The End

Their wrinkled hands melted together as they strolled slowly down the golden beach. They smiled at one another, knowing that their hands were made for each other, just as their lives had been. Behind them, the twin suns cast a warm, yellow halo across the horizon. It would be the most spectacular sunset of their lives.


Their names are not important because in a few short hours, life for the couple would come to an unforgettable end.


"Where do you think they'll all go?" she asked her husband. Her eyes were drawn to the stars out over the crimson ocean where tiny pinpoints of light sparked, stretched, then disappeared into the black unknown of space.


"There go some more," he said. "Do you regret staying?"


"Of course not," she said, squeezing his hand and pulling him closer. A salty mist washed over their frail skin as the breakers crashed over the rocks, sending foam and spray into the air around them. "We're much too old to be gallivanting across the universe. Our home is here. The End will be here." She squeezed his hand for emphasis. "We are here."


The man wanted to take her in his arms and just cry. Not a sad cry, mind you, but a happy cry reflecting a joy filled life, a full life, a life spent with her.


"So, where do you think they'll all go?" she asked again.


"Wherever they please I guess. Most will go to Earth, I think. But I feel for those that do. Last I heard, Earth was busting at the seams and couldn't hold another soul."


"I like to think that the majority of them will find another planet like this one. Do you think we're the only one's that stayed?"


He didn't need time to think about the answer to her question, but he let the silence stretch between them anyway. "I'd like to think that somewhere, maybe on another beach like this one, another couple is doing the exact same thing we are: asking the same questions, stating the same answers. Like us, I believe they have made their peace with their fate; and the fate of our planet."


More starships streaked into hyperspace above them, but their gaze was no longer on the heavens, but on each other.


"It's hard to imagine that the entire planet has been evacuated." One of the moons rose over the ocean, washing its green reflection over the beach. The red of the water deepened to purple as the celestial orb rose higher and higher above them.


"Yes, it is," he said, stopping to take her in his arms. He felt something fluttering in his chest and knew that the time was near for The End. "I love you."


"I love you, too," she said, resting her head of silver hair onto his chest.


Hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, the twin suns came closer and closer to their violent end. Over millions of years the suns had danced around each other, their gravitational forces tugged at one another until one day, the day the couple called The End, the suns would collide and explode into a supernova of astronomical proportions.


The End happened as the couple held each other on the beach. It started as a violent magnetic storm as burning charges of gas began to ignite between the two fiery giants. Then, in a blinding flash, the suns tore themselves apart, sending pulsing waves of energy outward in every direction. The energy waves stretched out through space in long fingers of reds, purples and blues as the blast radius grew. Within a few minutes of the explosion, the couple and their planet was gone, now only a memory in the minds of those that had escaped its violent end.


The End had finally come, and for the couple on the beach, it had been an end well worth waiting for.