Carla Amada Muntean is participating in the International Literary Creation Competition, 7th Edition, from Vladimirescu, Arad County, Romania and is 13 years old. We thank her for her participation and wish her success.

When the Earth Stopped Blooming

There had once been a time when the land was bright with colors and filled with fragrant flowers. But alas, that time had long ago come to an end. Yet you – you have seen that time with your own eyes and felt those flowers with your own hands.

In the end, your time was quite gone, wasn’t it? Now, after you had seen humanity take each wrong step and watched as they dammed their own fate…such a pity that your form as a mere specter, a ghost, allowed you to do nothing. Sad indeed, isn’t it?

As you wander the halls of a now-decayed building, you glimpse the view outside through a cracked window. The land is barren, dry cracks spreading across it like gateways to hell. No seed had sprouted and no bud had bloomed in years on this Earth; the only sign they even once existed is the skeletons of trees littered sparsely on the plain. If you would have had lungs to breathe with, they would have ached from the poisoned air, and perhaps if you still had a life, years would have been shaved of it.

You scurry pass towards the open door that was barely hanging on its hinges and look with pity at the human crouched in a corner.

If he were in your time, a fire would have been lit, but the heat had become so suffocating over the past hundred years, they’ve even forgotten fire once had such a purpose. You’ve been keeping an eye on this one for quite a while now. Humans have become rare on Earth in these past years, even gone, you could say. A few lucky ones had flown out across the galaxies but others, who showed no such luck, had gotten stuck here, thinning out.

All you could ever do was pray for them, anyways. They could not see you and you could leave no sings. In the past you’ve picked others like him and watched powerless as they proudly walked toward their demise.

Even so, for some reason, you still hanged around.

You knew he was searching for a hideout, one of the last places that were still filled with human life. But those efforts were in vain, and you knew that.

Some time had passed – weeks, maybe months? It had long ago become hard for you to tell.

But the important thing was that the human you were following had finally grasped information on the last remaining hideout and was heading out now. You couldn’t help but feel a bit disheartened, still you continued following him. You could catch a faint excitement in his movements as he set out, and you too, remembering your „promise”, felt a shadow of the same thing. You knew that he will be the last human you would follow in your lingering form, so it was only natural to feel such melancholy. Yes, soon the promise that has kept you here even after death, was to be fulfilled, and then, what waited for you, was change. What will change, and how? You didn’t know, all you knew was that it was soon.

You silently followed him on his journey as the sun set and rose again multiple times. It was a path you once walked before, so, you knew the hideout was near, you’ve been there before after all.

You continued trailing him. A persistent one, weren’t you?

Then the human sped up.

He had found the place he was looking for and began searching thoroughly through every corner hoping to find at least one final breath.

There was nothing.

You were long aware of this place, so of course you knew. He was the last one left.

And now, as you watched him, you heard your promise echoing through your head:

„You shall wander Earth, until every being draws its last breath, and the last loses reason to remember you”.

And in your final moments, as you slowly disappeared, you remembered your name.

Yes, your name.

You, were called –

Hope.