leaps and bounds

An invasion of noise that resembles a morning reveille breaking up the reverie, disrupting the peace of the valley below, which sports a sickly discoloration along the foliage surrounding the village at the center. As far as the eye can see, there is no sign of life. Stoic and still, the blaring sirens continue to roar in the distance. It may be too late, and the cascade of these ear-screeching cacophonies are in vain as any healthy, taut eardrum would have ruptured under this sustained loudness. Alas, a child dragging a blanket like an over-sized cape paces slowly out of a blind corner. Eyes unfixed on any particular point, as if sleeping awake. Scrapes and dirt marks on his face suggest a hiding spot was carved out. Whatever ravaged this community, this survivor represents the ones that go on to live many years with many peaceful sunsets, but with troubling memories of the split seconds of terror that made them an orphan, an outlier in the charts of mortality. Left untouched perhaps as a reminder of how fear is allowed to take over fate, yielding the undesirable outcome of an anonymous, solitary demise.