This Deserves A Title.

A quiet fall night, mist hiding ground from sky.

Venus and her light stopped from dancing in the puddles and the glass on the side of a bus stop.

Instead, the only light that can pierce the smog is that of that shining through a windowpane. A thick one, one of those ones you see in basements that’s just a solid block of glass.

The light must be very strong, shining from some basement on some street in some city somewhere, to be able to penetrate the mist.

The glow is almost seductive, who knows what might be lurking beyond that concrete foundation.

If only one could look through it. But that’s unthinkable. Prying into someone else’s life. Into their home. You can’t just do that.

Or can you?

The days fade away, and the seasons change. Snow is falling, as cryptid aberrations, dancing in the corners of your vision, the frost creeps into everyday life. Shining on the ground and clinging to windows.

Still that light. It shines through the block of glass in the cinderblocks. Bouncing off the shoes of strangers who perhaps take just a bit too much care of themselves.

It creeps onto the cobbled streets, bathing a singular triangle of lucky stones in its glory.

Long after the stones have been worn to shining. Long after the stones have been worn to cracking. Long after the stones have been worn away. The light still shines from the same place.

The glass is cracked now. Cracked and chipped, from decades of pebbles and storms.

The glass has a noticeable divot in it. The storms are getting stronger.

The light still shines through the holes in the glass, although the glass itself is too dirty and broken to reflect its shine any longer. The glass that remains, that is.

The glass finally falls from its setting, presumably shattering on the floor below. You wouldn’t know. Not only because you are long dead, but because you couldn’t possibly have given in to the urge to peer into the room that the light was coming from.

Right?

The decades have turned into centuries, and the centuries have worn on into millennia.

The concrete blocks surrounding the empty window have cracked and are worn away as well now. Much a slower process, as the concrete seems to be better at staving off the elements than the glass was.

This concrete is the foundation of whatever building is above it. The building still remains, at least some of it.

But that isn’t the most important remnant of whatever life used to be lived here.

The light. It still shines. Through the cracks in rotting floorboards. Through the crumbling stones on the ground. Through the hole, where the glass used to be.

The light seems to be the only thing that hasn’t changed over the centuries. Several thousand years at least. Shining out of a long-forgotten place.

During the times when there were people to look, none did. And now the era of people looking at things- of people doing much of anything- is long gone.

If one were to look at the light, they might have had their eyes burned by the brightness.

If one were to look at the light, they might have seen what was coming. If one were to look at the light, they might have been able to save the world.

But no one looks at lights when light is plain to see.

They go looking for answers in obscure places, seeking what no one has ever sought. Trying to find an answer to a question that mightn’t need answering.

No one ever thinks to simply look downstairs. No one ever thinks to look for the light that was there the whole time.

The one that has shone since the beginning of time, and one that will shine until the end of it.

The era of people doing much of anything may well be over, but the time of that light will never be at an end.

As long as there are things in the universe, the light still shines. As long as the collective consciousness of whatever might still be out there still exists to whatever capacity it may or may not exist, the light still shines.

And once the day has come, that nothing and no one is left to save, once it is no longer needed, the light might finally go out.