Black

Black

It was a dark and stormy night, but only because its creator wanted it to be one.

At least it was stormy, this time. For ages - several months' time, on Earth - the world had simply been black, a night unbroken, the visions of a blind man. The candles the dwellers of the land lit burned out; lightbulbs exploded. They all knew why. They pitied their land's lord even as they cursed him, relearning their homes and paths through touch and memory.

It's amazing how dependant one can be on the sense of sight. Even dreams live by it.

When the first bolt of lightning struck, nobody could quite believe it: Some thought it to merely be a mass hallucination, while others panicked, fearing that the sight was a flash of dying neurons, the last thing that their weakened eyes had transmitted before giving up entirely. But then the rain started to fall, and it was like hope falling from the sky...proof that their lives, and their lord's, would not go on forever in darkness and despair.

This did not, however, mean that the end was in sight.