Original A Final Stillness

[love]

A Final Stillness

Like Earth at Peace, but simpler and fully original. Thanks to @Sinderella for beta reading.
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The wind forgets to howl and the earth forgets to spin. From motionless leaftips and seedheads, from pacified shorelines, from breathless throats, emerges a depth of silence. Clouds dissolve like cotton candy in a child's mouth, baring a web of rainbows. Birds float on frozen wings, downward, like shed leaves. Ten thousand soft bodies settle soundlessly upon beds of stone or sand, or upon pillows of grass or foliage or pine needles, or duvets of snow, and close their eyes. Ten thousand souls depart for peaceful oblivion.

 

[K_S]

Here for the blitz because why not?

So here we are at the big sleep. A mass turning in as eveything literally freezes in mid motion and shuts down indefinitly. The idea brings back the horror of old childhood excuses of how passes so and so is "just sleeping". It also reminds me of how my family basically reared me without going that route becuase when you really think on it its horrifying.

You catch that hinted horror well. With the bird and thier floating... Down... A gentled but told tale of falling. Even if the gory impact is skipped over. The disolving of atmosphere as clouds melt so prettily they leave rainbows as they break down... The stagnation as the personified wind when it ceases to "howl. So on, and so forth.

The fact that only ten thousand (bodies) died such makes me think this was set either waaay back in the day when overpopulation wasn't an issue (though the fact we get front view to animals passing such kinda debunks it since insect/bird/small mammal population alone is easily such in say a forrest setting/ecosystem and animals being first felt like thet were in that tally for being first....

Which leaves the future... Like bad level boarderline lifeless on the ecosystem rating chart setting for this future.... Still it feels like a possibility.

Anyways thank you for sharing this piece (and yes i know its odd i would persue it come the day but i am untradtional at best) it was a fun read that lead to a fun think exercise. Are tou olanning on expanding the when, hows, and whys of this scenario or leave it as is?

Est words (258) not counting bolded words for count.

 

[Poivron]

This is a cool little snippet. It's short, but there's clearly a lot of attention paid to wording and how everything fits together. Reminds me of a prose poem. I'm no poetry expert, but this might be categorized as one.

Having read a few of your stories I think death and beauty, or the beauty of death, are a running theme with them. It fits with my own personal aesthetic (thumbs up), so I'm a fan. Also I love apocalyptic stories, I'm morbid like that, so the idea of a collective death appeals to me. The phrase "ten thousand" is used, but based on the title and first sentence, it feels like a stand-in for the population of the whole world. Everything alive. But the tone conveys a sense of quiet acceptance instead of despair. The end of the world isn't a bad thing. More the opposite, really.

The specific imagery is great. Soft, gentle, evocative. Particularly fond of "pacified shorelines", and birds floating down like shed leaves. I'll admit "baring a web of rainbows" confused me until I looked up what "baring" means, and then I thought it was a cool line. Blame that one on me not knowing words, though. At any rate, the clouds dissolving to reveal rainbows across the whole sky is a fantastic image.

(Also, and I know these are different settings and styles so apologies for comparing them, but this reminds me of Lily's SCP-001 Proposal. Probably not worth reading if you're not an SCP fan, but both stories have a sense of peaceful finality to them that I love.)

 

[zion of arcadia]

I went ahead and read Earth at Peace for some context. There's not the same level of detail here as there, but it allows space for more ambiguity in the wording, which I always enjoy. My one suggestion was for this part to have a touch more specificity:

From motionless leaftips and seedheads...​

This occurred to me because I read "motionless seedheads" and found myself imagining dandelions on the cusp of their seeds being whisked away. But it doesn't actually say that, which felt like a missed opportunity. To match it, for leaftip I refreshed my tree symbolism knowledge before at last setting on an olive tree. It had those religious/divine undertones that fit with the overall atmosphere of cataclysm--and a sense of peace in the face of that cataclysm.

The poem (vignette?) generates an atmosphere of 'before' and 'after' with the moment in-between cut out. The liminal space has been lost. To quote Richard Rohr:

The very vulnerability and openness of liminal space allows room for something genuinely new to happen. We are empty and receptive—erased tablets waiting for new words. Liminal space is where we are most teachable, often because we are most humbled. Liminality keeps us in an ongoing state of shadowboxing instead of ego-confirmation, struggling with the hidden side of things, and calling so-called normalcy into creative question.

But the time for change has past, and the end has come. It's very somber. The one exception is the line about clouds, which utilizes a cotton candy simile. The denotation of 'dissolve' is inherently that of flux. We also get rainbow imagery here, which commonly symbolizes hope and rebirth. It made me think that if there was any hope, it would be found in children.

Normally I'd share a poem here, but instead I'll go with a quote from teenage-me's favorite author:

“It's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.” --Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

 

[love]

Spoiler: zion

Liminal space in writing is an interesting idea. Perhaps I can think of ways to consciously incorporate it going forward.

This occurred to me because I read "motionless seedheads" and found myself imagining dandelions on the cusp of their seeds being whisked away. But it doesn't actually say that, which felt like a missed opportunity. To match it, for leaftip I refreshed my tree symbolism knowledge before at last setting on an olive tree. It had those religious/divine undertones that fit with the overall atmosphere of cataclysm--and a sense of peace in the face of that cataclysm.

This is indicative of a broader tension with this story, which is that I am trying to describe a global event, including all plants and animals, but it's hard to do that without resorting to generic language. And it's hard to make generic language impactful or vivid. I don't know if being more specific in this sentence is worth the cost (less sense of global impact/may make readers wonder if there's something special about these two species other than symbolism), but I think you are right to criticize the lack of specificity. I also appreciate the thought you put into this.

The one exception is the line about clouds, which utilizes a cotton candy simile. The denotation of 'dissolve' is inherently that of flux. We also get rainbow imagery here, which commonly symbolizes hope and rebirth. It made me think that if there was any hope, it would be found in children.

Maybe this interpretation makes more sense than my own reading, which I am not sure I should spoil. I should probably ask more people what they made of the rainbows.

Spoiler: Others

I don't have much else to say that is specific to the other reviews. There seems to be a general appreciation for the metaphors and atmosphere, which is great. I should mention that the phrase "ten thousand" is used in the sense of "infinite" or "countless", which is admittedly more of a Chinese idiom, but it reads so much better than any alternative I could think of.