All Around Me Are Familiar Faces

It was really a sight to behold, even before it could be seen. The grouping stood upon the high mountain pass, looking duskward into the receding Light, their hair - each with a vibrant shade of orange or red, green or blue, pink or violet - glistening as It drew nearer the horizon. They watched the clouds overhead swirling, pushing downward as though something large were pressing them closer to the ocean. A tapered column of white hung in the sky, visible through the expanding cloud cover.

A green-haired child toddled forward with a flower, and placed it just beyond the line where brown and grey dirt and rock gave way to blackened, charred earth. A pink-haired adult female pulled her away with a yank, the tiny yellow flower fluttering away toward the grim slopes duskward of the group.

Most of them just watched, their eyes wide with horror, as the object began to punch through the lower levels of cloud - barely discernible at first, but becoming ever clearer as the moments passed. Layers of mist roiled off the object as it fell, spreading behind it and dissipating slowly into the surrounding atmosphere. Rain pelted the ocean beneath the object as nitrogen and hydrogen and oxygen and carbon dioxide sublimated. These people watched this stone of what appeared to be cloud fall from the sky, watched it blot out the Light, cover the holy skyward disc with its enormous, foggy shape. What was perhaps worst was the noise the falling object made: a terrible hissing, squealing sound.

The cloudstone touched the water of the ocean, and the sound immediately amplified, the water touching it seeming to boil and expand upward. They watched as it pushed further in, like a thumb into warm dough. They watched as the water rose, and rose, and rose. They watched as the shoreline far below pulled back further and further from the mainland. They watched as the cloudstone pushed itself to the bottom of the ocean, forcing the ocean to seek a new home. They could feel it hit the bottom, the force of the shake leaving many of them laying sprawled upon the ground, rumbling for minutes afterward. Afterward, there was only the wind and the crying of the child with the flower, but the water continued to recede and the expanding wave grew larger.

It stopped peeling back and lunged suddenly forward, rushing against the continental shelf, skirting between newly opened faults. The people rushed higher atop the mountains, tried to move as dawnward as possible. Grip became impossible as the roar of water rushing up the blackened, duskward ridges became actual vibrations. The little girl who had offered the flower as a gift to the deadened duskward slopes fell, and tumbled down the mountainside. Several more developed individuals cried after her and tried to rush down the grade to save her. Water, hard as concrete, burst forth from around the mountain and whisked away a quarter of the group, their screams muffled and swallowed by the torrent.

In the aftermath, they laid breathlessly upon the stark granite of the mountainside, watching what of the tsunami had passed over the mountains continue its way toward dawn, wiping away forests and immense cities. One of them, a brown-haired individual, climbed the slope again and dared view the cloudstone.

It stood monolithic against the horizon, dazzlingly illuminated through the hole it had tunneled through the clouds above it. Mist still roiled and shifted down its sides, spreading white tendrils over the choppy waters below. All the individual could do was shiver at the sight.

The Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia

A story for everyone:

'There he stood, listening to her speak -- watching her beautiful, seemingly-huge teeth work behind her somewhat full lips, watching her blue-grey eyes stare him down while she talked. She was discussing how she'd read a book, a good book, about the process of becoming a geek -- a nerd, if we will -- takes place in young men. She really was pretty, he realized. Like, really, really pretty. And then she mentioned that many of the things that are normally associated with geekdom pique her interest. So she asked him, knowing him to be of the homely nerd variety, if he could compile her a list of graphic novels and such that she might be interested in reading.

It was at this point that he blurted out, "I love you!"

Moments passed before he felt the prongs enter the flesh of his torso, before he felt current rushing though his body. The bouquet in his hand convulsed with him as juice pumped through him, throwing petals into the air everywhere. All anyone heard was the stuttered burbling of the young man, the whipping of cellophane, and the surreptitious clicking of the taser."