SOMEWHERE IN THE FIELDS OF YESTERDAY

Somewhere in the fields of yesterday, she stood looking at tomorrow. Her deep blue eyes pierced the invisible walls that stood in the way of her destiny. She was defiant. She would break free. She struggled mightily, giving every ounce of her strength for freedom. Alas, the wall broke and shattered into a million pieces. She leaped and crashed through – much with sheer will and determination.

This alarmed her captors. The blood-lusted betrayers that wanted nothing more but the meat that covered her bones and the fur that wrapped her soul. She was a commodity. She was food. She was money more than anything else.

They came with their guns and their machines that roared, through dried grasslands once filled with life, into the dried-up earth where remnants of things that once lived now jut out covered in cracks of brown. They were machines that controlled machines. Hunters of a new age were void of morals and emotion. But they were never to be underestimated, though, for even if they lacked emotions, they earned much in intelligence. They were thinking machines built for the hunt because human beings became too lazy to do the dirty work.

She remembered her family at that moment when she ran for her life. She recalled her children. They came on a night filled with dreams of stars and prey that would fill up their bellies. Her children would never know the joys of hunting or see their mother grow old and eventually be taken by the gods of the earth. No. They were taken, and as the wind whispered into her ear – she knew they were dead.

Now there was only her and the dried-up world where prey was scarce, and she would eat by chance if a small rodent stupidly stumbled across her path. Machines flew overhead. Silent monsters became the new hunters. She ran to where the many stars met the horizon – to where there was still light that darkness never reached. Though her legs grew weary and bloodied, she pushed forward, knowing the enemy was not far behind.

But then she tumbled and fell into the dry ground. Her strength slowly left her. She lay flat, unable to move. Her deep blue eyes scoured the emptiness. The darkness above her covered reality. The stars slowly faded away. The sound of machines grew louder and louder. The cracking of a gun reverberated in the air. Something pierced her hind leg. She belted a roar.

They were coming.

She knew that her doom was near, and all she could do was cry.

From afar they came… her children, out from the stars that slowly dimmed, and they asked her to come and join them, with the gods and many fantastic things that awaited her. Come! They called out. She purred as her heart jumped for joy.

Whrrr…

The cracking of a gun resounded. The machines angrily beat their sounds of madness, but all of that did not matter, for she was with family at last, far away from the fields of yesterday, on to the lands of tomorrow where the stars waited and smiled.

Whrrr…

Copyright © 2024