Sunsets of Sunflowers

Back in my day the sunflowers faced the sun every morning, new florets joining the golden array that tracked the fiery orb's path from dawn to dusk, clear skies or dust. They held their heads high and turned them ever so slowly. The three-legged carnivorous triffids standing among them ignored them. They thought they were one of them.

One memorable day dawned rosy, a warning that storms were coming, perhaps rain. The sunflowers' roots waited in anticipation. They had bored deep into the fertile Kansas soils but they were parched none-the-less. I moved among them like the mole that I was.

Black clouds moved in before noon but they didn't bring promised rain. The dark dust swirled and covered the leaves with ash. There was no wind. In the stillness I could feel the restless rustles of triffids around me who pulled their three legs out of the soil and began to move.

Then the war commenced as clouds blocked out the sun. The triffids weren't happy as it was the source of replenishing their organic solar batteries now that humans and large animals had been hunted and most exterminated. Usually, the triffids could mirror the sun back at the clouds and disperse them. It only rained at night while they dozed.

Underground we worms, we moles, we few rabbits and foxes that were left, hid where we could to avoid the cross fire of laser beams and lightning.

And the sudden wind. Black swirls sucked up whatever they could, turning skies brown and green as they tore apart anything without deep roots, yanking them from the ground, tossing them like toothpicks. And then the burning, ashes to ashes as fires broke out. The screams were horrifying; the stench of burnt 'flesh' unforgettable.

By late afternoon the killing fields lay strewn with sunflowers and triffids alike.

I poked out my singed head after the fracas was over. The sunset was magnificent that day. A calm ruby glow at the horizon as snowflakes fell on ashes, an unseasonal frost icing the eerie landscape of ruin and hope. The few sunflowers left standing nodded their heads in requiem as a badger eulogized the fallen in an eloquent elegy. I poked my velvety head back in when a rabbit squeaked out a warning as a burrowing owl flew overhead.

Days of rain followed as clouds moved back in. A glorious rain pelted green sprouts as they braved the new world. The ground absorbed what it could, filling the rivers and lakes. Worms rose to the surface as if to rejoice.

But that was back in my day when triffids ruled. They rule no longer. The Earth had administered its judgment, cruel as it may have seemed.

Now I burrow among the sunflowers that rose from seeds we denizens of the dark underground had planted, each stalk raising hands of hallelujahs, their faces following the sun until the golden sunsets sing them a lullaby, repeating their daily mantra when the dawns wake them up.

And since there were no humans to whack me on the head, I joined in, in my own mole-ish squeak.

Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light... no light shines on me.

© Copyright 2022 Kåre Enga [178.342] (30.januar.2022)

Submitted to January 2022

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~535 words