The Potentially Alive, 6

This is the sixth post (out of six) in a short story about how the world ends, or begins. Click on the appropriate link for the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth post in the series.

***

The golden rays of a rising sun warmly embraced another morning. They skipped and danced across a lake. The lake, surrounded by lush, green grass, seemed to be composed of a million winks. It flashed continuously like a million cameras eager to record another splendid day. And a splendid day it was.

A tune could be heard now. It was a playfully happy tune, with notes that rose and fell, only to rise higher and higher yet again. It belonged to a girl named Phoenix—a girl who had had earned the right to listen to it—a girl it seems who was just waking up.

Her hands stretched to the sky as if they were being pulled up by the clouds, she looked down at the lake below, let it take a million pictures of a woman at peace with herself, and spoke aloud the first words that came to her mind. “The world began when I was born,” she said, “and the world is mine to win.”

She picked up the small device that was playing her tune. It had given her back her life she thought, and at the expense of no one. It was her latest invention, much better than the first model which had been taken from her, and it no doubt would come in handy now—at least for some.

Walking down the hill, the invention clutched in her hand, she had a big day ahead of her. She waved once more to the lake, took a left, and made her way to what was left of civilization.