

This red light that broke through the smoke from the sun dimmed and sent a hazy cast over everything upon the hill, lowering below the horizon in a slow, knowing way that the messenger felt he could not envy, but did. He wished to achieve even so much as an inch of the grace that sent the day tumbling downward into darkness, and then he remembered. Vile thing, it was, but still so beautiful. He supposed now, head resting upon his arms, arms resting upon the splintered surface of a tall fence, that all things, spiritual, physical, matter-less, contained some amount of corruptibility.

“The seeds are empty.”
He turned his head, and that face smiled back at him, her face, all pale and mystical and tired. She stood bare beneath the folds of a single, knitted layer of crimson-colored cloth, and the messenger found himself turning, for the sake of his own dignity, back toward the tower. When no reply came to counter her statement, she took a step forward toward him, but stopped at the trees to run her fingers over the trunk. “Their mothers are poisoned by the sun, and soon they will die, leaving each and every womb devoid of heirs. All seeds are empty; not even the weeds have survived.” The messenger watched the last of the light travel along the ground away from him, and wanted to follow it. “Have you come to save these people, Stranger?”

Silence followed, and the messenger considered the option of not responding, watching the tower with a kind of reserved malice, but even as he thought of the integrity that came with saying absolutely nothing at all, his mouth was opening. This disease was contagious.

“No, I am but a messenger,” said he, self-proclaimed.

“Oh? But what of correcting their sin-driven ways? Not your department of expertise?”
To this, the messenger turned again slowly, and found his eyes fixed helplessly, unwillingly. She leaned now against the withered bits of the dying tree, her eyes alight with the fading smoke-light, skin bright like hot flames, and her smile relaxing the muscles of the earth into tender, needy shreds of beauty. He felt his shoulders, too, fall, and could do little but watch in amazement, in horror. “No,” she continued, giving the messenger look of speculation before turning her head upward toward the tower. “I imagine its not. Whoever sent you here must know his boundaries. No civilization has the ability lift itself from its ashes with the assistance of one, shining savior, despite the wishes of its people. However, what the people have done to this earth is irreversible. These ashes are merely ashes, too scattered to find a phoenix, and soon, very soon, they will all be as the trees, doomed to darken, diseased, and fall.”

“So, Messenger,” She approached, standing on the tips of her toes and placing her hands atop the fence to peer over the city. “What sort of message have you for the lost souls? Words of wisdom, prophesy? Are you lost, Messenger?”
Lowly, the messenger spoke, “You mock me,”

“I find you amusing. You are so old, so strong, and yet there is such youth in your eyes. Your bones are white, and your skin has never seen the touch of a blade, your mind merely acquainted with such a concept as poverty. Messenger, you know nothing of age. All you know is your duty, your faith.”

“From what obnoxious, indecent well have you spouted? Are you of my Lord? Are you from the one they know as the Interloper, Sinner, the devil?”
“I am none of these.” She turned, the last of the light falling onto the graceful image of her slender, sickly form, aged by disease but warm against the earth. Amusement gone, she peered up at him, and time seemed to fall from them, like water from a tipping glass, and she replied, “I am I.”

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