Unblinking

• Yesmi Kalugalage, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2018

Its chartreuse leaves twist and unfurl, a silent aria of movement in the lush peacock grass. Palatial tangerine petals curl their way up the wiry stem of the flower, bathed in the watchful gaze of the sun above. It continues to grow, swaying blades of grass joining the race to the coral sky. Each stem, each petal, each spike of grass is caressed in the tender rains of its light; still growing, still reaching for the sky, still persevering.

But the flower lives in a sweet spring of euphoric ignorance, unaware and uncaring of sorrow and loss, shielded from the harsh winters of reality by a never ending horizon of pastel mist. But now there’s a storm brewing, rumbling like the irascible giant in the clouds, threatening to fracture the mist. It’s a storm of false hope, of fake love and broken dreams.

Because after growth, there is only withering. Shrinking. Decaying. Wilting. Death. And it’s only a matter of time. Tick, tock. Tick, tock....

The sun’s once tender rains of sunlight come in torrents now, fierce amber hues and scarlet red tinctures dousing the plants. There is no escape, no rescue from its inevitable kiss of death. Green becomes singeing black, tangerine turns into ashy grey. The flower’s utopia is gone now, an evanescent mirage in the distance. Veins of onyx black crackle through the flower, lacerating its gossamer fronds like an archaic lupine beast and its prey, slashing and searing until there is nothing left of its existence.

The blades of grass dissolve, one by one, prisoner to the palpable heat of the sun’s biting stare. They crumple into ash like felled oaks, rustling their last breeze before falling, dropping acceptingly into the waiting arms of Death himself. Accepting their cataclysmic fate.

Slowly but surely, the sun devours its children, its devotees, its very self.

And then there is silence. Deafening silence that floods the air. Where there was grass, there is dry, barren sand. All that remains of the flower is a single petal, crisp and blackened like a fallen star. Like a fallen soul. And yet, it still remains intact, in all its baneful glory and maleficent crimes, burning gaze of malice and torridity forever unblinking.

There may be another tangerine flower, another plain of peacock grass, many moons later. But their enraptured haze of utopia, their clouds of rose pompadour will once again, be snared by the sun’s paralysing glare. There will be no hope, no life for them. There is no use to existence under its cruel eye. The sun will devour, will maim, will snuff the flame of life over and over again. And it will do it without a single regret in its licentious mind.

And it’s only a matter of time before it begins its wicked massacre once again.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.