A Balance Restored
Summer holds her hands tight against her ears, but it’s impossible to block out the roaring, world-ending static. It rages through the Earth like an ocean. Dwarfs conscious thought. Threatens to sweep her soul away in its endless tides. Only by the most infinitesimal thread does she manage to hang on, and that’s only a holding pattern, a temporary stalemate that precedes annihilation.
She should have listened to her mother.
“All things have their place,” she’d said before passing on. “All things must maintain a proper balance. Upset that balance with your own designs, and the whole world might come undone.”
The exhortation had been her last.
Summer tried not to interfere in the human world. She took her mother’s advice to heart, and she strove to allow nature its due course. But so many people suffered, so many people died, and what was she supposed to do, abandon them to a dark, uncaring universe?
At first it was just little helps, small gestures to soothe the aches and pains of a village or a town. An inch of rain here, a calming of the winds there. So many lives saved. So many disasters averted. Soon she styled herself a savior, a superhero as Earth’s comic books and movies would have understood her. A goddess, righteous, noble, someone to be worshiped and revered.
Then the storms came.
Violent, ocean-sized gales, tearing through whole continents at chaotic speeds. A backlash to her meddling, a correcting force as the universe attempted to reassert balance.
If Summer had let the storms rage, perhaps some remnant of humanity would have survived. But she saw the hurricanes and tornadoes buffet the world, and she pushed back like a frightened child. She knew in the rational corners of her mind that doing so would summon a larger correcting force, yet she was too stubborn and invested to admit that she should stop.
Then came the static.
An all-consuming sound—a lightless void that tore the sky—a mounting pocket of vacuum that swallowed the world whole.
Now only Summer is left. She holds for the moment—she survives—but for how long? If only she could wait time enough for the breach to heal, for the universe to grow still once more.
But she knows the truth.
She’s the cause of the damage, and her destruction is a necessary part of that correcting force. For now she’ll hold, but no matter how long she survives, her fate has already been decided.
Everything has its place, and balance will be restored.
Enter your email address and click "Submit" to subscribe and receive The Sign.
