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A Funeral Song
As a single star fell from the sky, the midday sky seemed to travel forth in time. The near pitch-darkness led to an uprising, with only the fluttering lightning bugs left as guides through the end of the world. As the voices overlapped, the wildlife coming alive amid the throes of panic, the queen of the pride found it in herself to speak over the masses.
“Enough!”
The sudden roar led the grasslands to a tense silence, a sudden stop of hooves and sharp whines. She rose from her throne, her elegant steps echoing throughout her kingdom and making her subjects tremble. There was no moon and no sun in the sky, just a trail of falling stars illuminating the heavens above. Still, she seemed to shine as her voice roared again.
“The day has come! The fools have brought our mother's’ wrath upon the Earth, and we shall go down with them, through no real fault of our own. Still, with grace we must go.”
Sounds of dismay erupted throughout the land, and the queen made no attempt to stop their grief. She had known this day would come, since the first time the coyote tasted flesh, and greed and lust were born into the world. They would settle themselves in the hearts of the fools that ran their home into the ground, and there was no way to fight it. Her kingdom had lived with as much dignity as they could all muster; reduced to being hunted for sport, not even for need. She reasoned the stars were the ones hunting down the fools now.
The sudden gathering resembled the olden days, a funeral song for times of peace and prosperity. All of her subjects, big and small, joined by the chorus of falling stars. And then there was silence.
An eerie air enveloped the darkness, as nothing was anymore. The queen, or who she used to be, as she wasn’t anymore, descended into a deep trance-like slumber. But she awoke with a jolt, or as much as she could be awake and not exist at the same time, for a voice was speaking her name.
“Who calls for me?”
“M Y D E A R C H I L D. M Y B R A V E C H I L D. ”
The lioness, who was no more, felt a warm kinship with the voice from the void. She tried to roar, to explain herself and her kind, but found that no sounds came from her mouth. Nonetheless, her thoughts were echoed back into the darkness.
“Mother, our courage was not enough.”
As despair threatened to envelop her the way it had her subjects, images from their last moments on Earth found themselves seeping into her heart. A sight lost for centuries, all creatures standing together paying tribute to their home. A symphony composed for tragedy, a harmony missing a voice.
And the void answered back,
“D I D Y O U N O T W O N D E R
W H Y Y O U C O U L D H E A R T H E S T A R S S I N G I N G ? ”
