Retribution For The Past

Jax leaped over the scattered boulders around him. Though the leather mask that covered his head protected him from the rain, he still felt the cold seep through his thin shirt, and the pelting drops cried out they hit the top of his head. Looking up at the black sky meant blinding his goggles from the shower, and so Jax kept gaze fixed on the equally dark distance.
5,000 years of human evacuation seemed to not have taken a toll on the surface. The once luscious forests that held thousands of flora and fauna was now stripped bare, like when a butcher skins an animal of its fur coat. Just as man removes the fur, man also degrades the planet’s surface, until the insides are exposed. This was their planet now. Desolate and uninhabitable. No signs of living things. No greenery.
But Jax had not come to bring hope for humans. They did not deserve it, nor did it exist anymore.
He squinted through the showers. The noise was distracting, but even a blind man would come to the same conclusion- there was no green. And no green meant no life. He’d left the comfort of his warm house to prove that it had once existed, but now, Jax felt embarrassed- while his scornful friends and family enjoyed themselves in their huts below, he was above in the cold rain looking for something only spoken of in books. It was shameful.
Jax turned to leave as a muffled sigh escaped him- followed by a grunt as he fell. He’d mistook a trench for a large boulder, and meaning to climb it had been a mistake.
Darkness surrounded him as Jax pushed himself up. How far had he fallen? He scolded himself as he felt around himself. When was the last time his vision had failed him? This was embarrassing. His family would laugh once he climbed out of this trench and came back to them. Jax, the son of the iconic watcher, hadn’t been able to-
Something rustled beneath his palm. Jax paused, mouth clenched, and moved his hand to the side. Something soft pushed against it and moved again. Rocks did not move.
Trembling, Jax struggled to yank his glove off his hand. He let it run across the cracked ground, and felt at what had disturbed him earlier. His numb fingers barely registered the rounded curves of what he was feeling. Letting them trail to the bottom of the peculiar object finally helped the puzzle pieces in Jax’s mind fit together.
A sapling. Small and frail, but very much alive, clinging to whatever was helping it survive beneath the rocks.
Jax’s wild laughter shifted into a fit of coughing from beneath his restrictive mask. He dreamt of the stunned looks on his family’s faces while wheezing for air. Their once grin-filled faces would fall slack once he brought this sapling home.
This time, Jax was the one who would get the last laugh.

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