Tales of the Blight IV

The ground trembled. They said the end was coming. He had been waiting.

The horizon was bare; the treatments were to blame for that, their miraculous “cure.” Much good it had done. Blighted and blasted and, now, finally, dying. Everyone who could had left at the first warnings. After the quarantine, the vultures, messenger ships orbiting at safe range, taking last transmissions and final bequests.

He’d had nothing to say.

The ground shifted again. He sat down on the ledge, rested a hand on the rock, the land’s exposed bones, and softly began to sing a dirge for his home.