Alone

    The sun had become a fiery red reminder of the death that fell so carelessly upon the world.  It was a malevolent red, the kind of red that reminds one of hate and anger.  As the boy clambered to the top of the rocky hill, the light shuddered.  It rippled, distorting the world, and pulsing with an omen. 
    He stood and stood, until his legs gave out, waiting for a night that never came.  The sun was stationary, or was it the world that had stopped it's revolutions?  He fell to the ground, which burned like the sand in a desert. 
    When he awoke, there was a complete silence, a red silence, a lonely silence.  He made the mistake of looking up at the sky, and was transfixed by the awful sight which assaulted him.  He was seeing the naked universe, in a fullness that nature was not supposed to reveal.  He was isolated, a single dot of life whirling on the surface of a sphere which, in turn, whirled unnoticed through the infinity of space.  The sheer size rushed up and pulled at him, turning his empty stomach and dizzying his tired mind. 
    After an eternity of staring at infinity, he began to notice a beauty which had before been hidden by the horrible immensity of it all.  Colorful diaphanous bands twisted like celestial snakes through the heavens, and the sun had become an autumnal ember.  Though hot dust was blown by dry winds against his face, he lost himself in a sight he was unable to fully appreciate.  Like a wild and rare beast of the wilderness, it haunted his dreams and flitted through his waking hours as he drifted in and out of consciousness, more perfect for it's mystery.  Who was he to witness this?  Surely it was a sight only nature herself could love, and yet he felt a yearning to be full with it, painted by a cataclysm on the waiting canvas of the cosmos. 
    Faced with a spectacle so inhuman, his mind strayed into the unknown, and he felt himself drift up and away from that lonely shell he had once called himself.  As his consciousness floated upwards, it spread and spread, spread so thinly that he felt it as a bubble bound to burst.  The last touch he felt was the whispering caress of those heavenly bands, which brushed his mind with a tenderness he would never have the means to portray.