Weekly Finalist: Untitled by Andrew Cloud
The solitary hawk surveyed the landscape. Sun. Heat. Clouds lazily cruised through the solid blue sky. Breeze. A small, brown blur is spotted through the foliage. Rodent. Food. Flight. Wings spread, it takes off. Feathers ripple, wind feebly tugs at the edges of the being. The blur is much closer. Dive. Consume. And that is all. Another second has gone by, the change to the world is minuscule, yet necessary. There were no hard feelings. It just happened because it had to. Anything that conspires against that law will die.
In the distance, a motor hums. There’s a crash. Tree. Gone. Just like that. The past is the past, the present is the present, but the future has changed. Yet the goal remains the same. Always the goal. Now harder to attain. A chink in the chain. What to do, what to do. The same. Small change, but the goal still remains. The goal will always remain.
The sense of survival, of preserving one’s own life and continuing it so that chaos doesn’t erupt is the purpose of everything. One’s given something they must protect. It must be protected using all means possible. Simple, noble. It’s a solitary goal; the preservation of life.
So a tree went down somewhere in the forest, so what? Nothing can be done about it. Move on. So many more may fall. So what? Nothing can be done about it. The whole forest will fall. We tried, and that’s all that can be done. The goal remained the same.
