Fire of Reckoning
This is a work of fiction, by Amy D. Christensen
Darkness had fallen, like a veil. No, more like a shroud. It was the covering that brought death. How could life continue without light? Light was as necessary as breath, yet humanity embraced the darkness, taking no thought for the cost. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, they cared not that it was dark, because darkness was cheap. Oh, but the cost of striving in the darkness and never again turning to the light. Eventually it would cost them their lives.
She drew the curtains, the things themselves much like hanging shrouds, thick and weighted, but a necessity to keep the darkness without, from noticing the light within. There would come a time, when the light would no longer be hidden. They would raise it on the high towers in the form of fuel and flame. It would signal the beginning of the end. The battle for the light would begin, but for now they kept the light among themselves.
Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay
After the drapes had been drawn, the keepers of the flame drew their striking rods and simultaneously struck them resulting in a brief fireworks display followed by the gentle flare of multiple candles. Each lit candle was then used to light several more. Eventually the entire living space was full of light, including a fire in the large stone fireplace.
Image by Vladimir Maric from Pixabay
She knew that was the only way things would change, one flame at a time. She also knew that change depended not on a single flame, but on multiple ones. Light after light, after light, illuminating the dark places of the world. But it had to start with a single flame.
Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay
Forest fires started with a single ember, whether it be a lightening strike, a flicked cigarette butt, a discarded match or a purposeful addition of fuel and spark, but it still resulted in the same thing. The small spark would become a flame and the flame would become a blaze and that would sear everything in its path. The world would burn, just like the forest and one day life would return, sprouting forth from a tiny seed. The only way for new growth to come, was by the reckoning of fire.
“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.”