Pheonix

The sky was burning. A red sun illuminating the horizon and the sky running with blood. The red horizon burns into the clear blue sky, burning the air with swathes of black and shards of white light. Where the sun lands ribbons of oranges and yellow sparkle off the distant hill. All at once the heavens seem to open, the blue sky of day descending into the harsh yellow light of dusk only for that to be replaced by the blood red light of night as even that solders away into a pitch black.

The winds howl. Pushed through the valley they scrape the trees and cry out their joys. As the sun burns the skies, the winds ravage the lands. Small whirlwinds of trees and leaves are torn from the ground. Branches are flung from their arboreal homes and the ground itself seems to shudder. Except for a few mighty trees grown massive in years of storms, the winds rip through the desolate valley tossing stones out of their way and up rooting the puny huts of a small village.

Every night the sky burns. Every night the peaceful blue sky of day runs with blood. Every night the winds howl with their wrath. Every night the villages cower in fear murmuring their prayers to the gods. They sit huddled in alcoves, behind trees, underground as the nightly siege plays out above them.

And each night they pray to the Sun and it returns filling the air with the calm oranges and yellows of dawn. Each night they pray to the winds and it spares their crops hidden behind massive crags. Each night they pray to the sky and it renews itself out of it own burnt ashes to the brilliant sky of day. But as the sun ends it’s daily course and begins to sink into the horizon before them these villagers huddle knowing that this day might be their last in this infernal realm of days and nights. They fling up their prayers to Sun and Wind and Sky beseeching them to give them just one more day on this earth. Each day they pray as they know it might be their last.

These are god fearing men.