"If you are unkind, I will take her back from you. If you fail her, I will plague her with bad happenings. Every ugly thing that happens to her, will belong to you. I make her every grief your responsibility. Every pain she suffers. Every pain will be your doing. This is the bargain she struck with Me, to be with you. That your failures would be taken out on her. And if you think I won't destroy her, you are mistaken. Because all Broken Things come home to Me, in the end. And Heaven is so lonely without her."
One day, when no one is looking. She gives up. Stops Believing. No one notices. Not until the sky starts to fall in. Blue tiles trailing Heavenly Asbestos. One at a time, they fall.
Through holes in the sky, the angels peer down.
" Run. Tell Father she is coming."
Hearts go stumbling down stairs, everywhere. All the bridges burn. Going up one by one in hot whumps of fire. A sound like a dog barking endlessly in the night. The water wears a skin of ash.
Grey. Sliding shut like the protective eyelid of an attacking shark. The ocean stills. Then swallows. There is no Tide. The Moon, make no mistake, She is missing.
There is no rudder. There is no sail. The sky is a wet blackboard sliding into the wound of the horizon. It is starless, heartless, bloodless. Even the dirt is burning.
There are three colors left:
Black: the absence of light.
Grey: ash.
And the embers: Pink as the gills of an albino fish.
Imagine the whole of the world lit not by The Sun, The Moon, Stars, or Man. Imagine the whole of the world lit by nothing but the glaring embers of a magnificent rose-colored fire. The world blushing like a bride, all at once, everywhere.
I tell you. I tell you it was Beautiful. That final day when The Last True Believer, she gave up and went home.
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