Clad in a hazmat suit, Nivia emerges out of the underground trench, like a silk moth appears from a silkworm cocoon, not wiser akin to a pupa that develops into an adult moth, though certainly a few years older than her tricenarian self that had gone belowground. She is unable to discern her surroundings—faith dimmed, devoid of any assurance; eyes blinded by the glaring light; with the cold shadow whelming—currently nothing but a scattered wreckage of a lost battle marking the end of humanity. A mephitic fog hangs like a dark gloom of a cloud all over the place. She sets foot on the red earth—resembling a rugged, pine-cone-like carpet—with thick, black cracks. It seems as if a giant alien had picked up the town, she knew, tossed it, and shambolically hurled it back to the surface of Earth, breaking into several useless fragments, in each of whose depths lurk a malicious, smoldering power that awaits its next strike.
Amid the rubble of residential structures here and there, houses and trees tilted, half-buried in the earth, her eyes scan everywhere for a breathing soul. But not a single one is in sight. She recalls the faces of the last of the humans staring at the sky before the Armageddon, feeling the temblors, with animal-like swipes all over their bodies, having rickety hands and feet, wildly gasping for breath, in addition to bloated stomachs and open mouths.
While the question of whether it’s a dream or reality that she is still alive passes through her mind, she rattles like an unsettled cup in its saucer on noticing a living, hazmat suit-less man in a long time in what appears to be an unhindered vision. Breathing the pestilential air unconcernedly, along with a mask-less horse standing nearby, having white, red, black, and pale patches designed on its body, he is broadcasting seeds and planting saplings on the land before him that has four headstones at one corner. “God bless the four horsemen,” he says on seeing her, authoritatively gesturing for her to remove the defensive gear.
Undecidedly, Nivia sheds the protective garment that has formed her outer skin, feeling a hint of the engendering air on her sweaty skin like a sudden awakening. It isn’t only the aroma of mere earth but the fragrance of new existences, promising the attendance of the rising flora.
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