Land of the Beautiful Dead

by R. Lee Smith

“Animals will swell to fill the void left by Men,” he told her. “And over-swell it, perhaps. There will be other extinctions and other recoveries. The sky will clear, but those who see it will not marvel at its many colors. These ruins will collapse, burying treasures like this—” He waved at the walls. “—and this—” He picked up the spoon from her coffee tray and tossed it down again with a clatter. “—forever, but the world will go on. Years become centuries so easily when no one is there to count them. Centuries become millennia. The forests will reclaim the lands that Men have razed. Rivers will carve canyons across the scars left by his fallen cities. Mountains will rise up, trapping seas to dry under an uncaring sun and leaving the bones of whales to bleach in the newborn deserts for no one to find, no one to be inspired by thoughts of giants and dragons. And still the world will go on, and I will go on with it through ages that can only be measured by the coming and going of glaciers. The stars themselves will shift in the heavens and no one will be there to invent names for their new alignments or remember the stories of the old ones, no one but me. In time, the sun itself will begin to cool. Here on Earth, the world goes on and on as its remaining life passes through its last changes and dies away. It will be quiet. And lonely.” His mouth curved into a bitter line. “But I’ll live.” “Stop it,” Lan whispered through numb lips.