Nothing but sky

The sky is dark blue, like a summer crystal with a shade of night exploding in the dark dust above him. He's on a cliff, which throws him into the air above the ground below, until all the trees look like broccoli and the men like action figures from a children's toy set. It's winter, so with this summer sky with it's purple and fiery blue colours comes his breath, pale as death into the air, like the smoke from a dragon's throat as he coughs and sneezes with a seasonal cold. He stands there, taking all of this in, rubbing his white and pink hands together, contemplating what it all means.

Here, there is nothing but sky, it outstretches over everything, cuddling the corners of that tiny earth. And here he is, standing in it, breathing into it, giving it life as it floats around him like bubbles from a boiling bath; one that would wrinkle your skin and warm you to the bone. The broccoli sways below in the strong wind that soars through the earth and the little plastic men totter from place to place with these realistic aims and ideas. Look at them go, look at them live! He cannot see their smiles, he is too far away, but he knows they are there. Protruding from their ageing faces, like shining beacons of hope.

He should go and join them, he is one of them. But yet, he is not. There is no shining beacon of hope splashed across his face from summer rain; only hard crystal eyes sent from the fire of winter, sent with what he's seen and what he understands. He stretched out his cold hands and closed those eyes, and the lights went out in the world. Everyone, everything, was still. Time seemed to pause, holding it's breath, waiting, as this one man stood and contemplated everything and nothing, the end and the beginning, life and death, happiness and distress.

Tears that seemed black in this bright night dropped like tiny silver bullets onto the dark grass below him, and he watched them as they soaked like daggers into the brown ground. The figures were tottering again, though the trees still seemed frozen and waiting. He lowered his hands and clenched his teeth, the wind blowing his jacket, gnawing at his chest. What were they waiting for? Nothing. They could do without him.

And then with a bang and a crack and a blinding flash which fired up like morning and then burned out like dusk, he was gone. There was a sizzling black singed mark where he had been standing, and the birds in the nearest tree gaped with their beaks open in wonder. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. The men, the women, they tottered. The trees, they bent and swayed. The wind howled as the night wore on, but the man was gone. He just didn't hope to understand. It was beyond everything he knew.