PHOTO SUBMITTED BY: KAVEMAN19

 

All things seemed possible when the stretch of starlight glittered into a forever-fan of wonder. The brush of night-time clouds were but the gauzy whispers of potential tomorrows captured as tangible mass. The world was broken, yes, but it was not hopeless. The earth was scarred, but not dead. The rivers were muddy, but not stagnant. The air was sharp, but not suffocating. All one had to do was simply know where to look.

 

Perhaps it was in the way saplings continued to stretch skyward, fighting gravity for a sun that had not forsaken them. The forest was not the only place where verdant life could be found. Nature was resilient in its own way, creeping into the Savage Divide and demanding that even the shale and rock remember its power. Perhaps it was in the way that wildlife continued to exist--damaged, yes, but rebuilding a sustainable ecosystem of predator and prey. Memories of what they once were, glorious in their plume and fur, were held now only in storybooks not ravaged by fire and flood. Perhaps it was in the way that night always followed day, and day always followed night. The truth that not even the cataclysmic forces of fear and hubris could extinguish even this.

 

Or perhaps it was in the way laughter could swiftly and wildly dance with a freedom felt once more. The sound was as varied as the fingerprints that once more began to place their presence upon the land. It was universal, this simple act of emotional expression that was understood by all, contagious in the bonds shared by humanity.

 

To laugh meant that fear receded, shying away from the shimmering force that denied shadow’s grip. How long had they lived in fear of all the uncertainties of the future, of poisonous what-if’s that pumped crippling toxins into the mind? Waking now from the nightmare, humanity was searching for those places where hope was fostered. It did not mean that danger was now merely an echo of those first few months--far from it--but that they would no longer allow themselves to be constricted into unshakable indecision.

 

Humanity found, when the soot and ash of charred anger and fear were brushed aside, ground fertile for hope. It was here that seeds were planted and nursed into life from the dedication of the Self to seek to rise above the simple vibration of mindless existence. Like-minded and caught within the ties of community, humanity pushed back against the monsters of doubt, regret, hate… and laughed beneath the starlight.

 

For beneath such, all hopes are earnestly painted, all dreams are honestly sung, and all stories are truly possible.

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