Amber's Ember

My name is Amber. I’m about the size of the punctuation at the end of this sentence. I’m tall for my age. I live on a large log with my town and my family. We live in one of those little niches you stub your toe on; our Bark.

We gather for story time: my oldest relatives ramble on about the “olden days” when they lived on a tree before the Metal Teeth made their homes quake and fall. There’s also a prophecy that gets mumbled about like wildfire. Unlike the old stories, it ensnares my soul.

“One day, a giant will come and hoist our world into the sky and we will be thrown into Hell. Our only hopes of escaping will be to float to the Heavens.”

My great grandmother speaks of a “false-alarm-giant” that she lived through when she was my age. She said that she had hung by one finger when the log was thrown onto a pile of gritty soil. After that, the sky was encased in color over a blanket of sparkling blue every evening. We moved Bark after I was born and I don’t have a good view of the Blue Blanket anymore, but on a clear day I get to see the colors change in the sky and become black. My grandmother says that if I look hard enough I’ll see little white dots in the blackness that are supposed to be giant glowing trees, but my grandmother is silly and she wears glasses that make her eyes look too big. But maybe with those glasses she can see those trees…I look hard every night thinking that I could go up to the trees and live there, but my mother tells me I’m being naïve.

It was during my evening “How to Rope an Ant for Dinner” lesson that the excitement took place. The Giant appeared and blocked out the sun. It was ugly, large and white. It grunted a lot. Our world shook and trembled and we slid from one Bark to another. I could see the elders yelling “I told you so!” and “No false alarm here!” My father broke his nose on the log when it fell back onto the ground.

The Giant flooded us out by a foul liquid from a red bottle. We all yelled our goodbyes, mother was crying. The Giant struck a small piece of wood, it lit like the summer sun, and he threw it at us. We were engulfed into Hell. Everyone screamed. Through smoke-filled eyes I watched the Giant place a white ball onto a stick and begin to turn it over our burning bodies until it charred black. I held onto the bark at my feet. The Giant popped the charred ball into its mouth. I watched my mother holding my grandmother up. I coughed desperately. My bark snapped, bright red, and I drifted up on the cool night breeze. I was on my way, floating toward the white dotted trees in the black sky.