Thursday 13 September 2012

impending feeling of doom


His head was nearly all filled with joy, but a small shadow hanged at the back of his thoughts. As he kissed her lips and fumbled his hands around her waist he could feel a small itch, a little something deep inside his consciousness. Everyone was feeling it, not just him, a taste of impending doom, nearing, growing, a small spot of darkness in the blissful light of the oscillating twin suns of Sheliak.
 She had been just another girl, for a while, but as time passed on he did really fall for her and now he was thinking of asking her to become his wife. He had already begun the preparations, having bought the ritual beggar's cloth and the ticket for a shore trip, where he had to find a pair of perfectly round stones, one yellow and one blue. In a couple of days he'd arrange for them to be together at sunrise, but since he wanted to make sure that she wasn't expecting it, he had asked for the help of friends, in two days time. They were to show up, unexpectedly, at his place and insist on taking the two of them out for a couple drinks, and then, as sunrise approached, they would leave one by one, until the last of them asked for a ride home.
 That way he'd be alone with her, close to the gardens, and he could say to her "oh well, if we are here, we might as well watch the sunrise, sitting on the grass", and even if she did suspect anything he'd just say "oh come on, no way I could have planed all this!" until the suns started to rise, when he would remove his clothes, showing the beggar's cloth on his skin, and then he'd present her the round stones - "As the two suns revolve around each other, feeding each other with love and heat, so I want to revolve around you. As the two suns live forever bonded, so I want to live with you" - and she would say yes and he would be filled with joy and they would dance under the trees, the two stones firmly in her hand, her arm around his naked waist, and the birds would sing of their love.
 Even as he made plans for that, the feeling of doom grew bigger, but he was sure it was just his fear of she saying no, not knowing that what he felt everyone else in Sheliak-Three felt on the back of their heads. If he hadn't been so focused on her eyes and her every word and her every smile, he might have noticed the old man ranting about the end of the world on the street. But even focused as he was on her, he noticed the bright shine of a object entering the atmosphere as everyone did. And those few that missed the first, saw the second, or the third, or any one of the other hundreds of antimatter bombs that fell om the surface of the planet. The deaths of all living things on Sheliak-Three happened in a short span of seconds, barely enough for him to think that at least this way they'd be together forever.

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