Utopia

The sky is red.

When the sun still rose above this city, I peeled a tile from the rooftop, held it loosely. Softly. It shattered, three stories below, spreading like snowfall, like spiderwebs.

You said the ash was snow, though it burnt my tongue, my face, the back of my hands. Tiny embers falling from the clouds. And it was – piled like drifts, clumped and clung, speckled our hair until we were old like cathedrals. Churches burnt slower – they knew how to build, those Tudor parishioners, Regency petitioners, with stone and mortar and the hands of a holy man. The scattered ceramic disappeared beneath that grey cling, and we left the rooftops crumbling behind.

But in the country, the corpses were quieter. The ash continued, as thick a shroud as any that could serve a plague pit, and our feet dragged. The worst of it was the sad little crunch when you stepped on a finger or foot, anything easily broken. A fallen branch. A child.

We danced, though. You took me to the hills, and the crest was clean, clear, granite swept by the wind. The view was for miles, cliffs and fences muted, houses burning, burnt. And we danced, and we dance, to the song of a thousand million voices. The sky is red.

Soon, we will join it.